Obama's "Uninsured Americans" Lie

[joobz]

Beerina seems to think that the huge over-the-odds that America pays for its healthcare goes (almost entirely) to fund medical research, and this is America's contribution to the world - to subsidise medical advances eventually benefitting even the cheapskate countries who don't contribute because they have universal healthcare. He believes that if America stops doing this, then medical progress will slow down so much that it will cost millions of lives 100 years or so down the line.

In fact the huge over-the-odds paid by America goes quite a lot of places, including insurance company overheads and profits, unnecesary interventions carried out for defensive reasons, and complicated almoning and means-testing of non-universal benefits. Paying over the odds for pharmaceuticals is part of it, but by no means the largest part.

Even so, the over-pay for pharmaceuticals goes partly into pharmaceutical companies' profits, and the part that does fund medical research is far more likely to be funding the production of another "me too" drug to compete with a competitor's very similar product than it is to contribute to a genuine medical advance.

Beerina also appears to think that innovation is stifled within universal healthcare systems, because the doctors "work for the government". In fact, doctors with a penchant for research can pursue that career goal just as easily in a universal system as in an insurance-funded system. I suspect, possibly even more easily, as they don't have insurance companies standing between them and patients they believe would benefit from an experimental procedure.

He's been told this a dozen times, but he never addresses the points raised. It's possible he doesn't even read what's posted after he makes his hit-and-run posts.

Rolfe.

Well, We could easily see if this was true by plotting the number of new medical products produced by a country vs. the insurance premiums paid.
and compare this to the # of new medical products vs. government research dollars spent.

I already know the latter has a very strong correlative result. (japan and US typically lead, with Germany and UK also strong players).

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

And let's not forget that the drug companies tend to spend much more on marketing than they do on research (even counting what Rolfe calls the "me too" drugs as legitimate research).

 

[Rolfe]

Yes, I forgot that bit. And of course all the money spent on lobbying for legislation that increases their profits.

And of course genuine medical research isn't nationalised anyway - the research institutes and the grant-awarding bodies aren't part of the NHS. And I have a feeling that it's easier to do cutting-edge things if you don't have an insurance company bureaucrat refusing to authorise something that isn't on their list of "standard" treatment.

Rolfe.

 

[wackyvorlon]

I was thinking the other day, we get a couple american channels up here. It's very strange, seeing hospitals advertise. I can't help but wonder how much that costs. Television ads are very expensive. I can see that advertising budget easily topping a million dollars, money right there that isn't being spent to help a single patient.

 

[jimbob]

I think this is an excellent summation of the core issue. It seems heartless to me to force a person into the position of choosing between their life, and financial ruin. The fact that anyone in america is susceptible to finding themselves in this situation makes the situation even more alarming.

Actually there is a non-alturistic reason too:

The public health one.

I wants an effective healthcare system to deal with any infectious diseases the poor might have to stop them infecting preciouss me...

 

[Rolfe]

No more surprising than a member failing to prove that 2 + 2 = 5.

Works perfectly well for sufficiently large values of 2....

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6646340600856118396&ei=N53vSeq1NcGg-Aae9bnUCA&q=sicko

I think this works, I've not checked more than the first couple of seconds.

Yes, worked fine. Poor resolution, and it wouldn't run full screen at any price, but it was perfectly watchable.

And utterly shocking.

Fair warning: I found it upsetting. I hadn't realized just how loony things had become in the US.

You're right. I was crying a couple of times. Why do you people put up with this?

I noticed the short snips at the beginning included one of the cases summarised in the article in yesterday's newspaper I posted in a different thread - Adam who sewed up his own injury. However, there was a lot more detail in the newspaper account, so either someone embroidered on that little snippet from Sicko for the journalist's benefit, or the same case was coincidentally presented to her as Moore had picked up on.

ETA: Checked, not the same case, seems as if the name Adam and the sewing up of an injury are just coincidence.

Art critic Adam Mendelsohn stitched his own face after being bitten by a dog, because he couldn't afford a trip to casualty. He bought drugs in a pet shop, because "you can get amoxicillin and tetracycline from fish antibiotics". As a freelance writer, insurance is prohibitively expensive for him. "If there's something wrong with you, the first place you go is the internet, not a doctor," he says.

I need to go back and find the old thread where Sicko was discussed when it originally came out. I know Moore isn't always entirely straight with his polemic, so I think it's important to read what his critics have to say. However, nothing he showed about the NHS was untrue. He didn't show anyone complaining, but what he showed was perfectly typical experience.

I would say one thing though. Until recently the NHS was only prepared to shell out for a single cochlear implant, just like that US insurance company. What happened however was that there was a campaign led by the parents of the children concerned to persuade the bean-counters that two ears were better than one, and recently approval for bilateral implants has been given. And now that's been achieved, one time counts for all - everybody gets it and nobody has to campaign on that one again.

The one big criticism of Moore that I remember reading was, he shouldn't have gone to Cuba. It was a stunt. Well, I hadn't been quite clear what he'd done, but now I've seen it, I realise. Yes, it was a stunt. And a perfectly justified stunt in my opinion. He wasn't saying that Cuba has wonderful healthcare, he was saying that even though they have very little in the way of assets, they do the best they can for everyone with what they have. And you can shout about patent infringement till you're blue in the face, Moore was not suggesting that the USA should follow suit on that front.

