Herman

Cain

Read Herman's bio and previous columns

April 6, 2009

Health Care Ignorance

Each night last week on my three-hour radio talk show I featured a discussion on “Unraveling the Lies about Health Care”. Much of the material was based on a recently published book by CEO Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute. She was my guest one of the nights to give a first-hand perspective on The Top Ten Myths about American Health Care, which is the title of her book.

Sally is much more politically correct than I am, so she calls them myths. I have no political correctness, so after reading her book I called them what they are – lies!

Such as, “Government health care is more efficient”. People who believe that myth have obviously never heard of Medicare or Medicaid.

The night before Pipes was on the show, Dr. Todd Williamson, president of the Medical Association of Georgia (MAG) was my guest. He explained with compelling clarity why “a single-payer health care system limits choices and ultimately leads to rationing”. He also pointed out that a socialized health care system like those in Canada or England would further damage the eroding patient-doctor relationship.

Dr. Williamson had just testified before Congress that same week. Let’s see how many of them were really listening when they start voting on health care legislation.

The night following Pipes, my special guest was Dr. David Satcher, the 16^th U.S. Surgeon General. One of his main points was that access to health care is only about a 15 percent determinant of health, whereas human behavior determines 40 to 50 percent of a person’s health.

Throughout the week many callers underscored the insight of these three outstanding professionals with their own personal, family and professional experiences.

Then on Friday night, Norman was the first caller at 35 minutes into the show. I was not planning to take calls yet, because I had promised the listeners that I would talk about solutions to how we could fix some of the “leaks” in our health care system without blowing up the building to fix the leaks in the roof.

I decided to take Norman’s call because the comment on the call screen said “he disagreed with me and everything we had discussed all week.”

When I took Norman’s call, I asked if he had heard any of the shows from the previous four nights. He said no. I then asked if he had read any of the articles about socialized medicine I had posted as links on my WSB Radio Show web page. He said no again. I asked if he had read anybody’s articles about government-controlled health care. He said no again.

Click! I cut him off. This call was a non-starter, which promised absolutely no value at all. Norman wanted to argue with no facts, no logic and no common sense.

Norman made me realize the extent to which a lot of people are and want to remain ignorant about socialized medicine. No matter how many studies are published, articles written, comparisons made about the fallacies of government controlled health care, Democrats in Congress and too many people choose to ignore the overwhelming evidence that total government control of health care is a mistake.

Ignorance will destroy the best health care in the world if we let it happen. We can fix the leaks in the “roof” about how we pay for health care without blowing up the building, but the proponents of socialized health care don’t want to know how.

Maybe ignorance really is bliss!

© 2009 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

Click here to talk to our writers and editors about this column and others in our discussion forum.

To e-mail feedback about this column, click here. If you enjoy this writer's work, please contact your local newspapers editors and ask them to carry it.