by Greg Palast

This is a true story.

CHICAGO. In a school with some of the poorest kids in Chicago, one English teacher–I won’t use her name–who’d been cemented into the school system for over a decade, wouldn’t do a damn thing to lift test scores, yet had an annual salary level of close to $70,000 a year. Under Chicago’s new rules holding teachers accountable and allowing charter schools to compete, this seniority-bloated teacher was finally fired by the principal.

In a nearby neighborhood, a charter school, part of the city system, had complete freedom to hire. No teachers’ union interference. The charter school was able to bring in an innovative English teacher with advanced degrees and a national reputation in her field – for $29,000 a year less than was paid to the fired teacher.

You’ve guessed it by now: It’s the same teacher.

It’s Back to School Time! Time for the editorialists and the Tea Party, the GOP and Barack Obama’s Education Secretary Arne Duncan to rip into the people who dare teach in public schools.

And in Arne’s old stomping grounds, Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel is stomping on the teachers, pushing them into the street.

Let’s stop kidding ourselves. This is what Mitt Romney and Obama and Arne Duncan and Paul Ryan have in mind when they promote charter schools and the right to fire teachers with tenure: slash teachers salaries and bust their unions.

They’ve almost stopped pretending, too. Both the Right Wing-nuts and the Obama Administration laud the “progress” of New Orleans’ schools–a deeply sick joke. The poorest students, that struggle most with standardized tests, were drowned or washed away.

One thing Democrat Emanuel and Republican Romney both demand of Chicago teachers is that their pay, their jobs, depend on “standardized tests.” Yes, but whose standard?

Here are an actual questions from the standardized test that were given third graders here in NYC by the nation’s biggest test-for-profit company:

“…Most young tennis stars learn the game from coaches at private clubs. In this sentence a private club is….” Then you have some choices in which the right answer is “Country Club – place where people meet.”

Now not many of the “people [who] meet” at country clubs are from the South Side of Chicago–unless their parents are caddies. A teacher on the South Side whose students are puzzled by the question will lose their pay or job. Students on the lakefront Gold Coast all know that mommy plays tennis at the Country Club with Raul on Wednesdays. So their teacher gets a raise and their school has high marks.

And while Mayor Rahm promises kids in “bad” schools new teachers (the same ones at lower pay) at high-score schools, in fact, they are never actually allowed in.

But Rahm, after all, is just imposing Bush education law which should be called, No Child’s Behind Left.

You want to know what’s wrong with our schools? Benno Schmidt, CEO of the big Edison Schools teach-for-profit business is a creepy, greedy privateer. But he told me straight: that before Hurricane Katrina, his company would never go into New Orleans because Louisiana spent peanuts per child on education. He made it clear: You get what you pay for. Not what you test for.

So the charter carpetbaggers slither in, cherry-pick the easy students, declare success. The tough cases and special ed kids are left in the public system so they can claim the public system fails.

Here’s what the teacher who was terrible at $70,000 but brilliant at $41,000 told me:

“They’re not doing this in white neighborhoods. And they want to get rid of the older, experienced teachers with seniority who cost more. Get rid of the teachers and, ultimately get rid of the kids. And the charter school gets to pick the kids who get in.”

It’s simple. When you look at the drop-out rates in New York (41%) and Chicago (44%), the solution offered is to pay teachers less. They punish those who dare to work in poor schools where kids struggle and you can bet that “washing away” half the kids in our schools is, in fact, exactly what they’ve planned.

It’s notable that, when he lived in Chicago, Barack Obama played basketball with city school chief Arne Duncan, but Obama sure as hell didn’t send his kids to Arne’s crap public schools. Those are for po’ folk.

His kids went to the tony “Lab” School in Hyde Park. Obama knows what Duncan knows and what Romney knows: there’s no money and no need for universal education. Yes, they like to say that “children are our future.” But they mean the children of China are our future, the Chinese kids who will make the stuff we want and the children of India who will program it all for us.

After all, how much education does some obese kid from Texas need to stack boxes from China in a Wal-Mart warehouse?

