Home

Rudy's Healthcare Lie Lives On

Posted by Shum Preston on November 13, 2007 - 11:57am

Maybe this is the moment that crystallizes it all: Rudy Giuliani has to flat-out lie in order to argue against a guaranteed healthcare on the single-payer model.  Worst of all, he trades on his own cancer diagnosis to prop up a healthcare system that is failing many other cancer patients.  It’s a perfect symbol for the twilight of a decrepit insurance-based healthcare system.

Eugene Robinson, Washington Post columnist extraordinaire, is having none of it.

 



It turns out that Rudy Giuliani knows even less about health care than I thought. Not only are his figures about prostate cancer survival rates in the United States and Britain wildly misleading, but he's also wrong on his general point: that a single-payer system, of the kind that Republicans call "socialized" medicine, inevitably would deliver inferior care....

Untrue, according to a major study conducted this year by the Commonwealth Fund, a respected New York foundation with a track record in health care stretching back to 1918. Not that candidate Giuliani is likely to pay attention -- he won't even back down from his ridiculous assertion that he was nearly twice as likely to survive his bout with prostate cancer in the United States as he would be in Britain, although death rates from the disease in the two countries are basically the same.
…
And here's the bottom line: The United States ranks dead last in life expectancy, at 77.9 years, among the countries surveyed.... We're paying more and dying more, or at least sooner.

Meanwhile, employer-provided health care continues to go the way of employer pensions, USA Today reports.  This fundamental building block of our health care system is melting away, leaving us with two options: everybody for themselves or a national, non-profit, single-payer risk pool covering all patients.  Rudy’s lie was an attempt to argue that the first one is better.  It might better serve his insurance industry donors, but the facts show it’s deadly for patients.

The healthcare heroes at Healthcare Now have embarked on a month-long road show to spread the word about fundamental healthcare reform and the single-payer answer.  Here are some articles from the first day; here’s your chance to sign up.  This activism will continue and expand over the coming year.

»

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

Are you saying you want me to pay for your healthcare?

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on November 17, 2007 - 9:05pm.

Pay your own way. Don't you have any pride. Socilism is not the answer unless you are to lazy to support your self. I work hard to support my family you should also work hard and pay your own way.

»

Take your blinders off! We're all in this together.

Submitted by RN4MERCY (not verified) on November 19, 2007 - 7:24am.

Yes, "WE"! So, unlike the Good Samaritan, you would step over the bodies of the sick and injured who were at one time able to work and support their families but for the misfortune of having no access to basic medically necessary health care?

I believe our nation is better than that, yet what have we become when we say one thing and do another. "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity...."

There it is, right there in the preamble to the Constitution of the United States. We have public schools, we have police and fire protection, we have public works departments that make sure we have trash and waste collection services, clean water to drink, public libraries...social services that we all chip in for because they promote the common good and general welfare of all.

If we mean what we say, "with liberty and justice for all", then we cannot draw the line at health care. In the wealthiest nation on earth, say what? The majority of people believe access to health care is a social justice issue and they're demanding a publicly accountable, portable, affordable single payer health care service in this country. To each according to need, not based on ability to pay; insurance companies are ripping the money out of our sick and injured pockets and denying us care to make their profits. That's injustice, brother!

Our two-faced shame is showing for all the world to see and it's an embarrassment that we need to fix before we can talk about pride!

»

Healthcare (Universal); Rudy's Healthcare Lives On

Submitted by Mark Halverson-Wente (not verified) on November 20, 2007 - 9:50am.

In response to "Are You Saying You Want Me To Pay For Your Own Healthcare?":

First, we are not individual, atomized human beings; we are members of a community and a nation. Why are we not able to create a workable system--especially given the obscene wealth of this country--whereby all Americans may at least be covered with basic healthcare? As a Christian, I have no trouble whatsoever paying taxes to ensure the health of our nation.

Second, those who oppose "socialized medicine" (a meaningless bogeyman buzz-phrase) are certainly not opposed to paying for the ultimate socialized institution: the military. Why is that?

Third, with universalized healthcare, I will indeed be contributing, as will other American taxpayers. I take pride in that. I do not take pride in our 40-50 million uninsured and our 37th place worldwide ranking in healthcare coverage, nor our comparatively low life-expectency.

Fourth, why are we not able to view universalized healthcare coverage as something we, as Americans, are entitled to? Oh, no, I used that variation of the word, "entitlement!" Once we institute the "entitlement!" Give us government-run healthcare and, why, we are on a one-way gurney ride to the gulag. In any case, we are "entitled" to postal service (which is quite good, actually), a local fire department, police protection, and a military that is nearly larger and certainly better funded than the rest of the world combined--why not healthcare? Personally, I would rather my taxes go to save lives rather than take them. And yes, I do support the troops...but I would much rather support them as OUR military, providing for our country's legitimate defense, not the world's police force, a tool of the multinational corporations or a supposed democracy-building force.

Lastly, I believe our government does, at least through local taxes, provide for public education. Please learn to spell "socialism" correctly before you use it as a cheap scare-tactic against a reasonable healthcare policy where there is no profit-motive.

»