What could go wrong when your august publication asks Chrissy from “Three’s Company”—a notorious peddler of quack medical advice—to offer “expert” advice on what the new health care law will mean for retirees?
Just about everything.
I’ve skewered The Wall Street Journal a couple of times for its “The Experts” special reports that feature noted specialists like Pat Sajak, Morgan Fairchild, and Suzanne Somers answering questions about long-term care insurance and retirement planning. That has showed seriously bad editorial judgment.
But even with the section’s track record, I can’t believe it printed this Somers column in response to the WSJ’s question about “What will the Affordable Care Act mean for retirees?”
Summers’s Somers’s answer: “The Affordable Care Act Is a Socialist Ponzi Scheme,” which alone has a couple of fact errors in it (it’s not socialist and it’s not a Ponzi scheme). But there’s much more. Here’s the doozy of a correction:
An earlier version of this post contained a quotation attributed to Lenin (“Socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the socialist state”) that has been widely disputed. And it included a quotation attributed to Churchill (“Control your citizens’ health care and you control your citizens”) that the Journal has been unable to confirm.
Also, the cover of a Maclean’s magazine issue in 2008 showed a picture of a dog on an examining table with the headline “Your Dog Can Get Better Health Care Than You.” An earlier version of this post incorrectly said the photo showed and headline referred to a horse.
Actually, it’s much worse than the correction lets on. The conservative Churchill helped create the National Health Service—a true socialized medical system. Here’s an actual Churchill quote, not a made-up one:
The discoveries of healing science must be the inheritance of all. That is clear. Disease must be attacked, whether it occurs in the poorest or the richest man or woman simply on the ground that it is the enemy; and it must be attacked just in the same way as the fire brigade will give its full assistance to the humblest cottage as readily as to the most important mansion. Our policy is to create a national health service in order to ensure that everybody in the country, irrespective of means, age, sex, or occupation, shall have equal opportunities to benefit from the best and most up-to-date medical and allied services available.
Somers argues anecdotally against Canada’s health-care system, which isn’t at all what Obamacare implements:
My sister-in-law had to wait two months to get a General Practitioner. During this period she spent her days in bed vomiting continuously, unable to get any food or drink down because she couldn’t get an appointment with the doctor. When she finally did, the doctor said, “Oh you don’t need me, you need a specialist.” That took another two weeks until she got a pill that corrected the problem.
I’m going to guess the WSJ fact-checked this as rigorously as it did the rest of her column. But even if it were true, it’s just one anecdote. I’ve known plenty of Americans who have put off getting medical care because they didn’t have insurance.
And the data—you know, that stuff—says something quite different. Fifty-seven percent of Canadians are satisfied with the affordability health-care system, according to Gallup, compared to just 25 percent of Americans. And 52 percent of Canadians are satisfied with the quality of their health care, compared to 48 percent of Americans.
Americans pay $8,500 per person for health care, according to the OECD. Canadians pay $4,000 less.
Of course, if opinions had to be based on pesky things like facts, there would be no Wall Street Journal editorial page.
But for the WSJ’s news side, facts are the whole point. Let’s be very clear: The Wall Street Journal, of all places, shouldn’t be going anywhere near a dangerous crackpot like Suzanne Somers on the topic of health care.
Here are a few of her qualifications:
— She played Chrissy on “Three’s Company”
Today's news outlets, not just the much-maligned conservative media ghetto, are reporting that Pres. Obama knew in 2010 that many, perhaps even most self-employed people would not be able to keep their private insurance under his health plan. Yet the president repeated that no one who had health insurance would have to give up their plans under his proposals during the 2012 elections. Wonder what would have happened, in terms of election outcomes, if he had told the truth? Also, how many health 'experts' in the MSM repeated this claim? Why are we only finding this out now?
Alas, CJR is too busy scoring points against Suzanne Somers to pay attention to the whoppers told by the left side of our political divide. Give Ryan his due - he's good at making mincemeat of an aging ex-actress on 'the issues'.
#1 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Tue 29 Oct 2013 at 10:52 AM
Health care expert Suzanne "Chrissy" Sumers sounds similar to those alarmist during the cold war when Republican lawmakers wanted to make sure the US would not catch a bad case of socialized medicine.
Over 65 years ago it was a Republican Senator from Ohio, Senator Robert Taft who was dead set against National Health Insurance proposed by President Truman. “I consider it socialism,” the revered leader of the Republican Party on domestic affairs declared. “It is to my mind the most socialistic measure this Congress has ever had before it.” Taft suggested that Compulsory Health Insurance came right out of the Soviet Constitution and walked out of the Congressional hearings.http://wp.me/p2qifI-1Hi
#2 Posted by Sally Edelstein, CJR on Tue 29 Oct 2013 at 11:01 AM
As a Canadian I call out the story of her sister-in-law. Virtually every reasonably sized community has a drop-in clinic run by a general practitioner that has first-come-first served treatment. If she wanted to see a general practitioner (and get sent for a specialist appointment) she could have showed up at 9 am (with the other families who have not bothered to get a general practitioner) and she would typically have been seen by 11 am. A couple hours in a clinic is a small price to pay because you did not get around to getting a family doctor until you were sick.
Alternatively if she was too sick to wait for a general practitioner then the ER would have seen her, but she may have to wait a longer time (several hours) as she sounded like she was not an emergency (after all she was suffering the symptoms for two months without passing away).
#3 Posted by Blair, CJR on Tue 29 Oct 2013 at 12:27 PM
Suzanne Somers probably has more common sense/factual health information than most people on this planet. If you read some of her latest books on health issues we all are going to be concerned with at some point in our lives, you would know this. Wait until you start aging, need to take prescription drugs which you may or may not be able to get by then and have all kinds of side effects and need other meds to counteract those. If you are not informed on health issues earlier than when problems begin, you are headed for disaster. I totally agree with most things she speaks about, and I do most things she suggests--alternatives first before the dreaded drugs that mask the original root of the health problem. Thanks to her info, I no longer have plaque in my carotids!! No drugs for me or my family! As for the healthcare issues she is speaking of, there are many of us that feel the exact same way. That is one major problem with our government/congress--they need to start LISTENING to the citizen majority and get to the real issues of the every day U.S. citizen instead of butting heads because of their egotism and all the game playing.
#4 Posted by Linda, CJR on Wed 30 Oct 2013 at 09:46 AM
Why is it every newly found "conservative" celebrity seems to be more hair-brained than the last?
I remember when Richard Gere's odd speechifying at the Oscars (about the oppression of Tibet by China) was about the most detached, misaimed, celeb-speak on politics I'd heard in my life.
Hey, right wing media machine: Nobody issued you a challenge to top it.
#5 Posted by KadeKo, CJR on Wed 30 Oct 2013 at 11:44 AM