Education is no longer about information and learning skills. It’s now about “triage.” A few selected by standardized tests or privileged birth will be anointed and permitted into better and “gifted” schools.

The chosen elite are still very much needed: to invest in India and Vietnam, to design new derivatives to circumvent the laughable new banking laws, and to maintain order among the restless hundred-million drop-outs squeezed out of the colon of our educational system.

Democrats’ Bantustans, Republicans’ Value-less Vouchers.

The Obama/Duncan/Emanuel plan is to create Bantustans of un-chartered, cheaply-run dumpster schools within a government system. But Romney and the GOP would give every child a “choice” even outside government schools with “vouchers.”

Of course, the “vouchers” don’t vouch for much. Romney’s old alma mater, Cranbrook Academy, runs at $34,025 a year, not counting the polo sticks and horse. The most generous voucher program is Washington DC’s, beloved of the GOP, which pays about $7,500, or if the student’s “choice” is Cranbrook, about 2 months of school. Hyde Park Day School Chicago is $35,900. To give each kid a real choice, not just a coupon, means a massive increase in spending per pupil. I didn’t see that in the Republican platform, did you?

The experienced teacher in Chicago who took the pay cut was offered one consolation. She was told she could make up some of the pay loss by quitting the union and saving on union dues.

So that’s the program. An educational Katrina: squeeze the teachers until they strike, demolish their unions and drown the students.

Chicago’s classroom war is class war by another name.

Class dismissed.

A version of this story originally appeared in the Occupied Chicago Tribune.

You can pre-order Billionaires & Ballot Bandits from Barnes & Noble, Amazon or Indie Bound. Author’s proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.

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by Lee Camp

Look around you. Are there zombies? Are there vampires? If you answered yes, then maybe you don’t need to watch this video. If you answered no, then I’m about to change your mind…or eat it.

[..]

by Lee Camp

Looking to make out with a stranger in a tent only feet away from squads of angry police? Then your time is finally here! …Okay, maybe there are other reasons to celebrate the Occupy anniversary that’s coming up. They might not be as fun as that reason, but they probably matter more.

[..]

by Steven Whitney

In our first two Presidential elections, George Washington ran unopposed, with no affiliation to any Party, even though a multi-party system composed of Federalists, Anti-Federalists and the Democratic-Republican Party – yes, they were one united Party back then – was forming quickly, with each party eager to recruit him. But Washington felt it imperative to ensure the people that his first allegiance was to the country and not to any political party. . . and so he ran as a “Non-Partisan.”

Since our country was brand spanking new, urgent issues and conflicts sprang up at every turn. Under other labels, conservatives and liberals jousted for position and, as today, fiercely disagreed on the course the government should take. But guiding them all in those early days was a President whose very bipartisanship allowed the various factions to join together to construct a nation built on freedoms that otherwise might tear our democracy apart.

How were they able to do that? How did they manage to put personal and political issues to the side so they could “provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare” and secure for the populace the inalienable rights of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” – without political parties, agendas, ideologies, and platforms?

At the birth of our nation, political factions came and went, howling like low winds on the Chesapeake Bay. Instead of trusting in parties, voters trusted men proven to be of good character. Our first three Presidents – Washington, Adams, and Jefferson – held wildly conflicting moral, philosophical, and political views. Yet they were elected in succession because each had a strong character that had firmly won the faith and trust of the people.

That’s all – just Character, with a capital C.

Of course, today no man or woman can ascend to the Presidency without the backing of a political party, or without hundreds of millions of campaign dollars. But that should not preclude the importance of evaluating character at the ballot box. Isn’t that the first thing we should ask for and vet in candidates – that they possess good characters?

So let’s measure Romney, Ryan, and the RNC against the cornerstone of good character on which almost everyone agrees – honesty.

On its simplest level, honesty is merely telling the truth and avoiding deceit. On this score, the GOP and its candidates scored an unprecedented low with one lie and deceit after another. Even Fox News, the media arm of the Republican Party and not usually concerned about letting facts get in the way of agenda, was absolutely gob-smacked by the outrageous lies and deceptions delivered by their Vice-Presidential candidate: “…to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech.” Again – that’s Fox News!

