The Pampered Ex-Mayor, His Misleading Health Care Ad, and My Friend Mike
Paul Krugman recently wrote about it, Keith Olbermann named Rudy his Worst Person in the World due to it, but they didn’t cover the whole sordid story of Giuliani’s ‘socialized medicine’ radio ad, and that it plainly demonstrates how out of touch the elitist Republican presidential candidate is with ‘Ground Zero’ America, and what an unrepentant liar he truly is.
“I had prostate cancer, five, six years ago. My chance of surviving prostate cancer — and thank God I was cured of it — in the United States, 82%. My chances of surviving prostate cancer in England, only 44% under socialized medicine.”
– Rudy Giuliani, from his “Chances” radio ad released October 29, 2007.
When I first heard this ad on MSNBC earlier in the week it struck me that the figures were suspect. Republicans these days are factually-challenged to begin with, and it’s proved doubly true with the Giuliani campaign. It took me all of 30 seconds ‘on the Google’ to refute Rudy’s ‘statistics.’ As Julie Bosman wrote at the New York Times’ The Caucus Blog:
“Not so, according to the Office of National Statistics in Britain, which puts the five-year survival rate from prostate cancer, among men, at 74.4 percent.”
Add to this the fact that the statistics on prostate cancer are compiled and calculated differently in this country than in the UK, and, as Bosman notes, this 44% statistic was provided by Giuliani adviser David Gratzer, who quoted it from a seven-year-old Commonwealth Fund study that was described as “crude.” The Commonwealth Fund quickly repudiated Giuliani’s misleading use of their numbers: “Five-year survival rates cannot be calculated from incidence and mortality rates, as any good epidemiologist knows.”
But good Rudy-robot Gratzer, incredibly, dismissed his own source, accusing the Commonwealth Fund of “an ideological bias.” Never fear, though, as Giuliani campaign aide Maria Comella, who issued the ad’s press release, has assured us that Rudy will continue to run the ad, facts be damned.
Habitual GOP inaccuracy and sleaze aside, this ad irritated me for another reason. I have a good friend I’ll call Mike, a man about the same age as Giuliani, who has had stomach cancer for over seven years.
While Mayor Rudy was being chauffeured by limousine to see his doctors for treatment, my friend Mike had to take a long hour-and-a-half, 14-mile bus and train ride from the north to the south side of Chicago to see his doctor. That’s right, a three-hour, 28-mile round trip, for a man on a cane and weakened by cancer, and occasionally he had to make this trip three times a week. (Retired and on a fixed income, Mike can’t afford the luxury of a car.)
While the spoiled ‘America’s Mayor’ saw the finest doctors in the country and never had to wait in line, Mike had to settle for whoever would treat him at Cook County Hospital — the only ‘free’ public hospital left in Chicago thanks to our profit-hungry health care system — and would sometimes have to sit for hours, gut churning in pain, waiting to see his doctor. (He was lucky that he happened to get a decent doctor.)
You see, unlike Giuliani, Mike made the mistake of spending most of his life as a bartender, a job that pays well only if you get large enough tips. It wasn’t that he didn’t have the smarts to be a lawyer such as Rudy — he just didn’t have the dearth of conscience it takes to be a member of that bar. Instead, he served drinks to lawyers, as well as people from all walks of life, and met the famous and infamous along the way. He even became friends with a recently-deceased award-winning writer, and a raft of popular musicians. Mike could talk intelligently to anyone, regardless of the color of their collar or their skin. If I had to choose someone who actually understood how folks live in this country and what needs to be done to help them have better lives, I’d pick Mike’s opinion in a heartbeat over any politician running for president from either party, but especially that thick-skulled, stone-hearted egotist Rudy.
At any rate, out here in the real America the pampered ex-mayor knows nothing about, Mike never got any fringe benefits as a bartender — no pension, no health care, no perks except a few free drinks at the end of the night, and only the kind of savings that can be quickly wiped out by a disaster such as stomach cancer.
Mike was divorced and had no kids or close living relatives, so there was no family to help support him; when he was unable to tend bar anymore, he did part-time electrical contracting work for as long as he was physically able, but these jobs also came without health benefits.
