...or, how to get people to believe truth instead of lies!
Some working class people have been whipped into a frenzy by corporate-funded PR firms masquerading as grass roots public interest groups. On Sunday-morning talking head shows, all they are discussing is the delusional hysteria, manufactured by fear-mongers, among drooling cretins who think President Obama wants to pull the plug on grandma's life support system. The panicked hoi polloi are scared to death that a Canadian-style single payer health care system will be imposed on them and make their lives a living hell, just like they have up in Canada. How stupid are we in this country? Obviously, a lot of mindless people are flapping about like gigged frogs, but that's not the subject of today's rant. I'm proposing a strategy to address this question: How do you get ordinary people to believe an objective reality that conflicts with the fake propaganda that inundates their consciousness?
It's a tall order. The morons disrupting health care forums actually believe the crap they have been fed by lackeys of the insurance companies, pharmaceutical firms and greedy HMO's. The President has to waste his time explaining how having health care will be better for people than not having it. It's a travesty of public discussion. Such malarkey diverts him, and everyone else, from serious consideration of what people would get from Canadian-style health care. No one has time to ask any real Canadians what the scoop is. Well, I do. You will have to wade through a lot of convoluted agony first, though, because that's what I had to do. The payoff is worth it.
First, a word about my methodology. It's long been my hypothesis that a consensus among a small sample of representative people is a surprisingly good predictor of what the population at large thinks. In June 2008, I predicted that Obama would win big on the basis of the direction of change in public opinion detected among a handful of personal acquaintances. Small-scale sampling, such as exit polls of voters, is a very reliable predictor of what the final tally will be. Those of us who have studied statistics know that when exit polls deviate markedly from the official, final tally, it's proof positive that the tally was rigged. We know this is so because the probability that the tally was not tampered becomes prohibitive. Thus, we can state flatly that the votes in Florida in 2000 and that in Ohio in 2004 were rigged and that George Bush stole both elections.
Those are facts that no one can refute statistically, so those who have a vested interest in legitimizing the 43rd President of the United States don't even try to do that. Instead, you hear a lot of simple-minded notions that one can't know "for sure" what the vote was from a sample. They play on the general lack of understanding of probability to maintain the fiction that the deviating exit polls were a "fluke". Anyone who passed an introductory course in statistics in college knows that this is absurd, but to those who didn't take such a course, there is enough doubt about this proof of election fraud to let it go and say, "We'll never know for sure."
Unwarranted skepticism about numbers is used to confuse and deceive people about health care, too. Anti-health-care cranks don't believe any numbers cited because every statistic gathered supports the position of champions of health care reform. They disparage and discredit supporting evidence because to let it go by unchallenged would amount to an overwhelming case for health care reform. They know that if they cast enough doubt among those who don't manipulate numbers for a living, they can fill the information void with lies and distortions. You can't get people to clamor against health care unless you can first get them to believe that good health care, better than what they are getting now, will kill them. The only way to make universal, free, public health care seem like a bad thing is to suppress evidence that it is a good thing. In short, if one is not convinced that health care is pretty good in Canada, one is open to believing that adopting a similar system in the United States would be a disaster and ruin the country. Is it stupid to be afraid of that? Of course it is. But, why do so many people fear having good medical care at a reasonable cost? I think it's because the anti-health-care noise machine has conditioned people to not believe any numbers.
My favorite statistic to which very few people give credence is that about 18,000 people died in this country last year because they didn't get routine medical care. We have all heard this number, but no one seems to take this as proof that the general state of health care is not anywhere near as good as it could be if the only requirement for receiving care were that one needed it. To me, that's a telling statistic. It means that a lot of people are dying because they don't have enough money to get the care that they need in a fee-for-service health care system.
How was this number determined? A researcher examined enough death certificates to conclude that a sufficient percentage clearly show that the decedent might not have died had he received better care, the kind of care readily available in other nations, like Canada. Extrapolating to the population at large, the researchers concluded that about 18,000 people died needlessly. I believe that 18,000 people died for want of medical care because I know that the probability that the researcher's sample was a "fluke" is prohibitively small. I believe this for the same reason that I believe that the elections in Florida and Ohio were rigged. There was only a tiny probability that the 2004 election in Ohio was fair and honest. I'll take the probability that it was rigged any time. If you ask any Republican, though, they will steadfastly maintain that the 2000 and 2004 elections were completely fair and that one can't possibly know for sure that 18,000 people would still be alive if we had had socialized medicine last year. The numbers are there for both contentions.