Ryan deliberately misquoted the President on private sector success, reproached him for closing a GM plant in Wisconsin (it closed under Bush), called him the “biggest threat to Medicare” (when, in fact, Mr. Ryan’s “budget” claims that dishonor), and also blamed the S&P downgrade of America’s credit rating on Obama. To the contrary, when Standard & Poor’s made the downgrade, it clearly stated the reason: “We have changed our assumption…because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues.” Could S&P have targeted the blame any more precisely?

Ryan even lied about his personal accomplishments, saying he ran a marathon in 2 hours and 50 seconds. But according to his own brother, Ryan didn’t break 4 hours.

Not a big thing? Okay, but then why lie about it? Especially if he wants to be seen as an average Joe, the 4-hour mark is much more in keeping with the norm.

Back in 2000, the GOP loudly accused Al Gore of lying about “inventing the internet.” But Gore never said that – what he did say was that he was a strong supporter and initiator of the web in the Congress that funded and sustained its invention. So if Bush’s campaign made such a big deal about a so-called lie from Gore that they just made up, are we supposed to sit back now and accept real and numerous lies from Republicans just because they say it’s so?

Over this past weekend, Crooks & Liars released a well-documented list of 533 different lies Mr. Ryan told in just 30 weeks, which has to come close to the world record touted for him by Fox News.

But it’s not only the lies, Ryan also has been extremely deceptive since being tapped for V.P. But he’s still no match for Romney, the king of deception. Romney released only one year of tax information – and that was incomplete. He steadfastly refuses to release any more, saying the opposition would only use it as “ ammunition.” Ammunition for what? If his tax record is clean, there would be no evidence of wrongdoing. Ammunition could be used only if it’s found that he was part of the 2009 Swiss Bank Tax Evasion Scandal, or if he’s hiding even more money overseas, or if he paid no taxes for a number or years (as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid suggested), or any one of a number of questionable and even malfeasant transactions. No one worries about ammunition unless there’s a smoking gun hidden somewhere – and yet both Ann and Mitt have stated repeatedly that they don’t want to give their opponents any ammunition. Doesn’t it sound like they’re afraid that releasing more tax returns would explode in Mitt’s face and shoot dead any chance of being elected? That’s what ammunition does, isn’t it?

But Mitt is the Crown Prince of Avoidance. Ask him about his healthcare plan and he says he won’t reveal the specifics until after the election. It’s the same with his tax and budget plans (although we can surmise that they don’t stray too far from his running mate’s). He details nothing, by implication saying “Trust me,” even as he gives us nothing to base trust upon. Whenever they’re asked for specifics, his campaign says only that if a voter really wants to research the issue, he/she can find all the information they need. Which leads to the question: if experienced political journalists can’t find the specifics – and they haven’t – how can the average voter? But then, the sentiment exactly echoes Queen Ann’s statement about releasing more than one year of incomplete tax returns: “we’ve released all the information you people need to know” (italics mine).

Is this a crime syndicate taking the 5th in front of the American people or a political party trying to get elected in the absolutely worst way possible?

Doesn’t honesty – or at least the kind of honesty that leads to trust and transparent governing – start with full and truthful disclosure? If so, then Romney, Ryan, and almost the entire cast of the Republican National Convention fail the test by a large margin. Indeed, the lies, avoidances, and deceptions during the RNC were so numerous and shameless it appeared as if the GOP was celebrating National Liars’ Week. And that they didn’t care if the whole world knew. Romney’s press secretary Neil Newhouse even admitted as much when he said: “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.” Or facts, one has to conclude.

In the best of all possible worlds, men and women of good character cultivate their political garden with truth, allowing them to govern compassionately, fairly and responsibly. They do not hold the electorate in contempt by telling constant and contemptible lies. On every level they respect the people – all the people, not just the rich who can buy their way into influence.

