You can add Stuart Browning to the ever-expanding list of truth squad members. Stuart—one of the executive producers of my upcoming film Indoctrinate U—is also working on his own project analyzing the Canadian health care system. Last October, he and Blaine Greenberg—my two partners in On The Fence Films—released a short film called Dead Meat on the topic, and more will come later this year.
In his research on health care, Browning is discovering the various tricks that advocates of socialized medicine use to portray Canada as the utopian ideal of health services, an image that Krugman tries to promote when he describes the Canadian model as the “obvious solution” to the perceived shortcomings of our system.
What Krugman doesn’t say is that its easy to hold down health care costs if you do what Canada does: withhold medical treatment from sick and injured people. The U.S health care system could save billions of dollars if we drastically reduced the number of doctors, hospitals, outpatient clinics, medical devices and diagnostic machines available. If we followed Canada’s lead, we would severely limit each surgeon’s allotted hours in the operating room so that they couldn’t perform too many surgeries. Americans would wait months and years for critical medical tests and treatments - many would suffer greatly, become crippled, addicted to painkillers, go blind or die while waiting - however, the country would spend a lot less money on health care.
Browning then proceeds to administer a fact-based smackdown of Krugman’s spin. It’s a good read if you’re not Paul Krugman. And if you are, you may want to avoid the embarrassment.
