Republicans generally get their facts wrong when trying to make a point that the "free" market works better than anything the government can put together. They use conservative think (I use this word loosely) tanks to cite numbers, figures and charts to show that they are right and Democrats are wrong. Too bad that the think tanks are wrong to begin with, such as when Rudy claimed that people survive prostate cancer in higher numbers here as opposed to Britain where they use socialized medicine.
Now that can be chalked up as a simple mistake by Rudy for not having the good sense to read publications that actually deal with reality. Simple men, simple.....you get the message. Yet if you yourself had prostate cancer, dealt with the repercussions and survived I would think that a survivor would know their own personal medical history (I certainly do with regards to my knee surgery) better than anyone else. Well, that isn't true either.
From Salon:
The Giuliani ad's problems go well beyond a pair of phony numbers. Among the blogging wonks scrutinizing the relevant health data is Ezra Klein, who asked a separate but penetrating question: "Wouldn't it be interesting to find out if the gold-standard care Giuliani got during his prostate cancer came while he was on government-provided health insurance?"
As Klein surmised, Giuliani was serving as mayor and participating in a city of New York health plan when his doctor informed him that his prostate biopsy had come up positive. The coverage he enjoyed -- which resembles the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan -- permits all city employees, from trash haulers and subway clerks up to the mayor himself, to select from a variety of insurance providers, and it is not much different from the reform proposals adopted by his nemesis Hillary Clinton.
In the spring of 2000, when Giuliani learned that he had cancer and abruptly dropped out of the Senate race against Sen. Clinton, he was enrolled as a member of GHI, one of the two gigantic HMO groups that provide care for most city workers (the other is known as HIP). He underwent surgery and radiation at Mount Sinai Hospital, a prestigious institution that participates in the GHI plan, which means that his costs were largely underwritten by city taxpayers.
Now wait a second, isn't that similar to "socialized medicine" that Rudy frequently decries? GHI and HIP help hundreds of thousands of city workers here in New York, as it did for the man that now slams programs like it. If this is how he treats those that help saved his life, I wonder how nice he'll be to the rest of us?
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