These days, as Rudy cuts these misleading ‘socialized medicine’ ads, my friend Mike relies on his Social Security check, Medicare, and subsidized rent to get by, and his finances are still tight. While his cancer is currently in remission and he can still get around with a cane, it’s been in remission before and reemerged. He’s walking a tightrope, and not making any long-term plans.
That’s right, my friend owes his life to three programs that the Republicans have fumed over as ‘socialist’ and sought to eliminate or privatize out of existence: Social Security, Medicare, and subsidized housing.
Right about now, from my long experience of dealing with pecksniff neocons, I can hear the imperious dismissal that it’s Mike’s responsibility for the position he’s in — he should have planned better for his future when he was younger. (They only believe in personal responsibility, of course, when it’s someone who’s poor and not Republican; those who start stupid wars, lie under oath, ignore our laws, and cause ruinous debt are never to be held accountable.)
Wipe that cheese-puff dust from around your mouth and listen up, you little weasel: Mike’s in his 60s; when he was a young man, he didn’t have the luxury of pretending to be self-reliant while he tapped out obnoxious neocon idiocy on a keyboard at his Mom’s house — he actually had to go out and earn a living to support himself, and no one, when they’re young, plans to end up with cancer.
Aside from that, Mike paid plenty of Social Security taxes during his working years — contrary to what you’ve heard, it is basically an insurance program — so he’s just using what he’s already paid into. Furthermore, I have yet to meet a Republican, carping about socialism, who has turned down a Social Security check, Medicare, or any other public service when they needed it. “No, I have my principles — I’d rather be sick than use socialized medicine!”
I’d like to see any of the Republican candidates for president go through what Mike has to go through every month to fight his cancer and come out on the other end bleating about the horrors of socialized medicine. One 28-mile round trip on the bus and train in pain should be enough to convince them that the nearest hospital should be available to every patient for long-term care; counting out dimes to pay for your cancer medication should be enough to cure them of their opposition to low-cost drugs such as Canadians are allowed to buy, but Americans aren’t.
Later in his misleading ad, Giuliani chirped, “We have the best health care system in the world.” To paraphrase a quote by Abraham Lincoln, I’d like to see it tried on him personally, not as the celebrated ex-mayor of New York City, but as an average guy like Mike.
The Tattlesnake — Prince of the City Rudy Versus the Real America Edition
The Pampered Ex-Mayor, His Misleading Health Care Ad, and My Friend Mike
Paul Krugman recently wrote about it, Keith Olbermann named Rudy his Worst Person in the World due to it, but they didn’t cover the whole sordid story of Giuliani’s ‘socialized medicine’ radio ad, and that it plainly demonstrates how out of touch the elitist Republican presidential candidate is with ‘Ground Zero’ America, and what an unrepentant liar he truly is.
When I first heard this ad on MSNBC earlier in the week it struck me that the figures were suspect. Republicans these days are factually-challenged to begin with, and it’s proved doubly true with the Giuliani campaign. It took me all of 30 seconds ‘on the Google’ to refute Rudy’s ‘statistics.’ As Julie Bosman wrote at the New York Times’ The Caucus Blog:
Add to this the fact that the statistics on prostate cancer are compiled and calculated differently in this country than in the UK, and, as Bosman notes, this 44% statistic was provided by Giuliani adviser David Gratzer, who quoted it from a seven-year-old Commonwealth Fund study that was described as “crude.” The Commonwealth Fund quickly repudiated Giuliani’s misleading use of their numbers: “Five-year survival rates cannot be calculated from incidence and mortality rates, as any good epidemiologist knows.”
But good Rudy-robot Gratzer, incredibly, dismissed his own source, accusing the Commonwealth Fund of “an ideological bias.” Never fear, though, as Giuliani campaign aide Maria Comella, who issued the ad’s press release, has assured us that Rudy will continue to run the ad, facts be damned.
Habitual GOP inaccuracy and sleaze aside, this ad irritated me for another reason. I have a good friend I’ll call Mike, a man about the same age as Giuliani, who has had stomach cancer for over seven years.
