Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Surgeon-general Sanjay Gupta
Barack Obama has picked CNN correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta as Surgeon-general. Not that Obama was ever a proponent of single-payer health care, but if anyone was hoping he might change his mind, it's worth reviewing Gupta's utterly dishonest critique of Michael Moore's Sicko, which I wrote about here, here, and here. Most absurdly, Gupta criticized Moore for praising "free health care" by noting that "free health care isn't free" (because it's actually paid for by taxes). As I noted at one of the links, what next? Gupta's brilliant insight that the "free education" the U.S. provides to everyone through high school also isn't really "free"?
Gupta's absurd criticisms of Moore and his attempt to destroy the credibility of Sicko, a very important critique of the U.S. health care system, point very strongly toward his position as a defender of the status quo, not as someone who should be associated with "change."
