Fisking Moore’s Fisk, Part Duh
Michael Moore’s “truth squad” is at it again. Actually, I’m going to call them the Pravda Squad, since they remind me a lot of the old Soviet Communist Party newspaper “Pravda.” The russian word pravda literally means “truth” but the Soviet newspaper Pravda practically translated into “truth as defined by the Communist Party”. Michael’s Pravda Squad defines “truth” as “whatever supports Moore’s positions”.
It’s not worth the detailed deconstruction I did last time. Basically, they defend the indefensible mixing of sources to make the US look bad; they bring up Iraq again; they tacitly buy into the ridiculous notion that Medicare is more efficient than private insurance. But I want to focus on two real stupidities:
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.
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How does moore think that libraries purchase those “free” books? They’ve been trying to build an new library in my community for the past two years. There is but one detail keeping them from doing so, and that is that we, the taxpayers, keep voting down millage increases (taxes) to pay for it. Free, huh?
Who does moore think pays for those firefighters that put out those flames for free? Even volunteer units have to procure funds from taxpayers to keep themselves going.
And when people go to get chemo in Canada, they’ve already been paying for it long before needing it. Kind of sounds eerily similar to how Social Security works. Apparently moore has a very low opinion of his fan’s I.Q., as anyone who’s ever spent a weekend filing his taxes or paid HR Block $75 to do it for them, knows that nothing is free.
Who does moore think pays for those firefighters that put out those flames for free? Even volunteer units have to procure funds from taxpayers to keep themselves going.
I’ve lived in several different states and towns, but almost exclusively in areas that are Volunteer Fire and even sometimes Police. They do get some equipment, land, funding, etc. from government grants. You still see them collecting change in the middle of the road and holding pancake breakfasts and roast beef dinners and whatnot for donations. There is nothing wrong with this type of community funding. They are also generally professional and are more than capable.
What people like Moore don’t understand that people will take care of their local community including even things like healthcare, one of our local hospitals is non-profit and is one of the best hospitals around. It was started and initially funded by the local Junior Womens club. They will either work out reasonable payments with you, literally like $10 a week type payments or write the necessary care off.
What many people generally don’t like to do is send their money off to a government that rarely has their best interests at heart. Moore actually sorta gets the government not having the best interests of all the citizens at heart thing, I just can’t understand how he thinks with some things they will suddenly get it right and do a better job than the charities and non-profit organizations that exist all over this country alreayd do and would be able to do more if people had less money taken by the government and more to give. Nevermind that many of these charities and non-profits are supported by the very individuals and corporations Moore and his ilk insult on a regular basis.
Camkrisand’s post brings up an interesting hidden cost I know that I hadn’t considered. Would love to see a study showing how much lost worker productivity has cost Canada or France or the UK.
Come to think of it, I seem to recall hearing reports every few years that show that Americans far outpace the rest of the world in terms of overall productivity. The typical explanation for this seems to be that other countries take their vacation and family time more seriously. Unlike us work-a-holic Americans. In other words, we’re more focused on our careers than our families. Could it be that this is not the case? Could it be that the rest of the world is just as committed to their careers as Americans, but that they get forced into taking more time off because of these sorts of problems? After all, the studies never seem to say what the people actually did with their vacation time, just that they used a lot more of it.Camkrisand’s post brings up an interesting hidden cost I know that I hadn’t considered. Would love to see a study showing how much lost worker productivity has cost Canada or France or the UK.
Obsidian, I believe one of the factors, and its been a while sicne I read on it, was also that the U.S. has the longest standard work weeks.
Posted by Camkrisand on 07/14/2007 at 01:29 PM (Link to this comment | )
Another cost to society can be weighted in manpower hours lost by long wait periods for treatments of ailments that make working difficult or impossible.
True… but even worse, if they suffer more extreme damage.. or even death due to a wait… Another productive person, taxpayer, already educated.. gone or on public assistance instead of working.
Some people are taken out of the workforce at a relatively young age and put on disability because of the extreme damage. Thing is, most of these people would prefer to have been working. This is a side effect of the socialised medical care system.
Like I said before, that guy in the film living it up on the french riviera while on sick leave would actulla make most hard working europeans angry with his abusing the system on their dime.
But they would have understanding for a person with an injury or sickness who had to leave the workforce early in life because the damage suffered during the wait for treatment was not of his own making.
Many Average Europeans understand that their system of health care needs a good amount of revamping and streamlining to increase effectiveness, but the ruling political class is oblivious or willfully ignorant of the peoples’ perceptions.
Not many politicians in Europe have to wait very long to get treated for medical problems, so they can’t understnad the problem and laack the empathy needed to get some sort of reform.
A movie like Sicko is a wonderfull piece of propaganda they can play on to convince their own population that there is no better way to deal with health care. So they say to the people that they just have to get used to waiting for months to remove hemorroids that hinder sitting in an office chair or getting proper therapy for a whiplash from a car accident or surgery to remove kidney stones. (MM’s idea of elective surgery, I guess)
Could it be that the rest of the world is just as committed to their careers as Americans, but that they get forced into taking more time off because of these sorts of problems?
From the conversations I’ve had with immigrants from various locales in Europe, they don’t use vacation time to cover illness. In fact, some countries don’t have a limit on how much time you can take off due to illness. It is (apparently) paid leave, and does not cut into available vacation time.
This is probably not true of all countries in Europe, but I believe it is the case in many of them.
how much time you can take off due to illness.
Hell, Moore championed one guy in France that got six months off work paid. Showed him sitting on a beach and talking about how great it was.
Shocking their healthcare system is an endless blackhole for money, isn’t it?
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Another cost to society can be weighted in manpower hours lost by long wait periods for treatments of ailments that make working difficult or impossible.
A theoretical example might be a month to wait to operate an ingrown toenail for a person who is on their feet all day. (maybe a nurse for example) The ailment itself is not serious but I would make it excruciating for this person to be on their feet all day, even with painkillers. They will have to cover this person’s sick leave with a temp of some sort, to start with. then the sickleave payments for the person awaiting the surgery.
There are all sorts of subsidiary costs that Moore fails to take into account and he is dodging this critical point in his debate with Gupta. I guess it was better for him to start blathering about the Iraq war to avoid being pressed.