Out Of Rudy's Rectum

On this Guy Fawkes Day - my birthday, by the way ;-) - I'd like to blow a hole in Rudolph Giuliani's latest radio ad in New Hampshire about the presumed deficiencies of health care in the United Kingdom. True, everyone else has already done that, but it is my birthday, so why should I be left out?

Giuliani claimed that the average American man's chances of surviving prostate cancer, which he did, are 82 percent. In the United Kingdom, under their National Health Service, the chances are, Giuliani insisted, reduced to 44 percent. This is indeed an astonishing statistic, and one that Giuliani did not make up. That, however, does not make it true. The chance of a man surviving prostate cancer in both countries are about the same - pretty good - but in the United States, men are screened for it more often, which accounts for those misleading statistics offered up by - you guessed it - a conservative policy institute.

Personally, I doubt we'll get public medical insurance no matter who's elected President in November 2008. If Hillary gets in, the Republicans in the Senate won't trust her and block her proposal; if Obama or Edwards takes the oath in January 2009, they simply won't let them bring up the issue.

And if Giuliani is our next President, we won't be getting any taxpayer-supported rectal examinations any time soon. That happened once in New York when Rudy was mayor, and the policemen who performed the procedure on one Abner Louima got sent to prison for civil rights violations.