Dr. Gupta's Bias

Bill Scher reports (Campaign for America's Future):

Michael Moore and CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta faced off yesterday on Larry King Live, following Moore's on-air criticism of Gupta's anti-SiCKO piece which accused Moore of "fudg[ing] some facts."

Moore, on his website, is ably taking Gupta to task on the factual points.

And as Huffington Post’s Rachel Sklar notes, during Larry King Live, “Moore cites his source for every statistic offered ... yet Gupta ignores it, all of it, including Moore restating, again, that all of this was available in this email [sent by Moore’s team to CNN] from June 28, 2007.”

But what was most striking was when Gupta showed the heart of his bias, a bias against having our government guarantee universal health care.

Gupta says to Moore, “You criticize the government so soundly. But you're willing to hand over one of our most precious commodities, our health care in this country, to the government.”

Moore rebutted, “I actually love our government ... It does a great job of administrating Social Security ... the problem is who we've put in power who holds office.”

Then in response, Gupta made a completely misleading attack on Medicare:

Michael, one of the best examples of health care, at least some sort of universal health care, would be Medicare. I think you would agree with that.

It's going to go bankrupt by 2019. It's going to be $28 trillion in debt by 2075...would you say that this is going to be still a working system 20 years from now?

Is this some evidence that our government can’t be directed to fix our broken health care system? Economist-blogger Dean Baker doesn’t think so:

CNN’s health care analyst is now telling people that Medicare is going bankrupt. What does this mean?

Medicare’s costs are projected to exceed its revenue and drain the surplus from its trust fund in a bit over a decade, but this has been true at several points in the past. Did Congress tell tens of millions of beneficiaries to get lost? No, Congress appropriated the money needed to keep the program going...

...If Dr. Gupta meant to imply that Medicare, as a government program is uniquely inefficient, then he is way off the mark. According to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (Table 13) per beneficiary costs have risen in nominal dollars by 519.5 percent since 1980. By contrast, the cost per enrollee of private insurance has risen by 676.6 percent over this same period.

That gets at the heart of Gupta’s bias.

The pressures on Medicare’s finances are not the fault of our government, but of skyrocketing health care costs across the board.

Yet Gupta’s cherry-picks his facts to attack a government guarantee of universal care, and raise the prospect of dismantling Medicare, just like how conservatives sought to do the same with Social Security.

Health care costs are a major problem, but as Baker notes, “Eliminating Medicare would raise health care costs, not lower them.”

Whereas directing our government to ensure universal health care, as Medicare already does for seniors, can contain costs by pooling risk and maximizing bargaining power.

In the Health Care for America plan -- a Medicare-style public plan for those under 65 which would compete with private insurance – policy architect Jacob Hacker writes:

Because Medicare and the Health Care for America Plan would bargain jointly for lower prices and join forces to improve quality, they would have enormous combined leverage to hold down costs. Cross-national evidence and the historical experience of Medicare show conclusively that concentrated purchasing power is by far the most effective means by which to restrain the price of medical services...

...Other nations spend much less for the same medical services than we do because their insurance systems bargain for lower prices. And though Medicare covers less than a seventh of the U.S. population, it has still controlled costs substantially better than the private sector, especially since the introduction of payment controls in the mid-1980s.

When was the last time you saw a mainstream media report that merely raised the possibility that our government’s Medicare plan does a better job at containing costs than private insurance companies?

There is one thing said by Gupta that I have no disagreement with: “It makes it very hard to advance the argument if you're not getting the numbers right.”

Thanks to TomPaine.com.

Cartoon Credit: How to Save the World

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• E-Mail Shows CNN, Gupta Given The Right Facts Before Getting Them Wrong - The Huffington Post


• AlterNet: Michael Moore On CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta: "He's Not Telling the Truth" [VIDEO]


• The Carpetbagger Report: � Moore v. Blitzer/Gupta


• Fixing Health Care: Not Government vs. Market

  Dean Baker writes for Truthout: "With 'SiCKO' rallying popular support for universal health care coverage, defenders of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries are shifting into high gear with their scare tactics. The key to their efforts is to frighten people about the prospect of the government managing their health care."

• VIDEO - CNN.com - Michael Moore Talks About Healthcare


• Michael Moore Blasts Blitzer: "Why Don't You Tell The Truth To The American People?" - The Huffington Post

Technorati tags: Michael Moore, SICKO, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Health Care, Health Insurance and Managed Care, news, commentary

America: SICKO Society

Another Krugman MUST READ op ed follows.

