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Thursday, August 27, 2009

Virginian Pilot propaganda machine for ObamaCare sputtered into high gear



The Virginian Pilot propaganda machine for ObamaCare sputtered into high gear, reminding me of one of those ObamaClunkers headed for the dealer to be replaced by a nice shiny Toyota. Under the guise of providing facts vs. fiction the half-assed editors apparently rewrote a press release from Team Obama using data gathered by WHO (The World Health Organization).

Unfortunately, the remaining employees of the much-shrunken Virginian Pilot are not very bright, they are no longer believed and their evidence is simply belied by people’s experience. In fact, the editors, in an attempt to paint the worst possible picture of US medical care do themselves and their propaganda a disservice by making it appear as if the US is a medical hell hole, to be shunned by Americans who should be getting their medical care in Poland or Greece.

Yet somehow foreigners seem to be coming from these places with their much vaunted “cheap and better” health care for doctors and hospitals in the United States. So the flurry of statistics is neither believable not convincing.

For a better explanation of where these phony numbers come from, it’s useful to get someone who knows something about how statistics are used to lie. The real problem that the Pilot editors have is that they got their education in English Lit classes and in journalism school. Put them up against a doctor who knows his statistics and they simply look like the foolish, poorly educated partisans that they are.

An article by Richard G. Fessler, MD, PhD, is instructive as he destructs the misleading statistics and makes the point that the US in NOT Poland, Greece, France or England. For all the statistics that show Americans have shorter life spans, it’s interesting to note that:

In fact, if you remove the homicide rate and accidental death rate from MVA’s from this statistic, citizens of the US have a longer life expectancy than any other country on earth.


Homicides and accidental deaths are NOT a feature of our health care system, but a feature of American life.

It’s instructive that in today’s Virginian Pilot, we read about a double homicide in Norfolk, an event that will be factored into any future reports on the life expectancy of American men. Quawasheen Stewart was 21 and Jervonte Barnes was 20. One of the Pilot’s “proofs” that American men die young thanks to our “overpriced and inadequate” health care.

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