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I think we’d all agree that Australia is a big country. In fact, it’s not a country at all, but a continent like North America. So, it would be sensible to assume it’s a pretty big place with lots of people. It’s actually almost twice the land mass of India.

Julia A. Seymour would disagree. In fact, Ms Seymour would find it thoroughly acceptable for the whole population of Australia to be without any form of health service whatever.

According to Ms Seymour of the Business & Media Institute, people like me should not have healthcare insurance. Apparently, it’s fine for non-Americans to live and work in the USA, but they must not be included when statistics about health insurance are compiled.

In an effort to undermine Michael Moore’s film “SiCKO”, Seymour and her ultra right-wing colleagues at the BMI are challenging Moore’s figure for the numbers of persons in the US living without health cover. 10,000,000 – she says – are not US citizens and should therefore be excluded from the statistics.

In fact, she implies in her article that if you, citizen or not, are an owner-occupier and have a computer, then you can afford health insurance and its purely a matter of personal choice if you don’t have it. Given that for most people the cost of adequate health cover comes close to the cost of mortgaging a second home, this conclusion seems a little unfair.

Seymour is, in fact, utilizing quotes from a book: “The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care” by David Gratzer. As capitalism has failed miserably in that task over the last two hundred years in this country, it seems unlikely Mister Gratzer has found “the cure”, as he professes. When we consider his credentials, however, his enthusiasm for a capitalist approach to the problem appears more clear.

David Gratzer is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, another of those right-wing “think tanks” like the AEI and Heritage. Let us, for a moment, consider the commitment of the Manhattan Institute to America’s public health.

In it’s 1996 report “Buying A Movement”, the ultra-conservative [inaccurate – see note here] organization “People for the American Way” describe the Manhattan Institute as advocating:

“………privatization of sanitation services and infrastructure maintenance, deregulation in the area of environmental and consumer protection, school vouchers and cuts in governmental spending on social welfare programs……”

This hardly seems a recipe for improving America’s healthcare. Dig a little deeper, though, and the waters become even murkier.

The Manhattan Institute doesn’t publish a list of its corporate sponsors. That’s probably just as well. It’s happy to proclaim financial links to charitable foundations like Koch and Scaife, but makes more effort to conceal “donations” from Exxon Mobil, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and prominent tobacco companies like Phillip Morris, Brown & Williamson, and R.J. Reynolds.

Sourcewatch tells us that:

“…….a 1997 R.J. Reynolds memo reveals RJR’s intent to use the Manhattan Institute as a third party to help the company reduce the public’s perception of danger from exposure to secondhand smoke:

“Devise ways to educate the public about epidemiology and put risk in perspective. For example, work with Steven J. Milloy, Michael Fumento, CEI Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Manhattan Institute [my bold] and others to put together a 1/2-hour or 1-hour TV show explaining epi[demiology] and risk. Create an epi/risk website to educate the general public, maybe working with the Harvard School of Public Health. Do the same for journalists.”

Of course, Sourcewatch is one of those stinking liberal organizations not to be trusted, but in this instance it’s sources are verifiable. The memo, containing numerous other devious schemes to indoctrinate Americans into believing smoking is cool and the dangers grossly overrated, can be read HERE. Note 7 is pertinent, but as an object lesson in deceiving the American people, the whole memo is worthy of perusal.

Suddenly Julia A. Seymour’s persuasions are somewhat less than compelling, but just suppose her figures are correct after all.

She opens her article by stating:

“Michael Moore was wrong about health insurance. So were President Bush, Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), presidential candidates former Sen. John Edwards and Gov. Mike Huckabee and The Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, People magazine and Time magazine, as well as CNN, CBS and ABC.”

Well now, that’s an awful lot of well-informed people and organizations that got it wrong. What they say is that around 50,000,000 Americans are without health insurance. Ms Seymour argues that figure is way too high. Take out the 10,000,000 non-citizens like me, who live here just because we love America so much and don’t deserve healthcare, and subtract the numbers of people so well off they don’t even bother with it because they’re too busy enjoying their own home and playing on their computer, and you are left with a figure of around 20,000,000 – or, says Ms Seymour, a mere 7% of the populace.

Ms Seymour, however, is not content with that number. She pares it down still further by juggling the statistics until she arrives at – to Ms Seymour – the more agreeable figure of between 8.2 million and 13.9 million.

That’s much more acceptable. After all, if we average out those figures to just 12,000,000, it’s only the total population of Zimbabwe, or Angola, or Cuba – and who cares about them anyway?

Unfortunately, Ms Seymour has made a grave error in her calculations. By removing the 10,000,000 of us who are not citizens she is simply playing with words. While the figures quoted by Moore and others are classified under the terms “Americans without health insurance”, it is ludicrous to assume the statistics must only refer to citizens, and not other US inhabitants living under the umbrella – albeit, leaky – of American healthcare. We permanent residents get sick as readily as citizens. We also pay the same amount in taxes. So, in this instance, her argument is seriously flawed and utterly unacceptable as a means of reducing the figure she is trying to achieve.

