Rep. Shadegg Warns of “Soviet-Style Gulag Health Care”
Not content with out of control Hitler analogies, Rep John Shadegg (R-AZ) took to the floor yesterday to demonstrate that he’s a fool. Lee Fang has the quotes:
SHADEGG: You know, it occurs to me, and I’ll go through these other scandals very quickly, but what we’re really getting here is we’re not just getting single-payer care. We’re getting full on Russian gulag, Soviet-style gulag health care [...] It appeared in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal. You can Google it. You can pick up the phone and call Kim Strassel. You can ask her about Soviet-style gulag health care in America, where powerful politicians protect their constituents.
Lee reminds us that “The Soviet gulags were a network of prisons and forced labor camps that held as many as 20 million people during Stalin’s reign of terror.” To compare a set of insurance regulations you happen not to favor to Stalin’s mass imprisonment and slaughter is ridiculous, and absurdly insensitive to the real victims.
Massive human rights violations aside, I would also note that health care was among the strong points of the Soviet economy, along with primary and secondary education, armaments, and mass transit.
32 Responses to “Rep. Shadegg Warns of “Soviet-Style Gulag Health Care””
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October 15th, 2009 at 10:22 am
Powerful politicians protect their constituents…by sending them to gulags?
This is what you get when your political movement spends three decades reviling college education.
October 15th, 2009 at 10:23 am
Why not, we’ve had a full on soviet-style prison system full or rape, torture and a blind indifference to actual guilt or innocence for centuries now. We have a government that clearly only works for a tiny, over-privileged minority. It makes perfect sense for normal people not to trust government run healthcare. The government hasn’t done right by normal people since the 60’s. Oh, it’s helped this embattled minority or that one; but for most people all they have seen are declining wages, increasing gas, food and education costs that limit their children’s future, and a slavish devotion to the wants of the elite.
October 15th, 2009 at 10:23 am
Again, one of those times when the only appropriate response — “shut the fuck up, you lying bastard” — is considered insufficiently polite for broadcast.
October 15th, 2009 at 10:24 am
And the fascists made the trains run on time.
October 15th, 2009 at 10:31 am
The Ruskies forced sick people into special gulags called “hospitals” and made them accept free medical treatment, whether or not they wanted to get better. Barack Josef Stalin Obama would do the same… except for the “free” part.
October 15th, 2009 at 10:32 am
it’s nice to know that stupid people listen to stupid people: shadegg is a doofus himself, and even by the standards of the wsj oped page, kim strassel is a complete dope.
October 15th, 2009 at 10:33 am
Oh, all right then. I take it all back.
So, did they indict Bill Clinton for shooting Vince Foster yet?
October 15th, 2009 at 10:37 am
The likelihood that any Dem in Congress (other than possibly Alan Grayson) standing up and calling this man a lunatic and a demagogue? Zero. Because the job of conservative leaders in Congress is to advance their interests by fair means or foul, while our “leaders” view telling the truth and pushing back on this stuff as uncivil, partisan, and way beneath them (ie if they make too big a populist stink about these issues, they won’t get hired post-Congress as lobbyists).
October 15th, 2009 at 10:53 am
Matt,
How many times do we have to beg you to stop talking about the Soviet Union, a country of which you are almost completely ignorant? The healthcare system was adequate, that’s all. You still needed to bribe doctors to get real treatment, the system went into steady decline from the 1970s on, and the doctors made very few advances compared to the West. Not to mention the rampant sexism and anti-semitism which prevented talent from rising to the top. The health care system was not a strong point of the Soviet economy, it was simply one of the areas where the USSR did not do as badly as you might otherwise expect. And of course outside of the big cities the quality of care declined very quickly. And mass transit? Really? In most of the country outside of Moscow mass transit consisted (and still consists) almost entirely of buses and some creaky trams. Functional, cheap and effective, sure, but not really any better than what you’ll find in Indonesia, Mexico, Brazil or any other second world country. So how is that a strong point?
October 15th, 2009 at 10:53 am
Massive human rights violations aside? There is no aside, dumbass.