By the way, if you haven't yet seen Michael Moore's "SICKO" yet, do. If you see only one film this year -- see "SICKO." It ought to be required viewing for every citizen in this country.

The film will move you. It will surprise you. It will make you think. It will make you angry. Most important, it hopefully will make you DO SOMETHING: lobby your representatives loudly and ceaselessly for Universal Health Care.

Health Care Terror
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

These days terrorism is the first refuge of scoundrels. So when British authorities announced that a ring of Muslim doctors working for the National Health Service was behind the recent failed bomb plot, we should have known what was coming.

“National healthcare: Breeding ground for terror?” read the on-screen headline, as the Fox News host Neil Cavuto and the commentator Jerry Bowyer solemnly discussed how universal health care promotes terrorism.

While this was crass even by the standards of Bush-era political discourse, Fox was following in a long tradition. For more than 60 years, the medical-industrial complex and its political allies have used scare tactics to prevent America from following its conscience and making access to health care a right for all its citizens.

I say conscience, because the health care issue is, most of all, about morality.

That’s what we learn from the overwhelming response to Michael Moore’s “Sicko.” Health care reformers should, by all means, address the anxieties of middle-class Americans, their growing and justified fear of finding themselves uninsured or having their insurers deny coverage when they need it most. But reformers shouldn’t focus only on self-interest. They should also appeal to Americans’ sense of decency and humanity.

What outrages people who see “Sicko” is the sheer cruelty and injustice of the American health care system — sick people who can’t pay their hospital bills literally dumped on the sidewalk, a child who dies because an emergency room that isn’t a participant in her mother’s health plan won’t treat her, hard-working Americans driven into humiliating poverty by medical bills.

“Sicko” is a powerful call to action — but don’t count the defenders of the status quo out. History shows that they’re very good at fending off reform by finding new ways to scare us.

These scare tactics have often included over-the-top claims about the dangers of government insurance. “Sicko” plays part of a recording Ronald Reagan once made for the American Medical Association, warning that a proposed program of health insurance for the elderly — the program now known as Medicare — would lead to totalitarianism.

Right now, by the way, Medicare — which did enormous good, without leading to a dictatorship — is being undermined by privatization.

Mainly, though, the big-money interests with a stake in the present system want you to believe that universal health care would lead to a crushing tax burden and lousy medical care.

Now, every wealthy country except the United States already has some form of universal care. Citizens of these countries pay extra taxes as a result — but they make up for that through savings on insurance premiums and out-of-pocket medical costs. The overall cost of health care in countries with universal coverage is much lower than it is here.

Meanwhile, every available indicator says that in terms of quality, access to needed care and health outcomes, the U.S. health care system does worse, not better, than other advanced countries — even Britain, which spends only about 40 percent as much per person as we do.

Yes, Canadians wait longer than insured Americans for elective surgery. But over all, the average Canadian’s access to health care is as good as that of the average insured American — and much better than that of uninsured Americans, many of whom never receive needed care at all.

And the French manage to provide arguably the best health care in the world, without significant waiting lists of any kind. There’s a scene in “Sicko” in which expatriate Americans in Paris praise the French system. According to the hard data they’re not romanticizing. It really is that good.

All of which raises the question Mr. Moore asks at the beginning of “Sicko”: who are we?

“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.” So declared F.D.R. in 1937, in words that apply perfectly to health care today. This isn’t one of those cases where we face painful tradeoffs — here, doing the right thing is also cost-efficient. Universal health care would save thousands of American lives each year, while actually saving money.

So this is a test. The only things standing in the way of universal health care are the fear-mongering and influence-buying of interest groups. If we can’t overcome those forces here, there’s not much hope for America’s future.

Photo Credit: Paul Krugman. (The New York Times)

Also See:

• Health care wars and the lies the for-profit racketeers tell us:

  "As Michael Mooreís ìSickoî continues to draw crowds and spawn spontaneous health care reform advocacy groups across the country, the health care industry is planning to hit back hard...."

• Health Care Looms as Major Campaign Issue:

  "Eighteen months before the election, presidential candidates are already discussing a major overhaul to the health care system, reports Robin Toner of The New York Times. Toner writes: "Their approaches are very different, reflecting longstanding divisions between the parties on the role of government versus the private market in addressing the affordability and availability of health insurance...."