Add the 10,000,000 back into the calculation, and the figure Ms Seymour arrives at by her own arithmetic becomes 22,000,000.

Or, slightly more than the total population of Australia.

Filed under: Vital statistics

AUTHOR’S FOOTNOTE: The above article was written to highlight the absurdity of those who argue over figures; that the number 50,000,000 is unacceptable, yet 20,000,000 is much less so.

I would simply respond: “Is the figure ‘1’ acceptable?

Julia Seymour grandly announces that only 7% of “Americans” fall through the health net, as though it is to be applauded as a success. Only 7%. Let us take this figure and remove the ‘%’ sign. Imagine, if you will, a small village of just 100 inhabitants; a close-knit community of, say, 40 families. 37 of those families enjoy good health, and when they get sick the local doctor makes them better. 3 families cannot afford health insurance, so when an influenza epidemic hits the village the doctor refuses to treat the members of those three families because he won’t get paid. If you lived in that village and knew those families, what would you do? What would all the other families in the village do? I don’t need you to answer. I know your response. You would unhesitatingly rush to help in whatever way you could – even if it was just to assist in running the mercenary doctor out of town. Those three families represent about 7% of the village population. They’re the 7% that Julia A. Seymour and her well-heeled, capitalist, cronies would consider acceptably expendable.

RJ Adams

Today it is the turn of the Times of London to hurl verbal rocks at the Russian government and defend that most noble of Soviet dissidents, Boris Berezovsky, though in a more muted tone than that of yesterday’s Sun newspaper.

Of course, this comes as no surprise considering both newspapers are owned by the same man – good old Rupert Murdoch – who, as reported yesterday is one of Berezovsky’s close friends and business associates.

Let’s stick together, boys!

The Times wasn’t totally silent on the subject yesterday, laying the groundwork for today’s piece with a nice little non-story about two Russian bombers leaving their Arctic base on the Kola Peninsula and flying towards Scotland. While RAF fighters were scrambled just in case Vladimir Putin had blown his mind and ordered an attack on the Gleneagles golf course, the bombers predictably turned back well before reaching UK airspace.

All-in-all, hardly worthy of news space, but a suitable prelude to today’s weightier article.

It’s hard to comprehend whether Berezovsky is taking the British government for a ride, or the latter – in conjunction with the US government – is using the Israeli/Russian oligarch as a pawn in some power game with the Russian president.

Given the state of play in the world today, with corporate power in the ascendancy and politics simply their instrument of control, it’s more likely the former. There is no doubt Putin’s demise is Berezovsky’s prime objective. His cosy relationship with the vodka-swilling President Yeltsin came to an end somewhat abruptly in late 1999 when Yeltsin resigned and Putin took over, immediately taking steps to curb the oligarchs.

Berezovsky is a man powerful enough to break governments, and there are too many like him. Their ruthlessness knows no bounds. Killing, just as much as corruption, is a convenient way to achieve their objectives. They have seen how in the US, the office of President can be kidnapped, the incumbent reduced to a marionette dancing to a corporate tune. Expansion is their goal, and Putin is fully aware they are after, if not his position, then certainly his political power. While George W Bush and other political leaders may court Boris Berezovsky and his like, they had best be aware that any moment an oligarch’s knife may stab them in the back.

In an interesting statement today, it was announced that the recently arrested would-be assassin of Mister Berezovsky was held for two days by Britain’s Scotland Yard Police Headquarters and then quietly deported without charge. Berezovsky himself, when questioned on the matter, informed reporters that the police had told him “…not to go into detail about the assassination attempt and therefore I will not do so.”

But surely, if there has been an attempt on a man’s life on British soil, the public has a right to know the details?

Not to put too fine a point on it – the whole business stinks.

Filed under: More political corruption

Most of us are at least aware of Michael Moore’s latest film, “SiCKO”. Some will already have seen it. Many won’t bother.

As one who has spent fifty plus years dependent on the British National Health Service for my medicine, and five years enslaved by the insurance companies and pharmaceutical industry of America’s “healthcare system”, I know only too well where my loyalties lie.

Let me put it this way. If my advancing years cause me to require extensive medical care, my fervent wish is that the cause will not be down to accident or mishap. Rather, I would prefer a gradually encroaching illness – one that would at least allow me to exercise my right as a British citizen, hop on a plane, and book myself into a British National Health Service hospital for treatment, rather than suffer the financial disaster of medical care in a similar US establishment.

