Presidential Election Campaign > Checking the Facts
I have one comment to the two recent presidential campaign debate, chaired by PBS journalists Jim Lehrer and Gwen Ifill: there is a need to better shape the questions and the comments/follow-up questions to the candidates' answers based on the facts, meaning the complete facts. Two examples (there are many others):
. Medical insurance: in his first debate with Barack Obama, John McCain made the comment: "we do not want to socialize medical insurance like in Europe, where patients cannot chose their doctors, who are designated by the governement...". Actually, this is exactly the contrary: in many of European countries national medical insurance system, patients are free to go to a doctor, dentist...etc, or another of their choice. Whereas here, in the US, a patient is restricted to go to the specific doctors who are enlisted with the specific insurance company to which he/she subscribes via his/her employer, unless someone is willing and able to pay much higher for going "out of network"...and when you change employers, you are often faced with situations where you cannot go to your usual doctor(s) because they are not affiliated with your new insurance company, which breaks the continuity of the care provided by a doctor and a patient....
...and then, it could be indicated, as background data, that European countries usually have better, sometimes much better (Sweden, France) medical results over their entire populations than the US (see for instance the infant mortality rate, or the average length of life).
. Taxes: some candidates often say "we must reduce taxes, they are too high...etc". But this is only one side of the coin, and there is never a debate on the full equation, ie how much tax for how many services.
Comparing tax levels is meaningless if one does not compare the services and goods that are produced with these taxes. It is like comparing the prices paid for two different cars, but not comparing these cars' characteristics. For instance, European of Far Eastern countries such as Japan or Korea may have (not always) higher income taxes than in the US, but, against these taxes, their governements and public agencies provide many more services to the general population, whether in terms of transportation infrastructure, education, medical care, pension and medical care for seniors, concert halls, public outdoor and sport facilities, museums and other cultural institutions...etc.
So, I suggest it would be beneficial to all to improve the "fact content" of the questions and of the follow-up questions, so as to try to make these political debates more comprehensive and "trustworthy". Otherwise, the candidates' statements may remain superficial, error prone or even completely wrong, thereby mis-leading the public.
Thanks, best regards,
Louis
