About Richardson:
So would Richardson have had a better chance of survival had she been skiing in a different Canadian province, or in the United States? We can't possibly say. It's worth noting that not every state in the U.S. has medical evacuation helicopters - Vermont and Rhode Island, small states to be sure, do not, according to the Atlas & Database of Air Medical Services, which is funded by the Federal Highway Administration. As shown on this map, some areas of the country have many more air medical services than others: In North Dakota and Wyoming, for instance, it could take well over 30 minutes for an evacuation helicopter to get the scene of an accident, depending on the location
About England, the elderly and heart repairs:
He also said that medical procedures in the U.K. are not routinely denied for older people. The National Health Service, the U.K.'s public health care service, has a constitution which prohibits discrimination on the basis of age and other factors. "The NHS Constitution states that the NHS provides a 'comprehensive service, available to all irrespective of gender, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, religion or belief,' " the spokesman said.
We also contacted a nonprofit group, England's Age Concern and Help the Aged, which works to stop age discrimination in various facets of life, including employment and health care. Age Concern's press office had never heard of any kind of prohibition on heart surgery for those 60 and older.
About Obama wants to have our health care like Canada's and England's:
Obama, July 1: ... the way our health care system evolved in the United States, it evolved based on employers providing health insurance to their employees through private insurers. And so that's still the way that the vast majority of you get your insurance. And for us to transition completely from an employer-based system of private insurance to a single-payer system could be hugely disruptive. And my attitude has been that we should be able to find a way to create a uniquely American solution to this problem that controls costs but preserves the innovation that is introduced in part with a free market system. ...
But I recognize that there are lot of people who are passionate - they look at France or some of these other systems and they say, well, why can't we just do that? Well, the answer is, is that this is one-sixth of our economy, and we're not suddenly just going to completely upend the system. We want to build on what works about the system and fix what's broken about the system. And that's what I think Congress is committed to doing, and I'm committed to working with them to make it happen.
About "rationing of health care for senior citizens"
And it falsely says that Bloomberg News quoted Daschle as saying: "Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them." Daschle didn't say that.
Instead, those are the words of the former Republican lieutenant governor of New York, Betsy McCaughey, who wrote an opinion piece for Bloomberg News and offered her reading of comments in Daschle's book.
Its big lie time and those who wish to influence the debate over health care had better have keep a close watch on the Lies and the Lying Liars who tell them , especially in anonymous emails.
As a rule, I don't pass on chain emails, especially anonymous ones. As a rule, I presume that the facts and analysis in such emails is highly suspect and most likely distorted or wrong.
If you wish to try and counter this crap, then here are a few pointers that a friend and I came up with, based on good messaging and PR principles:
1. Don't just cut and paste the email itself, even if it is to refute each point. The more your spread the message of the email in the language of the email, the more you help to make that language and "framing" the default framing and message. When Richard Nixon said , "I am not a crook" , he made sure that the issue facing him would be is he or is he not a crook? Clearly, nobody wants the debate to center on such an issue, for how do you ever prove a negative? The best you can do is undermine and discredit its believability. This does nothing to advance your cause, it leaves the under informed uneasy, even if they find the original charge not credible and when in doubt, the temptation is to vote no on the issue, to play it safe.
2. If you blast back on such an email, do so in your langauge. For example , in the case of this email, I would paraphrase/reword its title , "SENIOR DEATH WARRANTS" , perhaps like this:
Regarding the "scare mail" you have recently received blaming the death of actress Natasha Richardson on Canada's health care system.
First off, realize that your representatives, those writing health care reform legislation , want you to have access to our fine health care system. Nobody was ever cured by a doctor they could not afford to see, or a hospital to which they could not, financially, be admitted.
Further check the facts of this scare mail. See the FactCheck rebuttal of this perfectly fact free set of lies here: http://www.factcheck.org/askfa...
3. Try to inoculate your recipients against future scare mail:
Health care reform is too important to be lied about. We should not take anybody's word on the facts , we should check them ourselves . Such sites as http://www.factcheck.org/ are a great tool for this purpose. They are non-partisan, and , unlike the anonymous scare mailers, they stand behind what they write.
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