Survey Shows That Fox News Makes You Less Informed

A survey of American voters by World Public Opinion shows that Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources. One of the most interesting questions was about President Obama's birthplace. 63 percent of Fox viewers believe Obama was not born in the US (or that it is unclear). In 2003 a similar study about the Iraq war showed that Fox viewers were once again less knowledgeable on the subject than average. Let the flame war begin!

Comments

Re:Seriously?

[DrgnDancer]

"Buy hospital insurance or... well there is no other choice."

OK, I've seen this Libertarian objection to the new Health Care law before, and I have a question about it. What do you consider the viable alternative? Before you answer, let me lay out the facts and assumptions that frame the question as I see it:

1) People get sick or injured. Often out of the blue, and occasionally seriously. The risk is lower for younger people, but even there it's not zero. I work with a guy who got cancer at 27. Thankfully he's insured. I knew a guy in college who had a stroke, again, thankfully insured. The older you get, the more likely and common these occurrence become. This a fact, i don't think there's any arguing it.

2) Our society will not countenance a system of "if you can't afford to pay for treatment or get insurance, you just die." As evidence for this fact I present a right wing invention: The Death Panel. We were told that if "Obamacare" passed our oldest and least able people would face the horrors of a "Death Panel" deciding who should and should not be treated. People were outraged, and it was the single most effective anti-healthcare argument out there. It was also complete bullshit, but hey. So again, our society will not actually tolerate a completely market driven Healthcare system. As soon as the old and infirm start dying for lack of care, something will have to change. This speaks well of our society, by the way. This is obviously an assumption, but I think you'd have a hard time countering it.

3) Care cost money. Particularity, the older and/or sicker you are, the more it costs. *Someone* has to pay for the care of those who can't pay for themselves, at least assuming that we accept my assumption "2" above. The options are: the patient (who obviously can't or they wouldn't be in this position), the Hospital (who will quickly go out of business in this model), or the Government (who usually wind up footing the bill one way or the other). Charities are an option, but they can only do so much. Unlike the government, they can't compel donations. This is a fact.

Given the three facts/assumptions above, what is the better option than compulsory health insurance? The current model is "People who can afford it, and want it, pay for insurance. Everyone else doesn't pay for insurance and either government insures them (medicare or medicaid), or when they do get sick they go to the hospital and build up phenomenal and unplayable debts that are eventually either forgiven by relief (bankruptcy) or just never paid." So either the hospital (through unpaid bills), the government (through Medicare/caid) or the patient (through insurance) pays for the care. This model has seen health care cost increase significantly faster than any other cost in modern life.

Forcing everyone to get insurance put people in the position of (mostly) paying for their own care, with the government chipping in to cover some of the bill for the poor. The end result is that people are getting care, they are primarily paying for it themselves, the government has a predictable expenditure structure, and hospitals always get paid. It's taking a choice away from you, true, you have to get insurance, but before when you had that choice you risked someone elves choices everyday. Because if you don't have insurance, and you get sick, someone is going to have to pay for it. And it probably won't be you.