Although informed by the past and present, elections are always about who will govern in the future. And those of good character know that a successful – and especially, democratic – future cannot be built upon a platform of lies.

This November, voters across America must not only cast Republicans out of office but also leave their party in ruins.

Why?

Because the GOP needs to be effectively reminded that our nation was created on the principles of truth that George Washington and our founders espoused. . . and not based upon lies that rob our country and its leaders of credibility, integrity, and, yes, good character.

The truth still matters.

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Gotcha!

by Moby

This might not be of interest to very many people, but I wanted to write about the federal government…

I know, 99% of you will stop reading right now. I assume that this is probably of interest to about six people, which is a shame, as it’s a subject that effects all of us, even those who don’t live in the United States.


See, one of the big issues in this election cycle is federal spending.
 The Republicans say over and over again that they want to drastically cut federal spending.
 And most people go along with it, saying, “sure, let’s cut federal spending.”
 But do people fully understand what federal spending involves?
 In very general terms, and excluding debt and interest payments, federal spending can be seen in quarters:

• 1/4 of the budget goes to Medicare/Medicaid.
• 1/4 goes to Social Security.
• 1/4 goes to military spending.
• 1/4 goes to ‘discretionary’ spending.

The Republicans have said that they don’t want to touch the military budget, they don’t want to touch Medicare/Medicaid, and they don’t want to touch Social Security.
 But they do want to drastically cut ‘discretionary’ spending.


What exactly is ‘discretionary’ spending?
 Technically it’s non-mandatory federal spending.
 But practically it’s 
railways, schools, hospitals, roads, infrastructure, arts programs, health, police, museums, emergency services, state and national parks, public broadcasting, water safety, etc., etc.


Some of these are also paid for by state and local budgets, but for the most part they’re all reliant upon federal ‘discretionary’ spending.
 And what I find incredibly frustrating is that no one, not even Democrats, is sticking up for this type of government spending.


When I travel I go to countries with a higher percentage of discretionary spending than the United States.
 Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Scandinavia, New Zealand, The Netherlands, etc., etc.
 Most Americans don’t leave the United States, so they assume that no matter where you go you’ll find hospitals that are over-crowded, schools that are under-funded, railroads that are slow, higher education that is expensive, water that isn’t always safe to drink, etc.
 But in almost every other Western country they have great hospitals, great schools, great roads, great public transportation, clean air, clean water, etc., 
because, simply, they spend more federal money on programs that benefit the people.


The Republicans want to cut all discretionary spending.
 And they want to cut taxes on the wealthiest 1% of wage earners.
 So the towns where these wealthiest 1% live will have great public services, but the rest of the country will, literally, fall apart, as is already happening.
 By most objective criteria the United States is already leaving the ranks of first world countries.

Here are two salient indices:


1. The United States comes joint 23rd in a list of countries ranked for literacy by the United Nations – below Cuba, Estonia, Latvia, Barbados, and Belarus, among others.

2. There are 48 countries with a lower infant mortality rates than the United States – this one is stunning!

In almost all indices for development and well-being the United States is either lower than most other Western countries or slipping fast.
 There might be other variables, but the one constant is we increasingly spend less on ‘discretionary’ items.
 And if Romney/Ryan and the Republicans have their way, we’ll continue to spend less and less on discretionary spending, and continue to push the United States out of the ranks of first world countries.

To be clear and seemingly self evident:

• Kids are better educated when they have well funded schools.
• Old people are healthier when they have well funded hospitals and health programs.
• People are safer when they have well funded health and safety programs and regulations.
• Countries work better when they have well funded public transportation.

Giving more money to the military will not improve the quality of life for people in the United States.
 And giving more tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires will not improve the quality of life for most of the people in the United States.

I truly believe that if Romney/Ryan and the Republicans are allowed to further cut federal discretionary spending that the United States will increasingly become a crumbling country filled with increasingly sick and uneducated people. It’s already happening. A Romney/Ryan administration will just accelerate the process.

