Salon's Joe Conason reveals Rudy Giuliani's latest lie. In a radio ad, in New Hampshire, the Giuliani campaign claims he stared down cancer without the help of government health care.
Or as Giuliani himself says in the controversial ad: "I had prostate cancer five, six years ago. My chance of surviving cancer -- and thank God I was cured of it -- in the United States: 82 percent. My chances of surviving prostate cancer in England: only 44 percent under socialized medicine."
But, Conason links to this New York Times report:
The Office for National Statistics in Britain says the five-year survival rate from prostate cancer there is 74.4 percent. And doctors also say it is unfair to compare prostate cancer statistics in Britain with those in the United States because in the United States the cancer is more likely to be diagnosed in its early stages.
"Certainly, if you intensively screen for prostate cancer, you will find early disease," said Dr. Ian M. Thompson, chairman of the department of urology at the University of Texas at San Antonio. "And simply because you find it earlier, you will always have longer survival after the disease is diagnosed."
Maria Comella, a spokeswoman for Mr. Giuliani, said yesterday that the 44 percent figure came from an article in City Journal, a publication of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research organization.
And this, from Washington Post:
As factual support for the presidential candidate's claim, his campaign cited an article by David Gratzer that appeared in the City Journal, published by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative New York think tank, slamming the Canadian and British systems of "socialized" medicine. The article provides no sources for its assertions about five-year survivability rates for prostate cancer.
Experts from the National Cancer Institute and the urology departments at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Kansas agreed that Giuliani's figures were way out of date, if they were ever accurate at all. The latest official figures for five-year "survivability" rates for prostate cancer are about 98 percent in the United States and 74 percent in England.
More important, the survivability figures tell us little about the differences in the quality of treatment received by prostate cancer patients in the United States and Britain. Doctors in each country have different philosophies about how to treat the disease, and these differences have greatly influenced the survivability statistics.
Phony numbers from a right wing institute, and even the models can't be fairly compared. The ad sounds about Rudy's style. But it gets better.
As Conason points out:
In the spring of 2000, when Giuliani learned that he had cancer and abruptly dropped out of the Senate race against Sen. Clinton, he was enrolled as a member of GHI, one of the two gigantic HMO groups that provide care for most city workers (the other is known as HIP). He underwent surgery and radiation at Mount Sinai Hospital, a prestigious institution that participates in the GHI plan, which means that his costs were largely underwritten by city taxpayers.
The city of New York pays the premiums for GHI and HIP. GHI is a nonprofit. Its board of directors includes several union officials. The state of New York supports GHI and HIP with mechanisms that help absorb the financial burdens.
As Conason continues:
If that isn't socialism, it hardly sounds like pure private enterprise, either. While that may startle a boob who accepted the premise of Giuliani's silly commercial, it is hardly surprising to anyone familiar with the pedigree of GHI and HIP, which were among the earliest examples of prepaid healthcare in the United States.
So, yes Rudy was lucky to have the medical care system he had. The medical care system paid for by the city of New York, and backed by the state of New York. Public health care. Rudy ought to be grateful. He also ought to be honest about who deserves his gratitude. Any honest ad could be summarized thusly:
Public health care saved Rudy Giuliani's life. What's good enough for Rudy Giuliani ought to be good enough for everyone.
Don't expect such an ad from the Giuliani campaign. He has been cured of cancer, but not of pathological dishonesty.
Update [2007-11-2 10:10:34 by Turkana]: Several commenters have noted that Paul Krugman writes about this, and Mitt Romney's health care lies, in today's New York Times:
At one level, what Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Romney are doing here is engaging in time-honored scare tactics. For generations, conservatives have denounced every attempt to ensure that Americans receive needed health care, from Medicare to S-chip, as "socialized medicine."
Part of the strategy has always involved claiming that health reform is suspect because it’s un-American, and exaggerating health care problems in other countries — usually on the basis of unsubstantiated anecdotes or fraudulent statistics. Opponents of reform also make a practice of lumping all forms of government intervention together, pretending that having the government pay some health care bills is just the same as having the government take over the whole health care system.
But here’s what I don’t understand: Why isn’t Mr. Giuliani’s behavior here considered not just a case of bad policy analysis but a character issue?
Why indeed...