David Frum tries to fool you:
Background: Al Gore
comes out in favor of Canadian-style single-payer healthcare.
David Frum (former speechwriter for G.W.Bush) writes an
essay in the National Review Online where he complained about the Canadian healthcare system.
Response: Several commentators disagreed with his conclusions, including the The New Republic's &c. - which
wrote:
[Frum's] entire argument is that the Canadian system is inferior to ours because Canadians are forced to wait for health care. And he provides statistic after statistic to prove it. But with all due respect to Frum's authority on the matter, there are two massive flaws in his analysis. First, Canada only devotes about 9 percent of its GDP to health care, while the United States spends 14 percent (and rising fast). If the United States imposed a single-payer system that cost 14 percent of its GDP, it would no doubt be vastly superior to Canada's.
Frum's
rejoinder:
This line of defense is often heard in Canada itself. I sometimes think that the words, “We need more government funding,” should appear on Canada’s coins in the spot where the words “E Pluribus Unum” appear on America’s. Here’s the answer.
a) The gap between America’s spending on patient treatment and Canada’s is not as big as the raw percentages might suggest. For example, America’s 14% figure includes the cost of the vast American medical research program. The budget of the National Institutes of Health alone - $27 billion in fiscal 2003 – is larger than the total healthcare expenditures of the provinces of Ontario and Quebec combined. (The provinces are the main funders of Canadian healthcare; Ontario and Quebec are the two biggest provinces, home between them to more than half of Canada’s population.) Canada does little medical research. In healthcare as in defense, Canada piggybacks for free on America’s costly efforts.
[Frum follows with three additional explanations.]
Our analysis:
Frum tries with his first point (a) to get the reader to believe that differences in spending is substantially due to funding for medical research. He cites the figure of $27 billion, which sounds like a lot. To the uninitiated, it might seem to be responsible for the difference in healthcare spending: 5% of GDP (14% - 9%). But what is $27 billion in a $10 trillion economy?
That's right, a whopping 0.27% - nowhere remotely near the 5% differential. (It's 1/18th of 5%)
What other arguments by Frum should we look forward to? Domestic spending on toothbrushes by Hispanics north of the Mason-Dixon line compared to retail sales of dental floss in Saskatchewan for indigent Fortran programmers?
Hey, whatever works. Right Dave?
This example is instructive of the "honesty" that people like Frum peddle.
We are sorely tempted to give Frum the nickname of "Mr. Eighteen", because when he tosses out a number to make a point, you should bear in mind that it's probably off by a factor of 18.
posted by Quiddity at 11/18/2002 10:57:00 AM 