It’s just a shame that most Americans can’t travel, even to Canada, to see an example of what a country looks like when it has great public education 
and great health care and great public transportation and great arts programs.

I’m writing this because I strongly believe that someone needs to speak up for discretionary spending. Someone needs to clearly state that many of the things Americans value – roads, health, education, police, emergency services, public transport, museums, national parks, safe water, clean air, etc., etc. – all require healthy levels of funding.

A Romney/Ryan Republican America would be paradise for the few people worth over $10,000,000. But it would be a crumbling dystopia for everyone else.

“All of us take too many things for granted, the rights and rewards we enjoy for which others greatly sacrificed and often even died. On Memorial Day we do reverently honor our fallen, and we still wildly celebrate our nation’s birth on July 4th…

But Labor Day, once a holiday that truly paid tribute to workers, has become just a three day weekend of boating, beaches, and barbeque, with nary a thought of the valiant, against-all-odds struggle of both individual and organized labor. These days it should probably be called a Bank Holiday, like in England, because the financial sector has had a great three decades at the expense of labor…

This Labor Day, September 3rd, instead of the all-day backyard barbeque, let’s take a few hours to mobilize our faith in ourselves and in the founding principles of our nation by hitting the streets once again to honor and support America’s two greatest assets – the worker and the Middle Class. They are one and the same.”

– Steven Whitney, August 2012
Excerpted from:
Forget The Barbeque On Labor Day – It’s Time To Take Care Of Business

by Sandor Stern

Dear Republican Friends,

Regarding your stand on healthcare…

This country spends more on health care than any other country in the world. One would expect that fact to translate into the best medical care. I know you believe it does, and you are correct when it comes to medical advances and facilities, but we are not even close to the best when it comes to the medical care of our population. According to statistics from the World Health Organization, we spend almost twice as much per capita than any other nation – $7290 in 2007 and it has increased since then. That amounts to 16% of our GDP. 18.5% of government revenue is spent on health care. And what do we get for that money? Our life expectancy is lower and our infant mortality rate is higher than every other industrial nation. Our system is ranked 37th in the world among 191 nations. And your reaction to those facts is a pledge to repeal the 2010 Affordable Care Act – the most comprehensive health care reform in 45 years.

You brand it with an Obamacare label in your effort to denigrate it. That is laughable; firstly because it mirrors Romney’s Massachusetts Health Care Plan of 2006 (framed by the Republican conservative think tank’s Heritage Foundation) and secondly because it does not reflect the single payer plan that Obama would have liked. Though Democrats held a majority in the senate, they fell short of the sixty votes needed to pass a bill unpalatable to the Republican senators. The Affordable Care Act was obviously a compromise. Given its auspices it seemed a safe direction. It’s basis is insurance coverage through private companies. Who would have guessed that the Republican party and its presidential nominee would disown a plan like that? In hindsight, considering the Republican about face on so many of your previous legislative bills, this should not have come as a surprise.

What baffles me is your disregard for Romney’s turn around. He initially touted his plan (that included mandatory insurance for all) as a model for the nation. Then he waffled by saying his plan was good for his state but not for the nation. Now he avoids the subject. My question to you is: if the plan is good for the state why not for the nation? All this hue and cry goes on about the Romney plan, but nobody seems to ask the pertinent question – is it working for the people of Massachusetts? 98% of Massachusetts residence now have insurance, including 99.8% of children. Two out of three adults in the state support the law and 88% of doctors say it improved or did not affect the quality of care. It seems the proof is in the pudding.

To this date, the Affordable Care Act has improved health insurance coverage in many ways. Children can stay on their parents’ policies until the age of 26. Individuals with existing insurance policies no longer have to pay deductibles and other out-of-pocket expenses for certain preventive care services. Children under 19 cannot be denied insurance because of a pre-existing condition. Insurance companies cannot drop your coverage if you become sick, nor can they place lifetime limits or arbitrary annual limits on coverage. Insurance companies are required to spend more of the premium dollars they receive on health care services and quality. It becomes easier to file complaints about the quality of care in a nursing home. Better access to information on nursing home quality and resident rights is available. Seniors who reach the Medicare doughnut hole receive a 50 percent discount on brand-name prescription drugs and a 14 percent discount on generic prescription drugs. Medicare benefits have expanded to include free coverage for wellness and preventive care. Hospitals that improve the quality of care for people with Medicare can qualify for new payments.

