Facts and Truth

By Ed Raymond
Staff Writer
I don’t remember who said this, but it helps to describe our present situation: “Washington, D.C. is the only place in the world where you can see a politician taking a walk down lovers’ lane holding his own hand.” It will be fascinating to watch the Tea Partiers battle with Republicans and conservatives (there is a helluva difference!) over earmarks in the next congress.  In politics and life there is nothing more eternal than death and taxes—except for hypocrisy and earmarks.

Politicians need earmarks like vampires need blood. In a 2010 campaign noted for hyperbole and hypocrisy, facts were almost nonexistent. Astronomers, sighting strange objects in the sky for the last 500 years, have determined that 492 planets now exist in our universe. When you hear a politician challenge another with the line “What planet are you on?” at least he has 491 to choose from. I thought I would relate a few facts in this column about the current state of our affairs, using the best neutral sources I could find. Let me know if you have better ones garnered from the Internet and Fox News.
Healthcare Hypocrisy, Facts, Fiction, and Outright Lies
On November 3 the presumptive Speaker of the House John Boehner said the American system was “the best health care system in the world.” Evidently John is on his planetary limousine searching for a planet that hasn’t any germs.

Fact: the U.S. is 49th in life expectancy according to the Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook. We are 29th in infant mortality, just behind Cuba and Hungary, two other world powers. In the category of “avoidable mortality” we are dead last (!!) among the 19 richest nations in the world. Avoidable mortality means we do the worst job among the rich nations of treating such diseases as asthma, diabetes, kidney disease, liver disease, and keeping hospitals clean of those mysterious little bugs (staph MRSA) that eat flesh. It’s a little like involuntary liposuction that takes you down to the bone.

Fact: An MRI in Eastern European hospitals costs $120; in Tokyo $98. An MRI in the U.S. averages out at $1,100. Mr. Boehner, please explain that one before landing on your disinfected planet.

Fact: An oncologist in Wyoming recently closed his clinic when new cancer drugs were charged out from drug companies at $200,000 to $400,000 a month per clinic patient.  That’s a little more than the $93,000 worth of drugs for extending a prostate cancer victim’s life by four months.
For sheer hypocrisy no one can top Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the lipless Louisvillian who vows to repeal that great government health care takeover and boondoggle passed by that black immigrant socialist from Kenya. Like Boehner, McConnell believes the U.S. has the finest health care in the world. But when McConnell needed heart bypass surgery in 2003 he was cut up at Bethesda Naval Hospital, a government-run hospital operated by ignorant, ill-trained socialist incompetents.  Why didn’t Mitch go to Mayo or Cleveland Medical, or some other free market heart hospital?

Fact: Obamacare was actually designed from that great free market health care program that Mitt Romney developed in Massachusetts, now called Romneycare. Poor conservative, moderate, Tea Partier, Republican perpetual presidential candidate Mitt is the man with a hundred political philosophies. Will he ever be able to live with the fact that his program was actually the role model for Obamacare?  He needs a long talk with Sarah.

Fact: 51 million Americans now have no health insurance.  Over 59 million spent part of 2009 without any health insurance.

Fact: Register at an emergency room and the average entrance fee across the country is now $522.

Fact: No tax dollars will be used to fund abortions although erectile dysfunction drugs and various devices will be covered for males (Not enough women in congress yet!).

Fact: Over half of the 1.5 million bankruptcies in this country are forced by medical bills and lack of insurance or adequate insurance.

Fact: Uninsured cancer patients are almost twice as likely to die within five years as those with health insurance.

Fact: Republican candidates on the campaign trail told the following lies: Under Obamacare patients would have to go through a bureaucrat or death panel before seeing a doctor! The government would subsidize insurance for illegal immigrants! The Obama administration was planning to have a federal health record on every citizen! The government was going to cut $500 billion from Medicare! (Can you imagine Republicans screaming about $500 billion of cuts in Medicare when they have been opposed to the program for decades?)

Fact: Obamacare requires that insurance companies must spend 80 percent of premiums on healthcare, not bonuses for health insurance CEOs.

Fact: There are many popular provisions in Obamacare although the Republicans keep yelling that Americans overwhelmingly want to repeal it. 78 percent support the section that requires states to set up special plans so people with major health problems can still get insurance. 75 percent agree with the law that prevents insurance companies from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions. 73 percent like the improvement in Medicare’s prescription drug benefits. 67 percent like the provision that allows children up to age 26 to stay on parents’ policies. 60 percent like the law that sets up insurance exchanges to cover over 30 million uninsured Americans.  54 percent agree with the law that eliminate lifetime caps on coverage. Even 45 percent agree that everyone has to have health insurance.

Fact: Exit polls from election night indicated that 48 percent of the voters wanted to repeal Obamacare and 47 percent wanted to keep and expand the law. Man! What a landslide! That’s like the Vikings “destroying”  the Detroit Lions, 48-47.

