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Today's single payer post: the counter attack

Submitted by DCblogger on Wed, 2008-07-09 00:31.

The Politico has story about Center for Medicine in the Public Interest:

As part of its campaign, the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest has created BigGovHealth.org, a website full of stories from people who have faced health care problems in Europe and Canada. The nonprofit advocates a free-market approach to health care, and its biggest contributors in 2006 were drug maker Pfizer and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, according to tax filings.

Peter Pitts, the center’s president, said that the campaign was meant to counterbalance what he called the mainstream media’s one-sided reporting on the benefits of government-run systems. The media have yet to show him, he said, “one single example of how the system does not work, not one.

The could be the beginning of good cop/bad cop between Elizabeth Edwards versus Peter Pitts. We would not see Rep. Conyers, or any other well known adovcate of single payer on TV.

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health care problems in canada

Submitted by hipparchia on Wed, 2008-07-09 03:27.

are exaggerated by the fraser institute [nonpolitical, my left foot!] among others, as cliff, one of the real canadians who have dropped in at my blog can attest.

that waiting-for-care meme is one of their favorite scare tactics, and it’s one that paul krugman has neatly disembowelled. i really liked this:

On the other hand, it’s true that Americans get hip replacements faster than Canadians. But there’s a funny thing about that example, which is used constantly as an argument for the superiority of private health insurance over a government-run system: the large majority of hip replacements in the United States are paid for by, um, Medicare.

That’s right: the hip-replacement gap is actually a comparison of two government health insurance systems. American Medicare has shorter waits than Canadian Medicare (yes, that’s what they call their system) because it has more lavish funding — end of story. The alleged virtues of private insurance have nothing to do with it.