It all comes down to whether one believes in statistics or not, or at least pretends not to. I think anti-health-care propagandists are pooh-poohing reliable, academic findings only because they don't support their contentions. If they had any statistics that did, they would cite them.
If you don't accept numbers like the mortality figure cited above, then all such numbers can be dismissed with a wave of the hand as easily. The ranking by the WHO in 2000 of the USA as 37th among nations of the world for health care outcomes is a favorite target of apologists for health care profiteers. Most of the nay-sayers just state that ranking means nothing because the WHO is part of the United Nations, and "we all know that the UN is biased against the US." Note that they don't ever offer statistics to prove their contention that our health care system is the best in the world, but they feel free to question the validity of any statistic that suggests that it is not.
Even when they approach questions seriously, using professional academic methodology, the tactic is still to discredit statistics they don't like rather than to disprove them, and more importantly, to offer statistics that prove the contrary. The Cato Institute had their statisticians work up a detailed critique of the low ranking for the USA by the WHO (which I won't cite because it's deceptive and a waste of time to read). They cast doubt on the validity of several measures used to make the ranking, but never stated explicitly what they thought was a true ranking. After impugning the WHO study, they left it to the reader to infer that the USA should be ranked higher, and thus that our health care system was "good" rather than "bad". I'm not buying it, boys. If the WHO says our health care isn't as good as Costa Rica's (#36) and only a little better than Slovakia's (#38), then that's enough to support the working assumption that American health care isn't very good. Most things are pretty simple. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, and US health care is one sick pig.
The Cato writers talked a lot about all statistics that they hope make their contention ("USA #1!") plausible, such as how many Nobel prizes Americans win and how much our greedy, price-gouging pharmaceutical industry spends on research. (We really need more ways to treat male pattern baldness and erectile dysfunction, don't we?) None of these figures has much bearing on the general quality of health care, and understandably were not used by the WHO in the ranking. So, why talk about them?
They had to discuss something that makes us look good to distract attention from the factors that the WHO did use, like lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality and access to routine preventive care. They quibbled about the infant mortality, saying that other countries count it differently than we do, but that rang hollow with me. It's a favorite jingoistic ploy of smug, flag-waving chauvinists to discredit science abroad, so I'm not buying it. I think they can count dead babies in France as easily as we can, and everywhere in the world they know how to note how old someone was when they died on the death certificate. It's not that complicated. Our health care sucks, worse than Costa Rica's, and almost as badly as Slovakia's. If you don't think so, prove it to me by backing up your contentions with statistics that I can trust more than I trust those from the World Health Organization. Go ahead.
When people don't accept statistics as having any bearing on issues, they have to use some other method in which they have confidence to validate their opinions on issues. Most opinion on complex issues is formed by listening to opinions of people in whom one places trust. For some, Rush Limbaugh or their pastor is such a figure. When the trusted person opines, the follower agrees and supports that view. They don't ask why or do their own research because they trust the conclusion of the authority figure. People trusted Walter Cronkite, and when he said that the Vietnam War was a bad thing, support for it evaporated quickly. Today, those who believe that "socialized medicine would ruin the country" do so because some bloviating gasbag told them it would.
No facts or figures can shake the true believer of such Kafkaesque absurdity. This is why talking about 18,000 dead people falls on deaf ears. It can't be true to them because they don't want it to be and it conflicts with their preconceived notions. Such delusions are continually buoyed by their chosen authority figure, so they see nothing amiss in their fairy-tale world. They say to us, "Don't fix it if it ain't broke!" We answer, "But, but, it IS broken!" (Note the syntactic differences in the stereotypes' usage.) We look at each other in stunned disbelief. Each thinks, or even says, "How can you possibly believe that?" Well, one of us has to be crazy. Which one is it?
Canadians think we are nuts. They quite literally laugh out loud when you tell them that we are afraid of their system. It's incomprehensible to them that they, or anyone else, could possibly want anything else. When given the opportunity, they will freely give you a matter-of-fact synopsis of their reality. Whom do you believe about Canadian health care, Glenn Beck or a real Canadian?
This is personal letter from a Canadian who calls himself the Wise Old Curmudgeon.
Facts about the Canadian Health Care System :
It's free. Doctors, Lab tests, Surgery, MRIs, Cat scans, Hospitals, Drugs (while in the hospital), etc. We choose our own doctors. Although there are often "wait times" for elective procedures, critical care is immediate.
Some provinces (BC and Alberta) charge a small monthly fee ($96 for a family) for health care services, if family annual income is less than $35,000 the fee is waived. Pharmacare is different in each province. In BC, a family deductible is established based on family income. Drug costs are paid by the recipient until the deductible is reached. After that the govt pays 60% (65% for seniors) until a maximum (also based on income ) is reached. After that the gov't pays 100% of drug costs. Drugs are 100% free for people on social assistance (welfare) or if there are mental health problems.
