Monday, August 23, 2010

Newsweek is Worthlesss


The only time I read Time or Newsweek is when I have to go to a doctor's waiting room. Every time I do, it makes me want to cause myself severe physical damage as punishment. (Remember when I wrote this? I read that TIME piece back in December at Lia's Obgyn appointment right before we had Reia.)

At Lia's doctor appointment today, I had the pleasure of reading this stinker about how Japan's socialized medicine is Oh-So-Awesome. They actually say that it's a universal system, but not "socialized medicine" (the "scare quotes" are theirs).

The description of how the system works vaguely resembles reality, but many of the facts are wrong or are left out. What's extra funny is they seem to have read this article in the WaPo and that was pretty much the entirety of their research, yet they contradict the source article several times, probably because the Washington Post doesn't paint as rosy a picture.

Much like in Canada, the Japanese spend a lot of time waiting in line for care. Hospitals are legally constrained to be not for profit, as are insurance companies. Doctors are paid far less there, hence there shortages of them.

Newsweek denies the system is socialist, just as the left denies Obamacare is socialist, but the truth is that 70% of expenses are paid by the goverment. How is this not a socialist system if the vast majority of cost is distributed amongst the taxpayers?. Okay, so I guess it's 30% non-crappy. My bad.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

And of course one big difference. Japan does not cover non Japanese.