Such a pity that the NY Times has been so beaten up by the commies amongst us that it actually now feels that it has to point out where Peter Pitts and Janet Trautwein get their money. Although, as per the last time it let Pitts write an op-ed, it didn’t mention his day job as a PR man for pharmaceutical companies. After all, who could be opposed to “Medicine in the Public Interest” — after all it is in the interest of the public to pay for all and any medicine at any price that PhRMA chooses, right?
And let’s not get started on underwriters (for whom Trautwein is the main flack). After all Grace-Marie Turner thinks that they’re the health care heroes! Perhaps they’re heroes because they drive sick people into the uninsured population so that the under-paid clinical staff working in America’s public and community health system get to show their worth by caring for them —even if they’re less heroic than underwriters.
But that’s OK, Pitts & Trautwein can be printed in the NY Times cherry-picking problems with other countries health care systems. Because as we all know there’s absolutely nothing wrong with ours, eh?
And why should Pitts quote the peer-reviewed 2007 Commonwealth Fund study that showed that waiting times for surgery were longer in the US than in the communist hell-hole of Germany, when instead he was able to cite an 11 year old study about longer waiting lists for one specific type of surgery in the Netherlands, which has completely revamped its health care system since then. Something he and Trautwein have helped stop us doing — preserving a dismal status quo they obviously want to maintain.
Those two wouldn’t last 92 seconds in a debate with Uwe Reinhardt or Hillary Clinton.
On the other hand, there’s no letter from Karen Ignagni to make up the trifecta. Did she negotiate some summer vacation time along with her $1.3m salary?
WEIRD
The Times has many faults (too much B.S. about alleged "single-payer") -- but this is NOT one of them. Anyone dumb enough to believe that a Ralph Nader fan wrote that after this tagline --
"The writer is president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, a nonprofit organization that receives financing from pharmaceutical and biotech companies."
deserves to live in the U.K., France or Canada.
This was just freakin' weird.
Posted by: Russell | Aug 15, 2008 11:18:02 AMRussell--
No, it wasn't weird.
It's part of a pattern at the NYT (where I have worked.)
The lack of discosure on where op-ed writers are coming from is disgraceful.
Madam, with a 1000 respects -- what the heck are you talking about?
Any normal American who has actually worked a real job (e.g., McDonald's) knows when she/he is being spun. As in, when the boss asks for a volunteer -- don't volunteer until the details are known.
Someone who gets $$$ from the pharms is NOT going to oppose the pharms. This is Comm 101, madam.
My God -- I cannot believe valuable electrons are being wasted in stating the plainly obvious. What is next -- there are no illegal immigrants in the USA?
Weird. Just frackin' weird.
Posted by: Russell | Aug 16, 2008 10:32:09 AM
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