My mother, who is 98 and who is in failing health recently moved into an extended care facility. It is in a wing of a hospital so full hospital services are available if needed. The cost is $31 per day (easily covered by the Canadian Government Pension plan and her old age security). $31 covers 24x7 care, meals, drugs, medical attention, recreation activities, etc.
When my wife and I travel outside Canada we must purchase "out of country medical insurance". There are two types... (1) for trips to anywhere in the world except the USA and (2) to the USA. #2 costs about twice as much!
So there..come on America...smarten up. Don't fall for the HMO backed hype!
Remember, those are Canadian dollars, which are valued today at 0.906 US dollar. Note the way he threw in an anecdotal tidbit, his mother's nursing home fee, to make it clear that this is reality, related by a real person, rather than some more crazy talk by another lying jackass on Fox News. I'll believe what this other curmudgeon guy says on the subject long before I'll suffer another Republican to tell me that I don't need real health care. How about you?
But, I have yet to tie in the idea of changing people's minds on this issue without numbers. I know someone who has a way to do that. I have a lodge brother who was convinced that it was too expensive to implement full-scale universal health care in the United States. My arguments fell on deaf ears. He simply could not believe that we are already spending more money than we need to do that, but so much of it is being siphoned off by insurance companies that there isn't enough left for the health care. The propaganda and outright lies from Fox News had become so ingrained into his thinking that he couldn't accept any other reality without personal experience.
That's the key to his thinking. It's only real to him if he experiences it himself. What authorities and experts write means nothing. I've never heard him quote statistics or cite references. Everything he asserts seems to come from what he sees with his own eyes and hears with his own ears. I couldn't square this with his political and social views at first, but eventually figured it out.
Brother J is a salesman. To do that job well, and he does, one has to read people, understand their thinking and make them believe that he has their interests at heart. You have to understand, identify with and to some extent become your customer to sell to them. Salesmen have to sell themselves, to each other, as well. To get a sales job, you have to sell your product, your sales skills, to your boss. To keep the job, you have to sell product, and to fit in on the team. That means making people like you, especially the boss. People like other people who think like them. J likes managers and their life style. Thus, he conforms to their prevailing ethos to become one of them. Their reality becomes his reality. After a while, it's just reality.
We all construct a reality based on experience. It's impossible to understand oppression until you, yourself, have been oppressed. It's quite easy to believe all kinds of crap if all your personal experience supports those beliefs. Germans in the first half of the last century had no reason to doubt that they were better than other people and therefore had a right to do anything they wanted. Americans still largely feel this way because it is taught in the schools. To say otherwise is treason. (Remember what they said about Michelle Obama when she said that she has not always been proud of America?) At some point, though, such delusions break down. Some German soldier on the Russian Front eventually had the epiphany, "Hitler is insane!" This idea spread and eventually they all knew that they were fighting and dying for nothing. Our troops in Vietnam eventually figured out that winning that war would still be losing. They told this to their families and public pressure soon ended the war. Now, Americans have begun realizing that we don't have the greatest health care system in the world, and, that in fact, it's pretty bad. The movement is all one way. Staunch advocates of capitalism gone amok in health care are wavering and beginning to topple like tenpins. They're having epiphanies and realizing that there is a better way. It's only a matter of time before we can all awake from the health care nightmare and begin to fix it.
But, let's not forget J's personal odyssey. He got where he is today, philosophically, by the path of experience. He identifies heavily with the wealthy although he is not a rich man. He has more money than many people, but he is no Rockefeller. By sheer force of will, tenacity and hard work, he has built a comfortable life. At some point he stopped thinking of himself as poor. At that point, he started thinking like a member of the elite, entrepreneurial class. Successful businessmen tend to like Republican politics. Those precepts must be right because the ideas seem to be working well for them. I can relate to this. It seems sensible to have the same values as those you work with and associate with. Class struggle loses its cachet while you're sipping champagne at the country club. When you're playing golf with another self-made man, you and he both give more credence about global politics and economics to each other than you do to your caddy. (What the hell does he know? He's just a damned caddy! Right?)
But conforming your thinking to that of others for reasons of affinity is not being objective or analytical. It means that you are making decisions about factual matters on the basis of emotion. It simply feels better to believe the same things that those you admire and respect believe. It doesn't mean that their truth has any more intrinsic merit than the truth of someone you don't know and don't want to associate with. It's a lot of work to sift through information, separating facts from fabrications, and derive a logical conclusion. Many people don't bother. They hold beliefs and defend them simply because they are going along with the crowd they run with. We all do it; don't pretend that you don't.
