Five minutes of CNN is all I can take
I don't know why the tv channel was on CNN but it was. I watched it for maybe five minutes while ironing a shirt a few minutes ago. Cafferty was on and he had some guy named Dean Baker, an "economic policy expert" from, according to Cafferty, a Washington DC "thinktank." The point of the report was how awful our healthcare system is, how we're paying too much, etc. So this Baker guy blasts the revamped Medicare program and calls for a health care "overhaul." Basically, this "expert" was on CNN to promote socialized healthcare; he kept saying how much better things are in other countries. Baker said that people in other countries, like Canada (his example), countries with socialized medicine, "live longer than we do" here in the US. He repeated this "fact" at least five times in the short segment before I'd had enough, found the remote and changed the channel. You see, this guy was lying his ass off as anyone who bothers to check can plainly see.
And I can't stand being lied to. The fact is, people in countries with socialized medicine are not living longer than those in the U.S. Period. CNN put Dean Baker on so he would say what they wanted him to say. The question I have is, can CNN not afford better propaganda?
And I can't stand being lied to. The fact is, people in countries with socialized medicine are not living longer than those in the U.S. Period. CNN put Dean Baker on so he would say what they wanted him to say. The question I have is, can CNN not afford better propaganda?
posted by dw at 11:44 AM
3 Comments:
Just like the claim that communist countries like Cuba have 98% literacy rates.
Right.
Er, that is, if you only count the literate.
I thought I would come to CNN's defense here. If you look at the data from the OECD, you will find that the U.S. ranks at the bottom of the industrialized world in life expectancy
[http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/7/42/35530071.xls].
I can't imagine where AP got data showing Japan with a life expectancy of 77 and Canada with a life expectancy of 72. All I can say is that they are lucky it is legal to libel a government (unlike a rich person or corporation). Otherwise, they would probably be looking at a pretty expensive law suit.
Interesting spreadsheet, Dean.
I guess it comes down to whether you believe the World Health Organization or the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
As far as socialized medicine being good for old people, I think the 15,000 elderly who died of heat-stroke in France two summers ago would have a problem with the OECD's numbers.
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