Health Care Figures No One is Talking About

I recently read Peter Singer's essay about health care. As the corporate media machine steamrolls over the truth in their drive to kill universal health insurance, here are a few figures from his article I am not hearing elsewhere:

• Health-insurance premiums have more than doubled in a decade, rising four times faster than wages.
• Health care now absorbs about one dollar in every six the nation spends, a figure that far exceeds the share spent by any other nation.
• Estimates of the number of U.S. deaths caused annually by the absence of universal health insurance go as high as 20,000.
• In one study, 43 percent of Americans with insurance reported that cost was a problem that had limited the treatment they received.
• More than 60 percent of all U.S. bankruptcies are related to illness, with many of these specifically caused by medical bills, even among those who have health insurance.
• In 2008, according to a Gallup survey, 73 percent of Canadians and 73 percent of Britons said they had confidence in their countries’ health care systems. In the United States, the figure was 56 percent.

Source: Singer, P. (2009, July 15). Why we must ration health care. The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved July 20, 2009, from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19healthcare-t.html?ref=magazine

Two More Examples Supporting Chomsky's Propaganda Model

Here are two more examples of journalists discussing our "free" press:

"In 1960, during the Wisconsin primary, Mr. Cronkite asked Kennedy, then a senator, about his Roman Catholic religion. As Mr. Cronkite recalled in his memoir, Kennedy called Frank Stanton, CBS’s president, to complain that questions about the subject had earlier been ruled out of bounds. He then reminded Mr. Stanton that if he were elected he would be appointing members of the Federal Communications Commission. Mr. Stanton “courageously stood up to the threat,” Mr. Cronkite wrote. "
Martin, D. (2009, July 18). Walter Cronkite, 92, dies; Trusted voice of TV news. The New York Times. Retrieved July 17, 2009, from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/us/18cronkite.html?ref=obituaries&pagewanted=print

“I just don’t go out to industry events, in part because it puts my sources in an awkward situation,” she said, adding that “the other thing about going out with these people is that when it comes time to cover something involving them, they say, ‘But, Nikki, we’re friends.’ I don’t want those kind of friends.” "
Carr, D. (2009, July 17). A Hollywood blogger feared by executives. The New York Times. Retrieved July 17, 2009 from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/business/media/17blog.html?sq=finke&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=print

NYT Still Getting the Story Wrong

A May 26, 2008 article about media coverage of the Iraq war had this to say:

" 'Ironically, the success of the surge and a reduction in violence has led to a reduction in coverage,' said Mark Jurkowitz of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. 'There is evidence that people have made up their minds about this war, and other stories — like the economy and the election — have come along and sucked up all the oxygen.'

But the tactical success of the surge should not be misconstrued as making Iraq a safer place for American soldiers. Last year was the bloodiest in the five-year history of the conflict, with more than 900 dead, and last month, 52 perished, making it the bloodiest month of the year so far. So far in May, 18 have died."

So, paragraph 5 says the reduction in violence led to a reduction in coverage. Paragraph 6 says there's been no reduction in violence.

I guess this logical fallacy is called denial of the antecendent:
P -> Q
~P
Therefore, ~Q

Source: Carr, D. (2008, May 26). The wars we choose to ignore. The New York Times. Retrieved May 26, 2008, from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/26/business/media/26carr.html?scp=1&sq=wars+we+chose+to+ignore&st=nyt

Civilisation

I'm watching the 1969 BBC series Civilisation: A Personal View by Kenneth Clark.

On Diderot and the Encyclopédie, Clark says: "And in the Encyclopédie he wrote articles on everything from Aristotle to artifical flowers. The aims of the Encyclopédie seem harmless enough to us but, you know, authoritarian governments don't like dictionaries. They live by lies and by bamboozling abstractions; they can't afford to have words accurately defined."

This observation seems completely true to me. I think about Orwell and the language of 1984 and Animal Farm; I remember all the times Chomsky has talked about defining the word 'terrorism.'

Clark also says: "The remoteness of Versailles had this good result: that Parisian society was free from the stultifying rituals of court procedure and the trivial day-to-day preoccupations of politics. The other thing that made Eighteenth Century salons a source of enlightment was that the French upper classes were not destructively rich. They lost most of their money in a financial crash brought about by a Scottish wizard named David Law. As I've said several times, a margin of wealth is helpful to civilisation, but, for some mysterious reason, great wealth is destructive."

I don't know enough about this topic to comment, but I was struck by the recent trend, well documented, of the wealthy becoming simply grotesquely rich and how the whole country has seemed to go down the crapper in the same time frame, i.e., the last thirty years.

I Guess He Needed the Advance

John Bolton was recently interviewed in The New York Times. Here's one question:

Question: A lot of Americans would say that if we haven’t done it in Iraq we can’t try regime change in another nation.

Answer: I think it’s almost beyond dispute that we were right to overthrow Saddam and the threat his regime posed.

Beyond dispute?? Threat?? If he isn't even going to acknowledge reality there's no sense commenting on this gibberish.

Source: Solomon, D. (2007, November 4). Questions for John Bolton: The diplomat. Retrieved November 3, 2007 from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/magazine/04wwln-Q4-t.html?ref=magazine

Proof of Propaganda

As a firm believer in Herman & Chomsky's "Propaganda Model," I'm always looking for the offhand, validating comment. (Chomsky's Web site has an article synopsizing this model.)

In that horrible rag, The New York Times, this weekend, they had two paragraphs that relate:

"Rick Wilson, a Republican consultant based in Florida who has worked for Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, and Katherine Harris, the former Florida congresswoman, among others, said that most states have their own expressions for the circumstances under which open secrets stay secret. In Florida, he said, it’s the 'Three County Rule' — no girlfriends within three counties of your home district. In New York, it’s the 'Bear Mountain Compact' — nobody talks about what politicians do with their free time once they’ve crossed the Bear Mountain Bridge en route to Albany from points south.

'There’s a similar phrase in every state I’ve worked in,' Mr. Wilson said. 'In a lot of cases it’s because the principals involved are powerful, and a lot of the people who know are aides or staff or lobbyists or even reporters who rely on these people for access. So you end up with this feeling of, ‘It’s just business, it’s not affecting their work.’ Once it starts affecting their work, then the rules change.'"

Source: Goodnough, A. (2007, September 2). Oh, everyone knows that (except you). The New York Times. Retrieved September 3, 2007, from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/weekinreview/02goodnough.html?pagewanted=1

The Times Continues its Fine Reporting

of some alternate universe.

This weekend, David Brook's reviewed the book The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation. His review ends with the line "The best way to win votes — and this will be a shocker — is to offer people an accurate view of the world and a set of policies that seem likely to produce good results. This is how you make voters happy."

I sure hope Mr. Brooks isn't advising any presidential candidates because he is dangerously out of touch with reality. (Or he's in third grade.) Politics has nothing to do with offering people an accurate view of the world. Politics has nothing to do with offering people a set of policies. Politics has to do with manipulating people's emotions and reducing your argument down to the simplest visual image possible repeated ad infinitum, ad nauseum.