There is no meaningful debate, anymore. None.
Not when we’re forced to consider the false dichotomy presented by liars on both sides of the aisle. They’ve successfully silenced opposition by repeating lies often enough that everyone forgot there was some truth out there in the first place.
Not when the desires of millions of Americans are being totally ignored. And we are talking about millions, or tens of millions of people, who really, truly believe that the government has no business telling them that as a condition of citizenship we are now obligated to buy healthcare—from a protected and well-connected oligopoly.
According to Agence France Press, the health care reform might advance on Christmas Eve. Merry fucking Christmas, right? Never missing a chance to editorialize, AFP concludes with two of the biggest lies (the omission of the will of millions of citizens, a lie of omission, notwithstanding) that continue to whitewash the real issues. If you can’t immediately spot them, don’t worry. I’ll deconstruct them below.
Washington spends more than double what Britain, France and Germany do per person on health care, but lags behind other countries in life expectancy and infant mortality, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) —AFP
“Washington” doesn’t spend this money. In America the costs are still largely borne by the people, whether individually or as part of a salary/benefits package nominally “provided” by their employers. But yeah, we spend too much. We get a lot more than they do elsewhere, but we spend too much. This is a serious problem which the health reform bill cannot solve, because the health reform bill is ignorant of economic laws. I’ve talked about this before, too:
Like any subsidy, this is a shell game. Money is taxed from Peter to provide for Paul. It doesn’t actually lower the cost of Paul’s health care (which is likely to increase), it simply lowers his out-of-pocket expenses by taking a portion of them from someone else’s pocket. This is not a viable, long-term solution. It’s a political band-aid, designed to beat the masses into submission.
Atomizing the market, putting responsibility (and privilege) back in the hands of the people will do for health care what it did for airline travel: turn something which was once an expensive luxury, into something which even the masses can afford.
AFP also repeats popular misinformation about infant mortality, life expectancy, etc., which is flat out junk science. Don’t click the link, I’ll tell you again:
America lags in some of these statistics, only because other countries lie about their statistics. Infant mortality is high because in America, the health care system (imperfect as it may be) attempts to save live birth babies which other countries consider “unsalvageable”, stillborn, or miscarried — even though by all objective standards (i.e., heartbeat, breathing, etc.) these are in-fact live births.
And for whatever reason, deaths by other-than-natural causes (i.e., accidents, homicides, etc.) are significantly more frequent in the U.S. than they are elsewhere, a factor which skews our longevity statistics downward, and a factor which anyone who’s passed a statistics class could tell you needs to be corrected for when analyzing the data. When you correct for differences in sample, (which is what you do if you want to conduct and report meaningful research), guess which country has the highest life expectancy?
It’s not fucking France.
