The President has kicked off the health care reform charge in the past week. Last Saturday, he used his weekly radio address to call for
a quick solution to the crisis, while his Town Meetings swung into high care, with him speaking today.
One of the best and most influential policy analysts and patient advocates, Betsy McCaughey, PhD, sent us a note that is one of the clearest rebuttals to most of the doomsday claims made by the President in his radio address, and again today at the town meeting. It also includes a link to her new article in American Spectator that blows the roof on many more of the claims – -titled “Downgrading American Medical Care.”
After you finish the articles, we recommend that you watch the video of Dr. McCaughey from our AAPS Congressional briefing held on April 16. Some of the data she is sharing cannot be found anywhere else.
READ “Downgrading American Medical Care”
FROM BETSY MCCAUGHEY:
New York, NY – June 9, 2009. In his Saturday weekly radio address, President Obama referred to the dangers of “skyrocketing costs” of healthcare. This doomsday scenario is untrue.
The truth is that healthcare spending is increasing at more moderate rates than in previous decades. Spending increased by 10% in 1970 and 13% in 1980. But over the last five years, spending increased less than 7% each year and reached a low of 6% in 2007. For more of the truth, backed up by government data, see “Downgrading American Medical Care,” at http://spectator.org/archives/2009/06/08/downgrading-american-medical-c
The evidence shows that Americans can afford their current standard of healthcare. They do not have to settle for the skimpier standards of care imposed by most Europeans governments. What Americans cannot afford is a healthcare overhaul based on misinformation.
“The President and his advisors owe the American people the truth, not misleading economics to back up their political agenda,” states Betsy McCaughey, Ph.D., a patient advocate and author of “Downgrading American Medical Care.”
“Slowing the flow of dollars into healthcare, as the President requests, will mean cuts in hospital budgets, nurses spread even thinner, fewer diagnostic machines, and waits for treatment,” McCaughey warns. “It’s an outrage that Americans coping with serious illnesses will have to make do with less.”
