Misinformation at its worst

In The Kansas City Star today, there was yet another example of gross misinformation, in this instance, on the part of a reader--no surprise--and it points out the mistaken ideas people have about real life, situations and hard statistics.

Here's most of the letter to the editor:

Government can't be trusted

"What is it The Star does not get when it keeps publishing liberal editorials pushing for national health care, claiming that such a system will drive down costs and provide affordable care for all?"

"Do you realize that everywhere this has already been attempted it has been a disaster? (i.e., Europe and Canada)."

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where I have to stop. (Fortunately, he didn't go on much longer, anyway).

What the heck??

That is such a blatantly mistaken statement, it's beyond belief.

Virtually the entire free world has health care for all its citizens--except the United States--and Canada's and Europe's health care systems, in specific, are two of the most successful, working health care systems of all these.

It seems this writer must purely be basing his thoroughly untrue and incorrect statement on some fictional opinion he holds.

Reality absolutely shows, unequivocally, how both Europe's and Canada's health care systems (pick a country) work so very efficiently for both the patients and practitioners in the industry. The doctors and health care givers are paid reasonable wages and the costs are far lower for the institutions and respective countries, in spite of everyone getting the care they need.

The US statistics, by comparison, show we spend more than any other nation on the planet for our health care, for starters. Followed by the facts that we also rate 37th, internationally, in terms of morality rate and, finally, that we have at least 46 million of us who have no health care insurance at all, no one can claim we have a good, working system.

Far from it. Our health care system is broken. Badly broken. And needs repair.

Let's start there, with the fact that it needs fixing and then use only good information, to take us forward.

Link to facts and data on other countries' health care plans by T.R. Reid, from the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/21/AR2009082101778.html