‘Oprah's Doctor' and CNN's Paula Zahn Lament Conservative ‘Nihilism' on Health Care

July 19th, 2007 6:01 PM

As part of their week-long series of specials previewing their upcoming presidential debates with YouTube, CNN interviewed Dr. Mehmet Oz on Wednesday evening. Oz and host Paula Zahn discussed the media-driven "crisis" in health care. Zahn asked Oz, "what is the answer to piercing the bureaucracy. That is certainly something you can't fix overnight." Oz's answer: "Well, one of our biggest challenges is nihilism. People don't think they can fix the problem. But we can, Paula."

Dr. Oz is a cardiologist, an author, and is a regular contributor to Oprah Winfrey's radio show "Oprah & Friends" on XM satellite radio. In her first question to Oz, Zahn asked, "how much of a crisis are we in, when it comes to health care." Besides listing the "deep-seated lack of confidence" among health care workers, and the technological backwardness in tracking patients and their records in the industry, Oz used the oft-repeated line that "to boot, 50 million people roughly don't have any insurance at all." Of course, this is just a sound byte that is used to support the sense that there is a "crisis," and doesn't tell the whole picture, as a recent BMI report demonstrated.

As the segment closed, the Oz and Zahn's personal advocacy of this sense of "crisis" reached its apex.

ZAHN: We certainly need informed consumers. I don't know about you. The number that gets me the most is the fact that there are nine million children in this country that don't have any insurance at all.

OZ: That's a good starting point for any candidate. If you are under 18 years of age in this country, you should have insurance, period, no questions. All you need is a birth certificate to prove that you're less than 18 years of age. It ought to be done.

ZAHN: It's heartbreaking.

OZ: Heartbreaking.

ZAHN: Unacceptable.

What neither tell you that the solution that they have in mind is the government-run system that the left has been working relentlessly to implement for the past fifteen years.