And she provided support for that sincerely held belief? As a matter of fact I know she didn’t, and was even forced to admit her “80% of pharma profits come the US market” assertion “wasn’t a statistic–it was a hypothetical” i.e ex culo.

For goodness sake, you’re more careful to not overstate your point and actually provide some support in a freaking one-off comment than she is at her JOB.

Also, I would caution against an analysis which uses life expectancy as the key measure of health care effectiveness. Life expectancy is (as again, you surely must know) responsive to far more things than health care. Like, being obese, being poor, genetics, etc. You want to look at specific health interventions. I would not claim the literature shows decisive advantages for the US, but there are indications that are intriguing. See this paper by Preston and Ho, for example.

Which is why it’s particularly galling to hear her spew her nonsense on NPR. Call me old fashioned, I still think NPR is capable of good news reportage and it irks me no end to see exceptions like this.

Holy fuck. In what discipline would this be a valid rationale? In what universe? Jesus, you have a JOB expositing on shit like this and yet actually doing a minute or two of actual RESEARCH to determine if your “sincerely held” beliefs are 10 lbs of bullshit in a 5 lb bag is just so darn unnecessary.

Not only that, it’s an obvious lie, because anyone who “sincerely believes” a policy will lead to MILLIONS UPON MILLIONS of needless deaths doesn’t sit back and blog about what plastic kitchen crap people should buy for Christmas, they fight it with ever fiber of their being.

But riddle me this: Does telling someone–a Megan, a McArdle–that she’s an idiot have the result of making her want to be less of one? Or of digging in her heels and resolving to be even more of one? The evidence suggests the latter.

Thus does “debate” deteriorate into vaudeville. “You’re an idiot, and here’s why…”

“Oh yeah? Well read THIS.”

“That’s idiotic, too, and here’s why…”

“Oh yeah?”

Etc.

It makes me very angry instead.

PS: I have no health insurance at all Megan, who has a better chance of an untimely death, you or me?

The Soviet Union had an economic system where the incentives were horribly broken, leading to bad results–and they changed it. The incentives in our health care system are horrbily broken, and it looks like we’re keeping them. So we’re even dumber than communism I guess.

always a sign of those websites that can’t take a slagging. Funnily enough, 99% of the time teh wingnuts….

That McArdle would even be considered “one of our best and brightest people,” not to mention that her fellow twit, David Brooks, actually quotes this creature in the New York Fucking Times, is emblematic of why everything is so immensely, and irredeemably, fucked up.

I may have been in error about this belief–but it was sincerely held.

200 to 3 odds that Dubya will boost this sentence verbatim to use in his autobiography – over & over & over again.

I just could not understand how all those people could be so determined to kill millions and millions of innocent people with their stupid central planning schemes that never work, haven’t they seen what happened to the Soviet Union

Dumb Russkies were doing way better under the Czars … & the truth that the LIEberal media are hiding from Amerika is that thanks to universal public health-care, Europe is now actually no more than a vast continental mass-grave – why, I hear they even managed to find a way to kill all the Finns MORE THAN ONCE! You betcha, Megs!

her commentariat is almost to a person dumber than she is

Yeah, now you have to “sign in” before you can comment (I’m presuming Megan heartily endorsed that innovation after one or two interlopers too many took a big ol’ 2X4 of logic to the kneecaps of her one-woman protest against sentience) … which often means spinning the E-Spam Roulette Wheel the moment you hit “Submit” … & also usually means THIS ARE A HAET-FREE ZOEN: FANBOYZ ONLY.

What chronic infant malnutrition or near-fatal level of blunt-force trauma to the brainpan would lead one to become a fanboy of Our Lady Of The Trust-Fund, one shudders to imagine.