Comments on the Myth of the World-Class Cuban Medical System

Michael Moore in Sicko, Jimmy Carter, Obama, and CNN, PBS, and ABC News reporters have all praised the Cuban medical system as one of the best in the world.  Most recently, Representative Keith Ellison, also Deputy Chair of the Democratic National Committee, has made the same claim. An article by Humberto Fontova addresses these evaluations of the Cuban Medical System with some interesting observations.

In summary of the most interesting of these:

• According to the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, more than 75% of doctors with Cuban medical degrees cannot pass the U.S. licensing exam given by the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates
• Most Cuba-certified cannot pass the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates exam for certification as physician assistants
• In 1958 before Cuba became a Communist regime, Cuba ranked 13th in the world in infant mortality.  Now, it is 43rd in the world, based on massive fraud in its reporting of infant mortality.  41.5% of pregnancies are ended with abortions, because any indication of a troubled birth results in an abortion, in order to keep the infant mortality rate low.  In addition, Cuban "doctors" are pressured to report the deaths of children younger than 1 year old as that of a child older than 1 year old.
• As in all Communist nations, the finer medical facilities so often pictured in propaganda reporting are not available to most people.

With all the calls for single-payer, a means of avoiding saying government-controlled, medical systems, we should remember every instance of incompetence or downright malignancy in examples of government-controlled medical systems.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the Full Faith and Credit of the USA

Robert Romano posted an interesting article on the debt of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the U.S. debt on 7 April 2010.  Romano is the Senior Editor of the ALG News Bureau.  ALG is Americans for Limited Government, which is an organization doing good work for the cause of American liberty.  I will summarize the most interesting points in his article below.

Congress placed the government secured entities (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under federal government conservatorship in 2008 because they were effectively bankrupt.  Congress formed the Federal Housing Finance Agency to manage their sorry financial mess, which Congress had long worked hard to foster.  In June 2008, their combined debt was $6.6 trillion, of which $4.7 trillion was mortgage-backed securities.  Congressman Scott Garrett asked Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner why this debt taken on by the federal government had not been added to the national debt.  The U.S. debt of $12.6 trillion should really be $19.2 trillion and this would result in the downgrading of U.S. debt due to excessive risk.  There is quite a song and dance going on here while trying to avoid this.

Geithner says this corporate debt is not the same as U.S. Treasuries and should not be considered sovereign debt.  He says, "By statute, all obligations and securities issued by GSEs must include a statement that makes clear that such obligations and securities are not guaranteed by the United States and do not constitute a debt or obligation of the United States."  But, he also says the "Treasury is committed to supporting the GSEs while in conservatorship and to ensuring that the GSEs have sufficient capital to meet their debt obligations and honor their guarantees."  When Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac were nationalized, the FHFA director James Lockhart told Congress that "the conservatorship and the access to credit from the U. S. Treasury provide an explicit guarantee to existing and future debt holders of Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac."  It seems clear that when Congress nationalized the GSEs, the earlier statute that their obligations were not guaranteed by the federal government, had to be superseded or inherently contradicted.

Foreign investors held $1.5 trillion of the $4.7 trillion in mortgage-backed securities.  In June 2007, the last an accounting by nation was performed, China held $376 billion, Japan $228 billion, Russia $75 billion, Luxembourg held $39 billion, Belgium $33 billion, Britain $28 billion, and Middle Eastern national funds are also big holders.  Many of these nations apparently said they would not buy Treasury bonds to support the U.S. national debt if the government did not rescue them from the bankrupt mortgage-backed securities they held.  The federal government has since bought up $1.25 trillion of mortgage-backed toxic security debt.  The Treasury will not say whose toxic securities they bought, but they only dealt with primary dealers who could directly deal with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.  When the TARP program was put together, the Treasury was forbidden to purchase the mortgage-backed securities of foreign central banks.  But, it appears likely that Geithner has done just that with paper which is indeed backed by the explicit backing of the United States.  What else could he have paid the primary dealers for the toxic securities with?

This is just me again:  Our real national debt is clearly much greater than the $12.6 trillion figure we are told in a huge lie that it is.  There is still much more hidden debt than just that of Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac also.

Kravis: Life Expectancy Humbug

The socialists claim over and over that the American health care system offers less quality than the European socialist systems do because:

• American life expectancy is lower than that of the Western Europeans and Canadians, despite our spending twice as much money on health care.
• Infant mortality rates in the U.S. are higher than in most other developed countries.

I have long been sure that these were specious arguments, given that I knew that American survivability rates for many illnesses were higher than those in those developed countries with longer life expectancy and lower infant mortality. I have long thought I should look into this more.

I am very grateful that Marie-Josee Kravis, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, has looked into this and thought it through. She wrote a great Ideas & Opinions piece in the 21 September 2009 issue of Forbes called Life Expectancy Humbug - We're getting a lot of sophistry connecting health care to life spans. To boil it down:

• If you reach 65, Americans have a longer life expectancy than Britons and Germans.
• Life expectancy depends upon diet and lifestyle as well as health care.
• American road fatalities are among the highest in the developed world. We drive more among other things.
• Our homicide rate is 10 times that of the U.K.
• 32.2% of Americans are obese, while in Japan it is 3%, France 9.5%, Germany 13.6%, Canada 18%, Australia 21.7%, according to the OECD. Obesity accounts for 10% of health costs in the U.S., but only from 2 to 3.5% in Canada. Obese Americans spend 36% more for health care and 77% more for medications than people of normal weight. Diabetes is 20 times more likely for them, heart disease 2.5 times more likely, and cancer, hypertension, and asthma are twice as likely.

Kravis asks if the Democrat health insurance changes will do anything to decrease road fatalities, homicides, over-eating, too little exercise, smoking, and dangerous use of drugs and alcohol? She says no. In fact, she worries that if these are considered pre-existing health issues and insurance companies have to provide insurance at costs subsidized by the healthy insurance purchasers, then those with bad lifestyle habits are simply encouraged to indulge those bad habits further.

She says that the quality of the health care available should be judged based upon the survival rate outcomes for illnesses, rather than life expectancy. She notes:

• U.S. mortality rates for all cancers are 166.3 per 100,000, while the OECD countries average 171, Canada is 173.2, France is 170.2, and U.K. is 175.6.
• Lancet Oncology found that Americans have lower mortality rates for 13 of the 16 most common forms of cancer.

She points out that infant mortality rates are a function of the mother's choices with respect to her age upon giving birth, her marital status, and her drug use and drinking habits. The mortality rate for teen pregnancies is higher than for older women and pregnant women in the U.S. are more likely to live alone than in other countries. These contributors to infant mortality will not go away with changes in health insurance.

I looked up a few other statistics of interest:

• The U.S. heart disease death rate is 106.5 per 100,000, with the U.K. at 122, Australia at 110.9, Sweden at 110.1, Germany 106.1, Canada 94.9, Netherlands at 75.1, France 39.8, and Japan at 30. The low French and Japanese death rates make it clear that these rates are not simply related to the quality of the health care system.
• The percentage of road deaths and firearms deaths both are maximal in the 15 to 24 year old age group in the U.S., which explains why these causes of death decrease American life expectancies so much.
• Life expectancy is also a function of dangerous careers. A nation with more fishermen, lumberjacks, and pilots and flight engineers, will tend to have a shorter life expectancy.
• Life expectancy will be shortened in a nation with a larger transportation industry, construction industry, and more warehousing, agriculture, and hunting.

Socialists will use any false argument to support more socialist programs, as long as it might seem plausible to most of the people who will not look into the argument more closely.