When I first arrived on these shores, my initial visit to a family doctor was for a minor matter. I was one of the very fortunate ones. My wife has family health insurance cover of the very best. She works for the government. My new doctor seemed somewhat patronizing of my origins, and at the end of the visit he told me I would have no worries about my healthcare in America, saying, “We have good strong medicines over here, Mister Adams, unlike your National Health Service.”

To say I was perplexed by this comment would be an understatement. I had no idea what he was talking about. Of course, I now know he was simply another victim of the GAIM – the Great American Indoctrination Machine. He firmly believed the British National Health Service was akin to a collection of 18th century African witch doctors performing rites and incantations while their patient slowly expired before them. He held that view because he’d been taught that it was true.

Sadly, for gullible America, so have the majority of Americans.

A few weeks ago I developed a minor, though irritating skin complaint. I rang my family doctor’s office to make an appointment, only to be told it would be at least six weeks before they could fit me in. After a bit of the good old British tongue-lashing, I was finally told they would have to arrange for a nurse to contact me back and ascertain if my condition required an “emergency appointment”. Apparently, it did, and I was told to report the next day. What, I later wondered, if I had been a meek, elderly gentlemen without a Brit’s requisite hard-bitten cheek to demand my rights? How might I then have fared?

Six weeks to see a doctor!

No, I’m sorry, America, but if you don’t stand up and exert your rights as citizens, you deserve to be trampled underfoot by those with power and wealth who will watch you die in the gutter, for the sheer fun they get from it.

Michael Moore’s film really cannot be criticized. It speaks for itself. Of course, there are those who will call it all lies and deceit – rigged to appear authentic but in reality just actors paid to read lines. Let me tell you, America, I can stand with hand on heart and state categorically that at least 85% of what the film says is true. I have no knowledge of the Canadian Health System. I have, as a consumer, extensive knowledge of the British system, and as an observer, a working familiarity with the French healthcare system, which is better again than the British NHS.

The greatest objection to be raised in this country against an all-embracing, free, health service is that it’s “UN-AMERICAN”. I cannot argue with that. It most certainly is. But aren’t you ashamed to admit it? It’s un-American because no-one would make a profit! “Ah, but we can’t have our government expanding itself and running such things,” I hear the cry, “next they’ll be telling us what to do!”

The GAIM rears its ugly head yet again.

Have you, America, ever stopped to wonder why there is such a hoo-ha in this country about restraining the size of government? Who is responsible for spreading this fear? “Ah, but it goes back to our Founding Fathers and the Constitution,” I hear the cry. Yes, it does. Which must surely mean that your saintly Founding Fathers had no concerns for the welfare and health of the nation they had founded. Or, did they expect citizens to simply dispense their home-brewed medicine and remove their own perforated appendixes?

The men who wrote the Constitution had escaped from a Europe of the day, brimming with petty kings and dictators. Their experiences colored their vision. Also, they were most certainly not the near-deities today’s American youth are taught they were. The GAIM has probably been the most enduring and profit-making idea in all of America’s history.

Does it not strike you as strange that your government is opposed to a National Health Service? After all, it was Thomas Jefferson who said, “The natural progress of things is for government to gain ground and for liberty to yield.” Surely, one way a government could gain lots of ground is by expanding into healthcare? Let’s make no mistake, healthcare has to be paid for. That means an increase in taxes – every finance minister’s dream. It makes sense to assume every US government since Lincoln’s would be straining at the bit to introduce its own universal health care program.

The nearest any came to doing so was when Bill Clinton empowered wife Hilary to set the ball in motion. It didn’t roll very far before being kicked out the arena by the drug barons.

Of course, that was before Hilary Clinton sold out to the insurance companies. It’s unlikely any whisper of universal healthcare will be heard from the Clinton platform during the 2007/2008 presidential campaign.

America, your politicians and your government have no interest in providing you with universal healthcare. In fact, it is utterly against their interests. A large percentage of your “representatives” already have other “jobs” – in, or associated with, the healthcare industry.

Are you finally beginning to realize you have been duped? Or is that all-American, self-consuming pride still preventing you from seeing the wood for the trees? Are you still too blind to recognize the light of truth, even when it sears your eyeballs like fifty million candlepower?

Until you open your eyes, your nation will continue to rank on a par with third world countries when it comes to infant mortality, deaths from preventable diseases, and a population mortality rate way behind the rest of the western world.

Alexander Hamilton, in his Federalist Paper No.23, 1787, laid out four principal reasons a government was formed:

1. The common defense
2. The preservation of public peace
3. The regulation of commerce, and
4. The supervision of foreign affairs

He wasn’t much of a “Founding Father”, was he? He missed out the most important reason any government is elected.

I’ll fill it in for him:

    5. Ensuring the welfare of the people.

Or, is it just about playing the GAIM.

NOTE: If you haven’t yet seen “SiCKO”, it can be viewed in its entirety online for free HERE.

Filed under: Winning the GAIM