But that’s not all. Yet to come in 2013: Those who reach the Medicare doughnut hole receive a 52.5 percent discount on brand-name prescription drugs and a 21 percent discount on generic prescription drugs. Increased funding will be available to help families and children get coverage through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance program (CHIP). Hospitals and doctors can qualify to receive a new type of payment (called a “bundle”) to coordinate with each other as they care for patients. Yet to come in 2014: Insurance companies cannot deny anyone health coverage because of a pre-existing condition. Those who reach the Medicare doughnut hole receive a 52.5 percent discount on brand-name prescription drugs and a 28 percent discount on generic prescription drugs. Subsidies are available for those with limited incomes who purchase health insurance through an exchange. Children, parents and adults without children who do not have Medicare and who have a limited income are able to apply for Medicaid. Spouses of people on Medicaid who receive care services at home get the same protections for income and other resources as spouses of those on Medicaid who live in nursing homes. Yet to come in 2020: after continuing yearly declines in doughnut hole costs, the Medicare Part D coverage gap or “doughnut hole” will be completely closed.

These are the present and future benefits of the Affordable Care Act that you want to repeal. Why? You claim multiple reasons. You rail against the mandatory coverage. You consider it socialism. Under your definition of socialism that would make mandatory withholding taxes for social security, Medicare, and Unemployment insurance socialism. It would make mandatory driver’s licenses socialism. In fact, mandatory income tax would have to be listed under your definition. Yet, there are no socialist aspects to the Affordable Care Act. Individuals purchase their coverage in an open market from private insurance companies. The physicians who provide services work on a fee for service basis. Hospitals and laboratories remain in the hands of private enterprise. So where is the socialism you love to scream about?

You claim that the costs of insurance will go up. Without doubt if there is no mandatory coverage that will be true. That was true before the ACA and was one of the prime reasons to institute the act. When healthy young people are not buying insurance, the price goes up for those older and in poor health. Mandatory coverage keeps the costs down. And before grumbling over that, how many people paying into social security and Medicare die too young to ever collect a dime? How many people pay unemployment insurance and never need to collect a check in return? That’s why it’s called insurance. It’s a necessary price one pays today just in case the day arrives when the need arises.

You seem to prefer remaining with the old “free enterprise” system – which has never been free or even enterprising. In that system, 40% of U.S. citizens did not have adequate health insurance, if any at all. The cost to these people has been that they’ve been avoiding medical care, sometimes until it was too late for a cure, often to the detriment of preventive steps, and for some a cost in dollars that led to bankruptcy. The cost to the nation has been a crush of patients inundating emergency rooms – paid for by the taxpayers. Is that the trade off you really want? Medical costs paid for others through your income tax rather than a small bite out of every citizen’s pocket?

There is no doubt that the Affordable Care Act is flawed and that flaw is the same one that exists in the Massachusetts Plan. In Massachusetts, though 97% of taxpayers are complying with the law, the cost of premiums rose 12.2% between 2006 and 2008. One of the main reasons for cost increases is due to the administrative overhead, and that will apply to Affordable care. An apples to apples comparison of plan overheads is best seen in administrative costs for Medicare and Medicare Advantage. According to the Congressional Budget Office, expenses under the public Medicare plan are less than 2% compared with 11% expenditures under the private plans of Medicare Advantage. Meanwhile the General Accounting Office reported that in 2006, Medicare Advantage plans spent 83.3% of their revenue on medical expenses and 16.7% for non-medical expenses and profits. That makes sense. Private Insurance companies are in business for profit and they must spend money on sales and advertising to compete with each other. Why do we need them in the health care business? That is why a single payer system gets you the most bang for the buck. We only have to look to our northern neighbor, Canada, for comparison.