October 15th, 2009 at 10:55 am
We imprison a higher percentage of our population than Stalin did. I would imagine that Stalin’s victims were a better cross-section of ethnicity, too.
Gulag health care would, presumably, be sending people off to health centers, or “spas” if you want to be all European-commie about it. They’d just be crummy spas, I suppose.
Or maybe leper colonies, but with better treatment options.
Why didn’t he just call us “doo-doo heads”? It makes as much sense.
October 15th, 2009 at 11:01 am
The healthcare system was adequate, that’s all.
Right. And in a country where many things were not adequate, that makes the healthcare system one of the strong points of the Soviet economy.
October 15th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Vanya,
Their life expectancy in the ’70s and ’80s was a lot higher then today, so they were clearly doing some things right. It’s also worth noting that things were quite different in the Stalin era vs. the post-Stalin era.
But I agree- Cuba might be a better example.
October 15th, 2009 at 11:09 am
So a Congress dude compares health care to “Soviet-style gulag health care,” using the gulag word three times, and Matt’s rejoinder is that Soviet health care generally wasn’t that bad. Um, I think the man’s point by emphasizing the word gulag wasn’t to engage us in a dispassionate analysis of the comparative historical effectiveness of various national health-care systems but to insinuate rhetorically that health-care reform will savor of the same kind of oppression and denial of humanity found in the gulag. I didn’t think figuring that out was too hard, but wevs.
October 15th, 2009 at 11:13 am
I also heard that, aside from the whole assassination unpleasantness that night in April 1865, the show in Ford’s Theatre was quite well done. Kudos!
October 15th, 2009 at 11:14 am
With our gigantic prison archipelago system, Shadegg might be inadvertently correct.
October 15th, 2009 at 11:18 am
Didn’t Michael Moore make the point in Sicko that the American Gulag medical care at Guantanamo was actually pretty first class?
October 15th, 2009 at 11:32 am
Anyone remember the right-wingers getting their panties in a twist when Amnesty International referred to Gitmo as “The Gulag of our time”?
http://www.pajamasmedia.com/instapundit-archive/archives/023409.php
Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
October 15th, 2009 at 11:58 am
I just called up Shadegg’s office and complained to a staffer about this. He sounded like he’s been getting a lot of calls on this.
October 15th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Did you know that the T-34 tank sucked? You know why? MASSIVE HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS!
Did you know that the Soviets didn’t actually put a man in space before the west? You know why? MASSIVE HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS!
Did you know that Moscow’s subway system isn’t actually very good? You now why? MASSIVE HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS!
However, if you dare mention Thomas Jefferson’s ownership of slave in a discussion of his achievements, Steve AR will hunt you down like a rabid dog.
October 15th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
People like this guy help write our laws.
“What is man that Thou art mindful of him?”
October 15th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Joe from Lowell,
Excellent points, all.
Scott,
Yes, I agree. Back to the point of the thread, unless Obama is planning on taking elderly Medicare patients out into the freezing winter, stripping them and spraying them with cold water, then I think ‘gulag health care’ is, at best, facetious.
October 15th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
So we are still lost. will we ever learn from history?
October 15th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
“Massive human rights violations aside, I would also note that health care was among the strong points of the Soviet economy”
Though probably not in the gulags?
By the way, Scott, Matt is saying both that the gulag comparison is not only unfair but absurd and offensive, because the gulags were atrocities, and that if you reduce Shadegg’s claim to “Soviet-style health care,” it’s not much of an indictment. DID I JUST BLOW YOUR MIND??
October 15th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
By the way, isn’t Shadegg a creature in Lovecraft? I think he’s the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young.
October 15th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
When you hear that many older Russians are nostalgic for the days when Stalin was in charge – the availability of good free health care is a big reason. Of course, it was Russia which primarily defeated The Third Reich, Russians who suffered more than any other country from the Nazi War Machine, and Russia which allowed its Cold War satellite States to enjoy a higher standard of living than within Russia itself. Oh, and of course, the Romanovs were darlings. In 1891 in order to finance the building of the Trans-Siberian railroad – over 90% of the grain was sold to foreign nations and millions of peasants died. There’s a reason why Stalin remains a hero there to this day.