I thought the end of the film was quite heartwarming, that the Cuban health authorities had been willing to make such a gesture of goodwill towards that boatload of "illegal immigrants". And yes, it had the side effect of showing that they did have some high-tech equipment and it wasn't just a case of sending people away with an aspirin.

Remembering the thread though, it seems as if Moore just went too far, and that the visceral hatred many of his audience feel for Cuba was impenetrable enough to allow them to shut out his point completely, and use the "stunt" to dismiss the entire film.

I thought it was a lot better than Farenheit 911, and probably better than Bowling for Columbine, but then it had a simpler message to get across. Granted that there was a lot of insurance-company funded counter-propaganda put up to emasculate it, but I still don't know why the message didn't get across better than it seems to have done.

Now I'm off to read the old thread.

Rolfe.

 

[BeAChooser]

Well, this is one case where you are correct. Obama was wrong regarding this point.

Good job. I guess if you claim everything a person says is a lie, you'll be right..... eventually.

So now that we are in agreement that Obama's statements in his press conference speech are wrong regarding what the 10 year cumulative deficit would have been had he done nothing, and how much his doing things would supposedly reduce the cumulative deficit, can we now also agree that's a pretty serious error? Afterall, he was off by $7 trillion dollars and does not appear to have any understanding of the facts regarding the origin of the numbers that he cited or the actual deficit/debt situation. I suppose you could claim he does understand those things, but then it seems to me you'd have to admit he lied to the public in the speech. A $7 trillion dollar lie just to get health care reform passed?

Furthermore, can we agree that since this was a prepared speech with days of lead time, his staff probably was aware he was going to say that. Right? Obama probably didn't write that speech. Right? So either his staff is demonstrating an equal incompetence or they too are showing themselves willing to lie in order to get health care reform passed. Right?

And finally, can we agree that since not one of the mainstream media outlets has focused on this, they too must either be incompetent or liars?

That being said, can we agree that people that incompetent or that dishonest should not be in charge of 1/7th of the US economy?

 

[quixotecoyote]

I thought it was a lot better than Farenheit 911, and probably better than Bowling for Columbine, but then it had a simpler message to get across. Granted that there was a lot of insurance-company funded counter-propaganda put up to emasculate it, but I still don't know why the message didn't get across better than it seems to have done.

Now I'm off to read the old thread.

Rolfe.

It would have been a great movie for someone else to make. Since Moore is already a lightning rod for hatred from his last movies (somewhat deservedly), the movie was rejected before/instead of being watched.

In a parallel case, how many people have you heard bash Al Gore instead of actually arguing a case against climate change? Same principle.

 

[joobz]

So now that we are in agreement that Obama's statements in his press conference speech are wrong regarding what the 10 year cumulative deficit would have been had he done nothing, and how much his doing things would supposedly reduce the cumulative deficit, can we now also agree that's a pretty serious error? Afterall, he was off by $7 trillion dollars and does not appear to have any understanding of the facts regarding the origin of the numbers that he cited or the actual deficit/debt situation. I suppose you could claim he does understand those things, but then it seems to me you'd have to admit he lied to the public in the speech. A $7 trillion dollar lie just to get health care reform passed?

Um. No. I would have to see what number he used. Afterall, there's a little matter of actual % used to project these values and it is quite clear that even a 0.1% difference in value can rsult in huge total amount variance in the long haul.


Sorry. I fullysupport health care reform. I noticed you ignored my other points regarding health care.
1.) The presidents value on health care cost growth vs. salary growth IS correct at three to one.
2.) There are two american born citizens losing health care for every 1 non-american brn resident.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

I would say one thing though. Until recently the NHS was only prepared to shell out for a single cochlear implant, just like that US insurance company. What happened however was that there was a campaign led by the parents of the children concerned to persuade the bean-counters that two ears were better than one, and recently approval for bilateral implants has been given. And now that's been achieved, one time counts for all - everybody gets it and nobody has to campaign on that one again.

My understanding is they generally only do one side because 1) if the surgery goes wrong and you ruin the cochlea or something really bad, you can still do it on the other side, and 2) we might discover a much better technology in the near future and wouldn't it be a shame that you're stuck with older tech forever.

I'm not saying the only reasons for just doing one ear are reasonable, but I don't think it's ever been just a matter of worrying over the expense.

 

[BeAChooser]

Originally Posted by BeAChooser
So now that we are in agreement that Obama's statements in his press conference speech are wrong regarding what the 10 year cumulative deficit would have been had he done nothing, and how much his doing things would supposedly reduce the cumulative deficit, can we now also agree that's a pretty serious error? Afterall, he was off by $7 trillion dollars and does not appear to have any understanding of the facts regarding the origin of the numbers that he cited or the actual deficit/debt situation. I suppose you could claim he does understand those things, but then it seems to me you'd have to admit he lied to the public in the speech. A $7 trillion dollar lie just to get health care reform passed?