In the mid sixties Canada and the USA faced the same issue in health care. As citizens aged, private insurance companies either denied them insurance coverage or asked exorbitant rates. This was an overwhelming humanitarian problem. The USA decided to alleviate the problem through Medicare, a plan that insured citizens above the age of 65 years. Canada decided to institute a Medicare plan that covered every citizen from cradle to grave. This is a system similar to those in almost every industrial nation in the world. There are only two exceptions: the USA and Turkey. Good company, right?

Before you start shouting “socialism” look at the facts. The Canadian system is no more socialist than our own Medicare. Patients choose their own doctors and those doctors are paid on a fee for service basis. Though federally funded, each province and territory maintains and oversees its own separate plan. Spurred, I suspect, by profit seeking private insurance, pharmaceutical and medical supply companies, a mythology about the Canadian Health Plan has taken root in this country.

Myth: taxes in Canada are extremely high. Fact: the average after-tax income of Canadian workers is equal to about 82% of their gross pay. In the USA that average is 81.9%. Myth: Canada’s health care system is a cumbersome bureaucracy. Fact: the provincial single-payer system in Canada operates with a 1% overhead. That’s even better than our own Medicare operating costs. Myth: the Canadian system is significantly more expensive than the USA system. Fact: 10% of Canada’s GDP is spent on health care for 100% of the population. The USA spends 17% of it’s GDP but 15% of its population has no coverage, and millions of others have inadequate coverage.

Myth: Canada’s government decides who gets health care and when they get it. Fact: the government has absolutely no say in who gets care and how they get it. Those decisions are left entirely to doctors. In the USA HMO’s and private insurers make medical decisions all the time. If they decide they won’t pay for a medical procedure like an MRI you won’t get it no matter what your doctor thinks – unless you pay out of pocket for it.

Myth: there are long waits for care. Fact: there are no waits for urgent or primary care in Canada. There are reasonable waits for most specialists’ care and longer waits for elective surgery. Despite the waits, Canada is ranked 7 points above the USA in patient care by the World Health Organization. Canada boast lower incident and mortality rates than the USA for all cancers. Life expectancy in Canada is 81.3 compared to 78.1 in the USA. The infant mortality rate in Canada is 4.5 and in the USA 6.9. Per capita expenditure in Canada is 3,895 dollars per year and in the USA it is 7,290 dollars per year. Fewer Canadians (11.3%) than Americans (14.4%) admit unmet health care needs.

Myth: Canadians are paying out of pocket to come to the USA for medical care. Fact: If a Canadian goes outside the country to get services deemed medically necessary, not experimental or are not available at home for whatever reason, the provincial government where they live fully funds their care. Those patients who do come to the USA for care and pay out of their own pocket are those who perceive their care to be more urgent than their Canadian doctors believe. In a Canadian National Population Health Survey of 17,276 Canadian residents it was reported that 0.5% sought medical care in the USA in the previous year. Of these, less than a quarter had traveled to the USA expressly to get care.

Perhaps the best example of furthering the myth is that of an Ontario resident, Shona Holmes, who traveled to the Mayo Clinic after deciding she could not wait for medical care at home. She characterized her condition as an emergency; she was losing her eyesight and portrayed her condition as a life-threatening brain cancer. Her Ontario insurance refused to reimburse her for medical expenses and she sued – and lost. In 2009, at the peak of the Republican fight against the Affordable Care Act, she appeared in ads on American TV warning of the dangers of the USA adopting a Canadian style health plan. After the ads appeared critics pointed out discrepancies in her story: the Rathke’s cleft cyst for which she was treated was not a form of cancer and was not life-threatening. In fact, the mortality rate for patients with a Rathke’s cleft cyst is zero percent.

The facts are available to anyone with the inclination to pursue them. In the face of those facts, how can you take a stand to repeal The Affordable Care Act? If anything, you should be working to improve it. I don’t find evidence of that in the Republican Party Platform.

Just asking

Your friend

Sandy

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