(some pertinent thoughts on our new Surgeon General... - promoted by poligirl)
I don't care about his background as a neuro-surgeon. When Sanjay Gupta lied about the indisputable facts in Sicko, he made a choice and that choice was with the Insurance lobby that practices death by spreadsheet. You see, you're either in your profession, the medical profession, to help patients and to ease human suffering or you're in it for the money. The fact that Sanjay Gupta was not angry after seeing this film like I was and most other people who can see a systematic catastrophe(though I had my experience with this before Sicko came out so I had an idea but Sicko hit it home for me) and to lie about the indisputable facts in this film and trying to use non sequtuirs(a RW favorite tactic with Moore criticism) to fudge others is unacceptable. He's doing exactly what he accuses Moore of doing and failing miserably.
Shilling for a health care system that is inadequate and causes half of bankruptcies, which also BTW, is a factor in the sub prime mortgage crisis, as well as leaving 47 million uninsured and denying life saving procedures based on pre-existing conditions for those who have it or sometimes, just because they don't feel like it is maddening and unacceptable.
So apparently Obama plans to appoint CNN's Sanjay Gupta as Surgeon General. I don't have a problem with Gupta's qualifications. But I do remember his mugging of Michael Moore over Sicko. You don't have to like Moore or his film; but Gupta specifically claimed that Moore "fudged his facts", when the truth was that on every one of the allegedly fudged facts, Moore was actually right and CNN was wrong.
What bothered me about the incident was that it was what Digby would call Village behavior: Moore is an outsider, he's uncouth, so he gets smeared as unreliable even though he actually got it right. It's sort of a minor-league version of the way people who pointed out in real time that Bush was misleading us into war are to this day considered less "serious" than people who waited until it was fashionable to reach that conclusion. And appointing Gupta now, although it's a small thing, is just another example of the lack of accountability that always seems to be the rule when you get things wrong in a socially acceptable way.
Paul Krugman is absolutely right. I remember relishing the the righteous anger Micheal Moore had for the embarrassing CNN which I don't watch anymore and this is one of the straws that broke the patient's back and was denied surgery, so to speak. I will go through a few facts here, but you should read all of them and how biased and dishonest Sanjay Gupta was with his shilling for our for profit system was on that segment.
CNN: "Moore asserts that the American health care system spends $7,000 per person on health. Cuba spends $25 dollars per person. Not true. But not too far off. The United States spends $6,096 per person, versus $229 per person in Cuba."
THE TRUTH:
* According to our own government - the Department of Health and Human Services' National Health Expenditures Projections - the United States will spend $7,092 per capita on health in 2006 and $7,498 in 2007. (Department of Health and Human Services Center for Medicare and Medicaid Expenditures, National Health Expenditures Projections 2006-2016. http://www.cms.hhs.gov/Nationa... * As for Cuba - Dr. Gupta and CNN need to watch 'SiCKO' first before commenting on it. 'SiCKO' says Cuba spends $251 per person on health care, not $25, as Gupta reports. And the BBC reports that Cuba's per capita health expenditure is... $251! (Keeping Cuba Healthy, BBC, Aug. 1 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/pro... ) This is confirmed by the United Nations Human Development Report, 2006. Yup, Cuba spends $251 per person on health care. (http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/statistics/indicators/52.html). As Gupta points out, the World Health Organization does calculate Cuba's per capita health expenditure at $229 per person. We chose to use the UN numbers, a minor difference - and $229 is a lot closer to $251 than $25.
That's a pretty embarrassing mistake to get all gung ho and high on your horse and their are countless other facts Gupta lies about and Moore was right to get angry as I was and am now. Now some might ask, why are you harping on this as much as you are? Well it's the ideology present I'm worried about, even though technically Sanjay Gupta could be stated as qualified to be Surgeon General. However, even though it is mainly a PR job, the Surgeon General does have a role in shaping the ideas and ideology which does shape what our health care system and what decision are made in what health care system we pursue, will look like. This is where a shill for the insurance, pharmaceutical, and for profit health system will do a lot of damage and that is unacceptable.
On a personal note, I'm sure you all remember the mandate non-mandate debates we all had this primary? Remember how we were lectured that because Obama doesn't have a mandate, that he somehow secretly supports single payer health care and hes just doing this till he gets elected and then we would all see the brilliant health care reform in his plan? Sure I know some, a lot of Kossacks told me that they don't like his plan either, but they think mandated coverage would be even worse(now since then I have had a change of heart about mandated coverage and I do think it has flaws in the economic state we are in and it doesn't provide enough care, however, I also rightfully trusted John Edwards to put the right regulations there to make a mandate work, as he has tried to do with the Patient's Bill of Rights, and because of good regulations like that, the Netherlands have mandates that work. I want HR 676 now.) but are they going to seriously pretend that they really thought the code language I always found in Obama's proposals wasn't there?
Like "Insurance will be so affordable, people will be lining up to purchase it." He didn't say it exactly like that, but that is what he is stressing with, "If people can afford it, they would be lining up to buy it," as if everyone goes to the doctor regularly and hasn't been denied treatment even with insurance. Hence we need care. I'll bet what you find on the kos right now is many of the dear Leader-ism stating what a brilliant bipartisan move this is. Well guess what?
Though for different reason, but still. I don't mean to harp like this is a major appointment, but the main spokesperson about health in our country shouldn't be a biased shill like Gupta and we know from Hillary's plan being defeated that waging a PR war with the help of the many lobbyists who spent millions on Harry and Louise commercials among other things to kill her plan in the 90's that this does matter.
So ends what I have called the "Obama supporter single payer myth," many Obama supporters used to attack Elizabeth and John and their supporters back in the day, even though they had the first UHC plan that Obama wouldn't even be calling universal if it weren't for Edwardses.
I should probably calm down, but that ends this rant.
