Sometimes I make fun of Bob.
But overall, I think he's indispensable.
Bob Somerby on the Washington Post and health care
First off, you can go to any site populated by the wingnut crowd and find them Blar-Har-Harring over the WaPoo pay for access scandal.
Ha Ha Libs!
But a sober analysis of what was going on there shows, as Bob S. does, that the Washington Post is serving their corporate clientele at the expense of the rest of us. Ever since Donny Graham became the publisher, this has been the trend at the WaPo.
We have a choice between a right wing corporate press and an insane right wing corporate press in this country.
Next, getting to the specifics of the health care debate, these numbers should be published everywhere:
Total health expenditures per capita, 2003
United States $5711
Australia $2886
Austria $2958
Belgium $3044
Canada $2998
Denmark $2743
Finland $2104
France $3048
Germany $2983
Ireland $2466
Italy $2314
Japan $2249
Netherlands $2909
Norway $3769
Sweden $2745
United Kingdom $2317
Those are astonishing data. Over the past fifteen years, they’ve almost never been discussed. Everyone but Krugman understands—you simply mustn’t discuss them.
UPDATE: Horton hears a Who?
I mean, Harry gets a clue?
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) abruptly waded into health care reform negotiations Tuesday, telling Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) that Democratic leaders had serious concerns about a bill that would tax health benefits and nix a strong public insurance option.
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Loser's Lament
9 minutes ago
5 comments:
As near as I can make out, getting sick in the U.S. is for rich people. If you have the money, the medical facilities are the best in the world, but you gotta have the Doe Ray Me. Those figures would back that up.
A recent visitor to our shores used to complain about the NZ health system but used it for free a couple of times. While the state of the hospitals and the equipment was old and worn, it got the job done, for free(well, we pay for it in taxes but nothing on the day).
I can see why Barak Lenin Hussein Malcolm X Obama might want to wreck it all
What we have is really just a scam for the insurance companies that have arranged the system, Another Kiwi.
Mention that other countries do it better, and you get the best Know-Knothingism in the world from the wingnuts.
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This is a topic that just leads me to despair. The answer is obvious, the public is overwhelmingly in favor of it, the mechanism is simple (Medicare for all), and yet the political reality is that this is somehow impossible because it will make the Etna CEO's cry. What luck will we have with real radical changes if we can't do something as simple as this?
It's a real radical change to pull the rug out from under kleptocrats.
Those kleptocrats weigh a lot, RB.
After all, they've got all that money in their pockets. And they're not shy about buying a Senator or 50.
So pulling rug, much more difficult, and such as.
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