Fact: The U.S. spends 17 percent of its gross domestic product on healthcare with 51 million people uninsured, while European countries spend about 8 percent–-and insure everybody.  We spend $8,389 per person for health care and rank 33rd in quality according to the World Health Organization. France spends $3,601 per person, covers everybody (even guests in the country!) and is ranked #1.  Canada spends $3,895, Switzerland $4,417, Great Britain $2,992, and Spain $2,671. Perhaps we should find out how they do it. How long are we going to remain stupid? If we don’t reform health care the annual cost by 2019 will be $13,652 per person.

Fact: Because of the terrible economy for the middle class, 48 million people (15.1%) have signed up for Medicaid. Even without Obamacare, federal, state , and local spending for health care will overtake all private health care costs in 2011.

Fact: Doctors pay little attention to the proper procedures for inserting central-line catheters for the administration of medicine to patients.  According to research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over 80,000 patients develop central-line infections and 30,000 die at a cost of more than $2 billion. No wonder doctors, hospitals, and the GOP want to dramatically limit malpractice suits.

Fact: The Foundation for Advancement of International Medical Education and Research tracked doctors in 244,153 hospitalizations and found that doctors trained outside of the U.S. had a 9 percent lower death rate than doctors trained in the U.S. Ouch!

Fact: About 100,000 American patients die each year of incorrect diagnoses, infections, surgical “mistakes,” and drug errors according to the National Patient Safety Foundation.

Fact: Half of the “insured” cancer patients under 65 have had trouble paying for treatments, and half of them have put off care because of cost.

Fact: Republicans want to repeal Obamacare because health care is a privilege, not a right. If people die young it certainly lowers health care and pension costs. Is that a policy?
Alaska, Sarah Palin, Republicanism, and Hypocrisy
Fact: Perhaps the most Republican state in the Union, Alaska gets more money from Washington on a per capita basis than any other state. Many Alaskans have lived off federal welfare since it was made a state. The federal government funds 34 percent of Alaskan jobs. This is a “Get-the-damn-government- off-my-back-so-I-can-spend-that- government-check-my-way” kind of state.

Fact: Senate candidate Joe Miller of the Alaska Tea Party wants to repeal Obamacare, slash taxes, and cut government farm programs, Social Security, Medicare,  Medicaid, and other programs too numerous to mention. Poor Joe was caught in a few lies while campaigning. He has collected farm subsidies, used state computers in campaigning, his wife has collected unemployment insurance, and his family has received state health benefits. I guess he didn’t feel those government boots “treading” all over him.

Fact: If Republican Lisa Murkowski wins the senate seat as a write-in candidate it would mean that Alaska will maintain its record of spend and “Charge It!” After all, Dick Cheney, that great conservative from Wyoming who voted against Head Start every time it was mentioned, said that deficits didn’t matter after Ronald Reagan put us $2 trillion in debt.
Other Political Hypocrisies
Fact: When Lurch refused to pardon the lying Scooter Libby in the Valerie Plame-CIA affair, Cheney chastized him: “I can’t believe you’re going to leave a soldier on the battlefield.”  This hypocrisy from a guy who left many grunts in Vietnam rice paddies while clutching his five draft deferments. Cheney said he had better things to do.

Fact: During the campaign Republicans paid $65 million for 161,203 anti-Pelosi ads.  It must have been because she was so ineffective as Speaker of the House!

Fact: Although the Bush administration was warned repeatedly about the Ponzi schemes of Bernie Madoff and other financial fraud on Wall Street for at least six years, Bernie wasn’t brought to court until 2009 for cheating people of $65 billion.

Poor Bernie and his wife had the greed bug bad. The court is selling their possessions to cover losses by investors. She had a 10.543 carat center diamond in her many-diamonded engagement ring which sold for $550,000 last Saturday. Her Tiffany watch with 169 rose-cut diamonds and 45 black onyx pieces is also on the auction block. Bernie owned 20 Patek Philippe watches and about 20 Rolexes, 300 pair of handmade Belgian shoes, 75 cashmere sweaters (all of a different color), and hundreds of monogrammed shirts. Alas, he has no need except for stripes now.

Fact: We now have 48.1 million people on food stamps, up from 26.3 million in 2007. In just one year Minnesota has added 63,000 to food stamp rolls.

Fact: While middle-class salaries have remained the same for ten years, the richest one percent of Americans now take home 24 percent of income. In 1976 they took home 9 percent.  The term “Banana Republic” describes the economic situation of any country where one percent of the rich have 20 percent or more of the national pie. We are now officially a Banana Republic, equal to Guyana, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and numerous African countries in the middle of civil wars.

Fact: If the Bush tax cuts are continued for all Americans, the rich will gain $800 billion over the next ten years. How many jobs have the rich developed with their tax cuts over the last nine years? 

Fact: We have lost 11.2 million jobs since the start of the recession.

Fact: Consumer spending accounts for about 70 percent of our economy. Why aren’t consumers consuming? They don’t have any money, and haven’t had any for a decade! Economists seem to have a hard time figuring that out. Ask a “middle-class” household in the middle of a foreclosure!

Fact: We are in deep trouble as a nation. All signs point to a economic collapse because of the superrich-superpoor income gap. Better get used to a lot of bananas.

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