In addition to being incapable of objective, non-partisan analysis, progressive health care wonks are utterly predictable. They can be counted on to mindlessly denounce any reform proposal from any Republican—-regardless of its merits.
So, their response to John McCain’s newly fleshed out health care agenda was no surprise. They reflexively repeated their talking points like so many parrots screeching in unison. One […]
As I have said before, one of the reasons liberals are so hard to take seriously on health care is that they cannot resist the temptation to fudge the facts. Linda Gorman has written a good piece about a recent manifestation of this progressive proclivity:
If Families USA were a newspaper, it would be a supermarket tabloid carrying articles […]
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Posted 30 April 2008
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“Cognitive dissonance” is defined as the “psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously.” If this concept has any validity at all, Shadowfax’s psychological landscape must have looked like a war zone after writing this post about the latest “never event” idiocy from CMS. The gist of the post is captured in the following passage:
CMS would have you believe that this is […]
One of the reasons I find it so difficult to take “progressive” policy wonks seriously on health care reform is that they seem utterly incapable of honest and informed analysis. A typical manifestation of that intellectual handicap can be found in this post by Maggie Mahar, which begins with a misleading conflation of disparate data:
A combination of spending on new construction and hi-tech equipment pushed the nation’s hospital […]
One of the reasons people style themselves “liberal” or “progressive” involves their need to feel morally superior to “mean-spirited conservatives.” This moral vanity also drives their ostensible generosity with regard to large social welfare programs, including government-run health care.
According to George Will, however, such people are generous mainly with other people’s money. While progressives are very enthusiastic about giving away tax […]
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Posted 28 March 2008
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Megan McArdle is uneasy with the condescending attitude toward the hoi polloi that informs ”progressive” enthusiasm for health insurance mandates:
I’m persistently disturbed by the notion that most of our fellow citizens are intellectual children who need to be forced to do what is good for them even at massive cost to their liberty, and ours.
This was written in […]
Since seeing Oleanna fifteen years ago, I have held David Mamet in high regard. Having read Why I Am No Longer a Brain Dead Liberal, I now have even more respect for him. The essay doesn’t speak directly to health care, but it does contain this highly relevant passage:
What about the role of government? Well, in the abstract, coming […]
Graham advises us that EMTALA “is a good law,” then gives us several reasons to regard it as an exceptionally bad piece of legislation:
The problem with EMTALA is that it provides too much potential for abuse … If you were to look online or eavesdrop in a doctor’s lounge, likely “abuse of medical resources by certain patients” […]
Well, the usual suspects are all over John McCain because of his comments relating to vaccines and autism:
It’s indisputable that is on the rise among children,” Senator John McCain said while campaigning recently in Texas. “The question is, What’s causing it? And we go back and forth, and there’s strong evidence that indicates that it’s […]
As I mentioned a few days ago, the advocates of government-run health care love to quote World Health Organization statistics. They are particularly fond of referencing “World Health Report 2000,” which purports to rank the health care systems of 191 nations.
Glen Whitman of the Cato Institute has written an excellent analysis of the methods used by the WHO to produce that report, […]