Yikes! Health Care Histrionics Unleashed

It's hilarious that the White House started (then abruptly cancelled) a web site where people could snitch on those who were allegedly spreading misinformation about The One's health care proposals, particularly since the misinformation is largely coming from proponents of a government-run health care system.

Consider the following:

* The "public option" so beloved by The One and his minions was supposedly intended to create competition with private insurers, but now Mark Penn has written that "The subsidized 'public option' was always meant as a transition to single payer, not merely as an aid to competition with private insurers."

* Penn also states that "Americans want universal care as they define it — the unlimited right to have all the health care they need and access to the latest technologies to live longer and extend the lives of their loved ones." Sure, and I'd like a scratch handicap, an invisibility cloak, and the ability to time travel, but those aren't going to happen either.

* The junior senator from the Enchanted Mitten, Debbie Stabenow, said in a recent interview that "The reality is that we need to act when you're talking about 62 percent of the bankruptcies in this country coming because of a health care crisis." This is a flat-out lie. The Fraser Institute did an extensive study of this precise issue, and specifically compared the U.S. to Canada, the left's third favorite paradise (behind France and Cuba). Here are two of their findings:

The most recent data (2006 and 2007) shows that personal bankruptcy rates are actually higher in Canada (.30% for both years) than in the United States (.20% and .27%).

Research indicates that medical spending was only one of several contributing factors in 17 percent of US bankruptcies,and that medical debts accounted for only 12 to 13 percent of the total debts among American bankruptcy filers who cited medical debt as one of their reasons for bankruptcy.

* As part of her ongoing series, TMAC authored part 2 of "Liberal Lies About National Health Care." Read and learn.

I can't remember who said it first, but I have always believed that while everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, no one has a right to be wrong on the facts. Mark Penn surely slipped up when he disclosed the true purpose of the public option (for which he certainly will be taken to the liberal equivalent of the woodshed, perhaps some re-education camp), but at least he told the truth that it is just a path to a single-payer, national health care system. Like all such systems, this will destroy private medicine and innovation, producing long waits for vital medical services and rationing, particularly for the elderly and persons otherwise afflicted and therefore undeserving of special care.

Truth and justice -- more of both, please.