Health Care BS

As I have said before, I have a rule of thumb that has served me well in assessing public figures: Anyone Paul Krugman dislikes can’t be all bad. Thus, Krugman’s snide comments about Sanjay Gupta suggest that the latter may well be a good Surgeon General.

Krugman’s main beef against Gupta is that he was one of the few media types who had the courage to call out Michael Moore on his schlockumentary, SiCKO. He admits that Gupta’s qualifications are OK (not a high bar to get over in the Obama Administration), but goes on as follows:

But I do remember his mugging of Michael Moore over SiCKO. You don’t have to like Moore or his film; but Gupta specifically claimed that Moore “fudged his facts”, when the truth was that on every one of the allegedly fudged facts, Moore was actually right and CNN was wrong.

Krugman is being typically dishonest. As much as it pains me to defend CNN, Gupta’s report was far more accurate than the network’s normal reporting. The usual suspects jumped on a single transcription error (the script read $25 instead of $251) to claim that Moore’s claims were vindicated.

The reality is quite the reverse. Moore, like Krugman, is a man of boundless mendacity,  and SiCKO is even less credible than his previous farces. The adipose auteur, as Gupta accurately stated, “fudged the facts.” There is no intellectually honest way to deny that reality.

As to Gupta becoming Surgeon General, how can anyone be surprised? He’s certainly more qualified for that position than Leon Panetta is for the post of CIA Director. Indeed, one can make the case that Gupta is more qualified to be SG than Obama is to be President.