• Google vs Michael Moore:

  "In an interesting move, Google has come out against controversial documentary film maker Michael Moore’s latest documentary “Sicko” in a post titled “Does negative press make you Sicko?“....

• 'SiCKO' Builds A Movement | Campaign for America's Future

Technorati tags: Paul Krugman, New York Times, SICKO, Michael Moore, Health Insurance, Managed Care, Medicine, Health, Universal Health Insurance, Medicare, news, commentary, op ed

A National Gut-Check: Who Lives Better?

By Timothy Egan
Guest Columnist
The New York Times

"One of the memorable scenes in 'Sicko,' Michael Moore’s latest cinematic provocation, comes from France, where he shows doctors in their little white cars making house calls — for free.

But it’s not just France. When we lived in Italy some time ago, a doctor came to our farmhouse rental on Easter Sunday morning to diagnose a stomach ailment. He charged nothing.

Let’s stipulate that Moore is a one-sided pamphleteer, with a bit of Mark Twain and Pat Robertson in his schtick. But like all propagandists, his job is not to find some objective truth, but to anger, challenge, ask hard questions.

With Independence Day just passed, a good nationalist shouldn’t be afraid to answer those questions. So, who lives better, us or them?

In Italy, this was a regular parlor game when friends came to visit. Inevitably, after a few days of taking in our new world — a village public school for the kids, neighbors who opened the doors of their ancient homes to us, a lengthy siesta every afternoon — our houseguests would side with the Italians. I would counter for the U.S.A., to keep the argument alive.

The Italians won on health, family and food. The United States was better on race and opportunity.

With health care, the anecdotal often carried the argument. One day, a tenant farmer named Sergio, our neighbor, woke with a terrible eye infection. He was full of pain, unable to see. Sergio got world-class care in Florence. After three days of attentive fussing in the hospital, he came home entirely well and without a bill.

Had he showed up at any American hospital — poor, no insurance — well, good luck. Especially in a place like Texas, where 30 percent of adults lack health insurance and what can pass for medical care is a get-in-line form of triage.

But even with insurance, Americans are stuck with what may be the worst of all systems: one that lets a handful of corporations make life-and-death decisions, with incentive to dump and deny.

Little wonder that the United States ranks 37th in effectiveness of health care. Italy ranks 2nd. This is a country that can’t form a government to last longer than the soccer season, and yet, they make our medical system look barbaric.

If our system doesn’t kill you — see the infant mortality and life expectancy rates, bringing up the rear — it can put you in the poorhouse. Medical catastrophes are the leading cause of bankruptcy, and most of those are people who have some insurance, clinging to the frayed edge of the middle class.

O.K., so what about leisure? Americans spend nearly a third of their disposable income on good times, baby. But we can’t relax. Sorry — no time. Lunch averages 31 minutes. And the U.S. ranks dead last among 21 of the world’s richest countries when it comes to guaranteed days off, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Most Americans don’t even use their allotted days of leisure. The Italians take 42 vacation days a year — No. 1 in the world. The average American takes 13.

A quarter of Americans receive no vacation at all. And it’s not like we don’t need it: one in three are chronically overworked. We even work 100 hours a year more than the Japanese.

President Bush has it figured out, with his month off at the ranch. But for a profile in clueless, Bush set the mark when he lauded as truly American some citizen who told him she had to work three jobs. Ain’t that something?

Ah, but what about taxes? Europeans pay more than we do, to fund that free health care. Take that, Euro-trash, while lying on the beach. And yet, our tax system is approaching Gilded Age disparity. Listen to Warren Buffett, the third richest man in the world. Last year, he was taxed at 17 percent of his taxable income, he said last month. His receptionist paid nearly twice that, at 30 percent.

Where America shines is with our multiracial society and the easy access to opportunity. It was jarring to listen to otherwise thoughtful Tuscans denigrate Ethiopian immigrants or even their Sicilian countrymen.

By contrast, nothing made me prouder than telling Italians that I came from a place with an African-American mayor and a Chinese-American governor. Or that I grew up in a big Irish-American family with little money.

A patriot should not be afraid to have this debate, vigorously — after a nap.

Timothy Egan, a former Seattle correspondent for The Times and the author of 'The Worst Hard Time,' is a guest columnist."

Technorati tags: Timothy Egan, New York Times, United States, Taxation, Health Insurance and Managed Care, SICKO, news, commentary