Again, I'm getting away from J's story. Due to his social conditioning, words like "socialism" and "government-owned" throw him into a panic. Such notions are anathema in his milieu. When I first blandly asserted that I wanted a full-scale government-run health care system, he was scandalized. He touched my arm benevolently, stared at me with those beady, little eyes and intoned in a mournful, concerned voice, "You don't want socialized medicine, do you?" When I assured him that I did, he was genuinely shocked. He shook his head and laughed, thinking I was joking. He was incredulous. "You don't really mean that." He likes me personally, as I like him, so my holding such beliefs was unthinkable. If I were his friend, I couldn't possibly be a pinko. And, if I were truly a commie, how could I have garnered his friendship? It was pure cognitive dissonance.
At other times, we contrasted the Canadian health care system with our own. J repeated many of the false claims he had heard and reiterated his confidence that our system was at least as good. He was more concerned with, as he always is, costs and the level of taxation. In our e-mail exchanges, all he would discuss was money. He was tenacious in his belief that adopting the Canadian model here would be a disaster. He may have never heard anyone else say that Canadian health care was good, so telling me how bad he knew it to be seemed like the reasonable thing to do. When I asked why copying the Canadian system should wreak havoc here when it seems to have had few ill effects there, he was unfazed. The numbing fear that the evil government might take a little more of his hard-won hoard of lucre from him overshadowed all other concerns. No! He would not be moved! He would beat the odds and not need more health care than he could pay for. He might fork over a few bucks for kids with multiple sclerosis or leukemia, but everyone else who needed medical care and couldn't pay for it should have the decency to just stoically endure it and die. You can't accumulate wealth without learning to instinctively defend your nest egg from assault by predators.
J was immune to every angle of discourse I presented until I stumbled onto the idea of interviewing Canadians about their health care system to develop an informed opinion. I could tell right away that he liked that idea. Talking with people one-on-one is his forte. As a salesman, he feels comfortable extracting money and information from strangers. He also also puts great stock in the conclusions he draws from direct personal contact. Validation and trust are crucial to his business, so he trusts what real people tell him more than what purported experts say.
Bear in mind as you read J's succinct report of his Canadian health care investigation that he had firmly held beliefs before, but now feels quite differently. His change of heart is entirely due to a small number of personal conversations with Canadians on a recent trip there. After years of brushing aside my rhetoric and the documentation I presented, J suddenly flips on this issue because a few Canucks tell him that they like their health care system would not care to have one like ours. This makes a lot of practical sense, though. You don't have to understand the mathematics of statistical sampling and probability to instinctively grasp that when you ask one person chosen at random a question and he tells you something, and then ask someone else and she tells you the same thing, and then a third gives you the same answer, that you're getting the straight scoop. After a while, this anecdotal evidence compounds and becomes an overwhelming consensus. It's got to be true if everyone tells you the same thing.
J had never doubted the common knowledge he had always accepted until he found, through his own methodology, that the real situation was not as he had been told. He's a sensible, practical man. He synthesized a different reality, and adjusted his thinking accordingly. His process held an important lesson for me. If you have strongly held beliefs based on tradition or an official orthodoxy, but not supported by personal experience, I urge you to talk to some people who have direct knowledge of the subject. Specifically, if you have never lived in a country with socialized medicine, talk to some people who have. Get the story from the horse's mouth. You may change your thinking as J did.
Without this big buildup you might easily gloss over J's short note and dismiss his comments. He didn't build a complex argument as I am wont to do. He just looked into the matter in his own fashion and told me what he found out. And now, at long last, consider J's findings. Think about what he says here and how that impacts what we should do about health care reform in this country.
My wife and my nephew and I spent the last weekend in Victoria B.C. I received a first class education in socialized living. Everybody I met from all parts of Canada were by and large very contented. They were very satisfied with their complete all encompassing free health care. Their taxes were not that much higher than ours to pay for it. Their property taxes in fact were less than one percent of the total value of their house, lower than our property taxes. No one I spoke to had any desire to move to the U.S. Many Americans I have been told are moving to Canada. How to translate the Canadian health program to the U.S. is another matter.
So, do you now see what it takes to lure some people away from the dark side and into the light? They have to hear someone they believe in tell them the truth. That may be a trusted media figure or a close friend for most people. J and I, for very different reasons, can also be swayed by a consensus among ordinary people. J believes in common sense, and I believe in probability. Either way, it makes more sense to us than letting someone else do our thinking for us.