Conyers' doesn't like Gupta's integrity
In 2007, habitually dishonest left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore did a movie called "SiCKO," in which he indicted the American health care system and compared it unfavorably to that of Cuba.
Health care is one issue on which I am not terribly conservative anymore. Being uninsured for as long as I have, without needed medications, and with only the most tenuous prospect of being able to deal reasonably with even a non-catastrophic illness, a single-payer nationalize plan looks increasingly attractive to me. Philosophically, I strongly believe that access to health care ought not to depend upon one's ability to pay. I feel the same way about justice- and the fact is that in our legal system the ability of the rich to hire the best attorneys and to pay expert witnesses are only two of the ways in which equal protection under the law is more of an ideal than a reality in America.
There remain, to be sure, excellent arguments as to why a single-payer plan would be less than ideal, to say the least. The problems which any attempt to reform the inherent inequities of our legal system would face are even more imposing. Suffice it, in any case, to say that, my social conservatism aside, I am not necessarily disposed to be hostile to the case Moore tried to make in "SiCKO."
Nevertheless, Moore's movie played fast and loose with the facts. The Cuban system to which Moore compared America's is in fact available only to the elite members of Cuba's Communist Party. The health care system the Cuban people have to deal with makes ours look positively utopian by comparison.
In any event, it seems that President-elect Obama's expected nomination of Dr. Sanjay Gupta to be our nation's new Surgeon General is being opposed by leftist Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich).
Molly K. Hooper of The Hill suggests that Gupta's pointed confrontation with Moore over the film on CNN's "Larry King Live" might be the reason for Conyers' opposition.
If, as Conyers claims, Gupta is opposed to universal health insurance, that remains to be seen. And contrary to Paul Krugman, the New York Times blogger alluded to in the story, the argument of Moore's movie was a deeply flawed comparison of an entire nation's health care system with one intended only for a privileged few.
And Moore's reputation as a political extremist complicates the matter. One wonders whether it's his iconic status on the left, rather than Gupta's position on universal health insurance (a position which Mr. Obama surely considered when considering his appointment) which is the real issue here.
HT: Drudge
Health care is one issue on which I am not terribly conservative anymore. Being uninsured for as long as I have, without needed medications, and with only the most tenuous prospect of being able to deal reasonably with even a non-catastrophic illness, a single-payer nationalize plan looks increasingly attractive to me. Philosophically, I strongly believe that access to health care ought not to depend upon one's ability to pay. I feel the same way about justice- and the fact is that in our legal system the ability of the rich to hire the best attorneys and to pay expert witnesses are only two of the ways in which equal protection under the law is more of an ideal than a reality in America.
There remain, to be sure, excellent arguments as to why a single-payer plan would be less than ideal, to say the least. The problems which any attempt to reform the inherent inequities of our legal system would face are even more imposing. Suffice it, in any case, to say that, my social conservatism aside, I am not necessarily disposed to be hostile to the case Moore tried to make in "SiCKO."
Nevertheless, Moore's movie played fast and loose with the facts. The Cuban system to which Moore compared America's is in fact available only to the elite members of Cuba's Communist Party. The health care system the Cuban people have to deal with makes ours look positively utopian by comparison.
In any event, it seems that President-elect Obama's expected nomination of Dr. Sanjay Gupta to be our nation's new Surgeon General is being opposed by leftist Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich).
Molly K. Hooper of The Hill suggests that Gupta's pointed confrontation with Moore over the film on CNN's "Larry King Live" might be the reason for Conyers' opposition.
If, as Conyers claims, Gupta is opposed to universal health insurance, that remains to be seen. And contrary to Paul Krugman, the New York Times blogger alluded to in the story, the argument of Moore's movie was a deeply flawed comparison of an entire nation's health care system with one intended only for a privileged few.
And Moore's reputation as a political extremist complicates the matter. One wonders whether it's his iconic status on the left, rather than Gupta's position on universal health insurance (a position which Mr. Obama surely considered when considering his appointment) which is the real issue here.
HT: Drudge
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