Maggie's Farm

Re: Medicare, is the cure for America's ailing healthcare.

Bernie Sanders (the Socialist congressman writing in the Guardian, the Socialist news) says; In terms of life expectancy, infant mortality and other health outcomes, the United States lags behind almost every other advanced country.

This is untrue and anyone aware enough to write an article on this subject would know it is untrue. All health outcomes in the U.S. are better then the outcomes in all of the other advanced countries. Cancer, heart disease, stroke, etc. are all treated more effectively by our health care system then by the socialized health care in England, Canada and France. As for infant mortality it is well known that because the data is collected differently our stats on this looks worse then say France or England when in fact it is about the same. But most of our infant mortality comes in the black and Hispanic community from mothers on dangerous drugs like crack and meth and NOT from a broken health care system. If those unfortunate infant deaths were excluded from the stats and only the non-drug using population was counted our infant mortality rates would be substantially better then all of the advanced countries of the world. As for life expectancy there is a similar problem; first the data is collected differently. Secondly our drug problem and the genetic diseases that blacks and Hispanics carry reduce the statistical average life expectancy. Third, and related to illegal drugs, too many young people are killed in the constant gang wars over drugs and drug money. Statistically killing an 18 year old hurts the average far worse then a 60 year old black man dying from high blood pressure or diabetes does. When you look at the U.S. life expectancy of people of European origin and compare that with the life expectancy in European countries the U.S. comes out better then any of them.

What Bernie is doing is knowingly comparing apples to oranges to achieve his lifelong goal of making the U.S. a Socialist country. Presumably Bernie and his fellow congressmen will choose to exempt themselves from socialized health care when it is implemented. Oops! That's right, they already have.