The medical care in countries with socialized medicine is still free. Gupta doesn’t seem to grasp that. Here in America, when you go to the library and check out a book, it’s free. When the fire department puts out a fire at your house, it’s free. In Canada, when you go into the hospital for chemotherapy, it’s free. You don’t walk out with a bill. Yes, citizens pay higher taxes in countries with socialized medicine, but they don’t pay the premiums, co-pays, deductibles and other out-of-pocket medical costs that we face in America. Moreover, in other industrialized countries citizens are not bankrupted by huge bills during a medical crisis – as is the case in America, where the leading cause of bankruptcy is medical bills.

Apart from the absurdity of the semantic games, there’s another cost that Michael’s not including, as I have said many times—opportunity cost.  There is no cost in this world greater than opportunity cost. And no cost harder to see. For example, the citizens of socialist countries don’t see the incredible healthcare systems they’d have had they remained private—because they don’t exist.  All they is the great slime engine edifice of “single payer healthcare”. 

Eliminating the evil profits in medicine will destroy innovation.  The biggest cost of a socialized system will be the revolutionary drugs and surgical methods that we won’t get in the future because the profit motive is gone. The motto of our modern political culture seems to be: “Children are the future . . . today belongs to me!” Socialized medicine may get us “free” pills and surgeries. But the price may be our grandchildren dying of drug-resistant TB or never getting a cure for Alzheimer’s.

That’s not a price I’m willing to pay.  Especially as I won’t be one getting the bill.

The Pravda Squad then gets into Paul Keckley.  Apparently, Keckley is full of crap because he once worked for the same organization as Tommy Thompson, donated some money to Republicans and worked for EBM, which has healthcare clients.

I despise these guilt by association arguments that Moore is so fond of.  And I hate it when Republicans do it too. It’s a pure opponent slime.  Don’t respond to their arguments, imply they are biased because of a distant relation with someone else. So we can ignore what Pat Michaels says about global warming because Cato gets a small amount of money from oil companies.  On the flip side, global warming skeptics say we can ignore the issue because the environmentalist movement has some old Commies in it.

Michael Moore is essentially saying that we can’t trust the fact-checking of anyone who is connected to politics (or maybe it’s just Republicans) or the healthcare industry.  By my count, that means the only person we can trust is . . . Michael Moore.