October 15th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Rarely, if ever, will you hear older Russians wax nostalgic about the Soviet health care system. They are nostalgic about cheap food staples, guaranteed housing, full employment and freedom from crime. The Soviet health care system wasn’t beloved by people who had to use it. It was very good at basic general and preventive medicine – and they accomplished this by educating a large number of doctors with what Americans would consider fairly rudimentary skills. It was labor intensive and capital poor. Soviet surgery and internal medicine always lagged well behind the West. The Soviet system is not much of a model for an advanced post industrial society. Neither is Cuba. That model of “socialized” medicine is irrelevant to the needs of the US or of modern Russia. Bringing Soviet health care into the discussion makes about as much sense as pointing out the productivity gains collective farms made by replacing horses with tractors. What do we learn from it?
October 15th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
“ I think he’s the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young.”
I thought that was Jim Bob Duggar . . . ?
October 15th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Re: Neither is Cuba. That model of “socialized” medicine is irrelevant to the needs of the US or of modern Russia
True- I think most people, like Dr. Paul Farmer (who should know), cite Cuba as a good model for health care in other developing countries, not in the U.S..
That said, modern Cubans live about as long as Americans, and a lot longer than Russians.
Some question, of course, how much longer post industrial society will last, but that’s a separate question.
October 15th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
matt,
you usually do a pretty good job of things and i greatly enjoy your blog. however, it’s flatly inaccurate, and embarrassingly so, to say that healthcare was one of the soviet union’s “strong points.” if healthcare was a soviet strong point, then the entire economy was a strong point and we should all rush to adopt a centralized command economy. in fact, you should know that healthcare was probably the single lowest priority of the Soviet leadership from the 1960’s on and one of the poorest performers when compared to the west. after khrushchev’s ouster, the healthcare gap with the west, both in life expectancy, survival rates, and medical innovation, yawned into a massive chasm because the soviets were never able to effectively treat non-infectious diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and, most especially, heart disease (you can look up the data if you want, the western countries began making steady progress reducing mortality from non-infectious diseases in the mid 1960’s, whereas the soviets NEVER did, their mortality rates were actually higher in the 1980’s then they had been in the 1960’s)
by the time brezhnev had finally kicked the bucket the soviet health network was already in a state of advanced decay because of the bizarre and insane incentive structures which were built into it (essentially “success” in healthcare meant a steady growth in the number of doctors and hospital beds regardless of their quality. janos kornai talks a lot about this ‘quantity drive’ in his book on the socialist economic system) and the notoriously stingy funding streams. even after Gorbachev boosted state spending substantially during perestroika it was never more than 2-3% of GDP, and perhaps another 1% worth of GDP was spent on healthcare in the form of “gifts” that patients were expected to provide their doctors.
you should also, of course, know that soviet doctors were legendarily poorly compensated (with the result that the highest quality labor went into any field BUT medicine) and frequently received medical training inferior to that of western e.m.s. personnel. soviet hospitals were also famous for their backwardness with up to 30% of “hospitals” lacking HOT RUNNING WATER. think about that for a second: a large percentage of major soviet healthcare installations lacked hot running water. now, does that sound like a “strong point” of an economic system to you?
the soviet union’s economic system, of course, did have strong points otherwise it never would have survived as long as it did. what were they? certainly not the social and service sectors, as you suggest, but essentially those sectors where russia is now competitive on a market basis: raw materials, heavy industry, metallurgy, energy, and, most especially, armaments. anyone who’s ever studied russian/soviet healthcare knows that the soviet union was radically uncompetitive in the health sphere and had a well deserved horrific international reputation for anything even tangentially related to medicine (censorship was largely to blame for this as researchers were prohibited from publishing embarrassing mortality or attending most international medical conferences).
don’t make things easy on the wingnuts, matt, because when you say things like “soviet healthcare was great!” you look exceptionally foolish.
October 15th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Two Soviet surgeons are looking at a patient. One asks, “Should we save him, or should we operate?”
Which of course has very little to do with gulags. One wishes they could choke to death on their own hyperbole.
October 16th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Shadeg is an idiot, as anyone who would vote for him. And you can tell them Dave said it.