Memes Are For Morons: Health Care
A few times in the past this page has dissected false memes. Memes are made for fraud given they encourage pithy claims without documentation. And one favorite ploy of the the dishonest is to take a photo of one thing but claim it is something entirely different. The more committed to an ideology one becomes the more they seem willing to bend the truth.
Consider the health care meme from the Socialist Party as a prime example. They show one photo labeled “Capitalism” showing a line of people waiting to see a health profession and then show another photo of a top-of-the-line hospital and label it “Socialism.” The only problem is the labels are quite literally swapped.
Look carefully at the photo on the left of the meme and pay attention to the sign. If you have the resolution or the photo large enough you can see the line of people are waiting for service at the Sunbury Health Centre. That spelling of center is British, as Americans swap the e and the r in the word for Center. Sunbury is in Surrey, England and was very near to where I stayed during a year in England.
The photo they are attributing to “capitalism” is an example of nationalized health care. They lifted it from The Daily Mail, one of the worst newspapers in the world and one of the most dishonest, but the Mail didn’t mislabel the photo. The paper is badly edited and replete with misspellings or the use of wrong words. The photo first appeared there December 22, 2014 and was repeated for many days in a row before others stole it and started mislabeling it to make their dishonest case. have attached a copy of that use with the Mail’s own byline and description attached clearly saying this clinic, with the long line “is one of the biggest in Britain” and it is government run, not private. You can also confirm that the clinic is part of the National Health Service and not private by going here.
Here is part of the article that was attached to the photo making clear the context.
Shivering in the cold before dawn yesterday, more than 30 patients queue in the desperate hope of seeing a doctor.
The scene, a bleak picture of a health service in crisis, is one repeated daily in many parts of the country.
The patients lined up from 6.30am because it was their only hope of a same-day appointment with their GP at a heavily oversubscribed practice. The Sunbury Health Centre in Surrey is one of the biggest in Britain.
Hilariously the Socialist Party of Great Britain, who posted the fake meme, brag they know it’s fake but claim it’s still true because socialized health care in England fails because capitalism funds it. So, the reason socialism fails is because they take the wealth produced by capitalism and redirect it. When capitalism fails, it’s capitalism’s fault. When socialism fails, as typified by the long queues endemic in socialist countries, it’s still capitalism’s fault. That’s how a fundamentalist mind-set works.
And the bright, shiny “health care” that “waits for you” is actually a Hybrid Operating Room produced by a private American company, Steris, out of Mentor, Ohio. So, unlike the meme the queue of patients is one at a socialist example of health care and the operating room “waiting” for patients is built by a private, capitalist company. A list of of our Memes are for Morons series is below. You will note most rely on dishonestly labeling photos.
The Million Dollar Denver Shack Meme