Um. No. I would have to see what number he used. Afterall, there's a little matter of actual % used to project these values and it is quite clear that even a 0.1% difference in value can rsult in huge total amount variance in the long haul.

Now I'm just puzzled. You said in posts #164 and #166 that I seemed to be correct in my assertion that Obama was wrong about his claims regarding the cumulative deficit. Are you now reversing yourself and trying to claim he was right about that? Make up your mind.

And by the way, I am totally right. You need only check the CBO report to verify that. Obama either is totally incompetent on this subject or a liar. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.

 

[Shalamar]

Now I'm just puzzled. You said in posts #164 and #166 that I seemed to be correct in my assertion that Obama was wrong about his claims regarding the cumulative deficit. Are you now reversing yourself and trying to claim he was right about that? Make up your mind.

And by the way, I am totally right. You need only check the CBO report to verify that. Obama either is totally incompetent on this subject or a liar. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.

So, by your own claim, if Obama is proven to be right about something, we can say he is right about everything?

 

[tyr_13]

Car!

Being wrong != lying.

Thread on!

 

[joobz]

Now I'm just puzzled. You said in posts #164 and #166 that I seemed to be correct in my assertion that Obama was wrong about his claims regarding the cumulative deficit. Are you now reversing yourself and trying to claim he was right about that? Make up your mind.

And by the way, I am totally right. You need only check the CBO report to verify that. Obama either is totally incompetent on this subject or a liar. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.

Nope.

I live in the real world where a person can be wrong one one point but right about others. In this case, Obama is corect about the need for health care reform.

Like he said, the proposal is for a public insurance choice. If private care is(as conservatives claim) better and cheaper than any public option could be, there shouldn't be any problems.

 

[joobz]

Being wrong != lying.

I'd thought I' quote this just in case BAC missed it.

 

[Tricky]

Car!

Being wrong != lying.

Thread on!

Being wrong is also not the same as being a total incompetent, especially when it comes to financial predictions. Otherwise, every financial adivsor in the world is a total incompetent. They've all been wrong about some things.

Wasn't it GW Bush who planned his first budget with a big dependency on the surplus he planned to have?

 

[Darat]

My understanding is they generally only do one side because 1) if the surgery goes wrong and you ruin the cochlea or something really bad, you can still do it on the other side, and 2) we might discover a much better technology in the near future and wouldn't it be a shame that you're stuck with older tech forever.

I'm not saying the only reasons for just doing one ear are reasonable, but I don't think it's ever been just a matter of worrying over the expense.

I was about to post something similar. That was at least part of the reasoning behind the "only one implant" approach in the past in the UK.

 

[Rolfe]

It would have been a great movie for someone else to make. Since Moore is already a lightning rod for hatred from his last movies (somewhat deservedly), the movie was rejected before/instead of being watched.

In a parallel case, how many people have you heard bash Al Gore instead of actually arguing a case against climate change? Same principle.

Yes, it does seem to be a fairly exact parallel. Except that Sicko was a better movie than An Inconvenient Truth.

I found three or four old threads from 2 years ago, discussing the movie. Much of the discussion centered on Moore, and criticism of his earlier films. Much of the point of Sicko was dismissed by many posters because they believed his tactics were questionable - and that criticism seemed more to be rooted in the previous films than anything you could reasonably say about Sicko itself.

I found Bowling for Columbine fascinating, because it surprised me. I thought it was going to be a movie about the evils of gun ownership, but it turned out not to be. It was a movie about the peculiar American relationship with the gun, which to a non-American was very interesting indeed.

I don't remember a huge amount about Farenheit 911, but my main impression was that the movie was made with the explicit purpose of not getting Bush elected in 2004. This is never a good idea.

Sicko, in contrast to Bowling for Columbine, held no huge surprises for me, so in that sense it wasn't quite as satisfying as the latter film. On the other hand I thought he made his point very well indeed, and I could see nothing dishonest about it at all. Yes, he was comparing specific disasters of the US system with normal, everyday good experiences in universal healthcare systems, but that was precisely his point. Americans have been fed a steady diet of one-off universal healthcare disasters, patients who, for some reason, were failed by their system. These one-off disasters have been represented to Americans as normal standard of care in universal healthcare systems, and compared to the US system when it is actually working.

Moore's film did the opposite, quite deliberately. It said, look, these are the disasters which happen when the US system lets people down, and by the way the system is set up to encourage letting people down wherever possible. In contrast, here is normal standard of care in a variety of universal systems, and by the way, the systems are set up with the purpose of delivering care, not denying it.

I'm thinking I might start a new thread on Sicko, two years on. It seems to me from reading the old threads that the debate has moved on a lot in that time, and it would be interesting to revisit it. Also, with the film being freely available online, everyone can debate from an informed position (that is, actually having watched it). If it were possible to bar ad hominem attacks on Michael Moore, it might be an interesting discussion.

Rolfe.

 

[Ocelot]

If it were possible to bar ad hominem attacks on Michael Moore, it might be an interesting discussion.

Rolfe.

Invite him to join the forum. If he's a member here then rule 12 offers some protection