While Mayor Rudy was being chauffeured by limousine to see his doctors for treatment, my friend Mike had to take a long hour-and-a-half, 14-mile bus and train ride from the north to the south side of Chicago to see his doctor. That’s right, a three-hour, 28-mile round trip, for a man on a cane and weakened by cancer, and occasionally he had to make this trip three times a week. (Retired and on a fixed income, Mike can’t afford the luxury of a car.)
While the spoiled ‘America’s Mayor’ saw the finest doctors in the country and never had to wait in line, Mike had to settle for whoever would treat him at Cook County Hospital — the only ‘free’ public hospital left in Chicago thanks to our profit-hungry health care system — and would sometimes have to sit for hours, gut churning in pain, waiting to see his doctor. (He was lucky that he happened to get a decent doctor.)
You see, unlike Giuliani, Mike made the mistake of spending most of his life as a bartender, a job that pays well only if you get large enough tips. It wasn’t that he didn’t have the smarts to be a lawyer such as Rudy — he just didn’t have the dearth of conscience it takes to be a member of that bar. Instead, he served drinks to lawyers, as well as people from all walks of life, and met the famous and infamous along the way. He even became friends with a recently-deceased award-winning writer, and a raft of popular musicians. Mike could talk intelligently to anyone, regardless of the color of their collar or their skin. If I had to choose someone who actually understood how folks live in this country and what needs to be done to help them have better lives, I’d pick Mike’s opinion in a heartbeat over any politician running for president from either party, but especially that thick-skulled, stone-hearted egotist Rudy.
At any rate, out here in the real America the pampered ex-mayor knows nothing about, Mike never got any fringe benefits as a bartender — no pension, no health care, no perks except a few free drinks at the end of the night, and only the kind of savings that can be quickly wiped out by a disaster such as stomach cancer.
Mike was divorced and had no kids or close living relatives, so there was no family to help support him; when he was unable to tend bar anymore, he did part-time electrical contracting work for as long as he was physically able, but these jobs also came without health benefits.
These days, as Rudy cuts these misleading ‘socialized medicine’ ads, my friend Mike relies on his Social Security check, Medicare, and subsidized rent to get by, and his finances are still tight. While his cancer is currently in remission and he can still get around with a cane, it’s been in remission before and reemerged. He’s walking a tightrope, and not making any long-term plans.
That’s right, my friend owes his life to three programs that the Republicans have fumed over as ‘socialist’ and sought to eliminate or privatize out of existence: Social Security, Medicare, and subsidized housing.
Right about now, from my long experience of dealing with pecksniff neocons, I can hear the imperious dismissal that it’s Mike’s responsibility for the position he’s in — he should have planned better for his future when he was younger. (They only believe in personal responsibility, of course, when it’s someone who’s poor and not Republican; those who start stupid wars, lie under oath, ignore our laws, and cause ruinous debt are never to be held accountable.)
Wipe that cheese-puff dust from around your mouth and listen up, you little weasel: Mike’s in his 60s; when he was a young man, he didn’t have the luxury of pretending to be self-reliant while he tapped out obnoxious neocon idiocy on a keyboard at his Mom’s house — he actually had to go out and earn a living to support himself, and no one, when they’re young, plans to end up with cancer.
Aside from that, Mike paid plenty of Social Security taxes during his working years — contrary to what you’ve heard, it is basically an insurance program — so he’s just using what he’s already paid into. Furthermore, I have yet to meet a Republican, carping about socialism, who has turned down a Social Security check, Medicare, or any other public service when they needed it. “No, I have my principles — I’d rather be sick than use socialized medicine!”
I’d like to see any of the Republican candidates for president go through what Mike has to go through every month to fight his cancer and come out on the other end bleating about the horrors of socialized medicine. One 28-mile round trip on the bus and train in pain should be enough to convince them that the nearest hospital should be available to every patient for long-term care; counting out dimes to pay for your cancer medication should be enough to cure them of their opposition to low-cost drugs such as Canadians are allowed to buy, but Americans aren’t.
Later in his misleading ad, Giuliani chirped, “We have the best health care system in the world.” To paraphrase a quote by Abraham Lincoln, I’d like to see it tried on him personally, not as the celebrated ex-mayor of New York City, but as an average guy like Mike.