Steven Crowder Is Wrong About Colombian Healthcare: Yes, It Can Be Better than America’s
If you’re a Conservative, there’s a chance you know about Steven Crowder. He’s that outspoken (and sometimes really loud) Millennial Conservative who has the (in his words) top Conservative channel on YouTube and hosts a semi-daily show on the platform, Louder with Crowder.
If you’re a Liberal, you might also know who Crowder is. Recently, he was criticized by most because of his “bullying” of a gay Latino man who himself hosted several citation-free and exaggerated videos on the Leftist outlet Vox.
As a Conservative, I approve more of Crowder than I disapprove of him. (Not that he’d care either way.) In fact, my husband and I paid for the yearly Blaze subscription in the midst of the whole “VoxAdpocalypse” meltdown this past Summer because we support what he and his crew are trying to do and hope they’re able to reach more and more people.
Immediately after paying for our subscription, I excitedly tweeted about it and he even retweeted that post, exponentially increasing its reach. How cool!
Our #MugClub and @BlazeTV memberships are set and we’re stoked!
We’re especially grateful to @gaywonk for misinterpreting reality and incentivizing SO.MANY.PEOPLE to join the club.#HappyPrideMonth and happy #VoxAdpocalypse, bud ❤️! @scrowder #tcot pic.twitter.com/8DuUV0HQay— Annie Paul-Murphy 🇺🇸 (@MsAnniePaul) June 7, 2019
(As much as we support them, however, I don’t think we’ll renew our subscription for next year, as the Blaze app is rather clunky and the only host we watch on there is Crowder. But that’s for another post.)
Today I want to go more into what Crowder’s (wrongly) said time and time again about the Colombian healthcare system, or rather, how it stacks up against that of the United States.
You see, I admire Crowder’s enthusiasm and his team’s extensive research savvy, but when someone constantly displays not only how ignorant they are about a particular subject, but also their seeming disinterest in finding out more about it, AND they cover up that ignorance with baseless jokes, I lose respect for them and start tuning them out, because what they have to say is wrong (so why waste my time?).
Such is the case with Crowder and his rhetoric on Colombian healthcare.
What has me so fired up about something that most Americans could care less about?
Well, in case you didn’t know, my parents and I are originally from Colombia, so that’s one reason.
For two, despite of why my family fled to the U.S., Colombia still has a place in our hearts and I’m always proud to defend or highlight its strengths to the rest of the world–esp. those who’d rather believe misconceptions about it than know the true story.
And for three (and this is specifically more for Crowder and others like him), as much as I love the USA, I’m not a crazy USA fanatic like Crowder seems to be.
I’d like to elaborate on this last point because whenever I see Crowder about to start flying off the handle with how amazing and superior this country is, it’s like nails on a chalkboard. There’s patriotism and then there is believing your country is THE BEST AT EVERYTHING, almost to the tune of Borat’s “Kazakhstan national anthem.” I don’t believe any country is that way, just as much as I don’t believe that Catholicism is the ONLY path to Salvation, etc. I tend to not live my life with many absolutes because flexibility seems like a more sane way to live to me.
But I digress.
This post was motivated by a recent event Crowder & Co. hosted at Texas A&M University on Halloween 2019. It was essentially a live show and at the end he had a Q&A. This short video shows the part of the Q&A that I took issue with:
In it, a young Venezuelan immigrant mainly thanks him for showing him that America isn’t all full of bigots and immigrant haters, as the Left makes Conservatives out to be. Crowder then touches on healthcare, arguing that that’s one aspect Leftists (and other “subjective” sources) always say America sucks at. “Healthcare should be socialized,” the argument goes, “because those with socialized healthcare are better able to provide for their citizens and residents.”
Crowder ALWAYS takes issue with this, as should every Conservative. Socialized healthcare is just a band-aid, not a true way to fix a broken healthcare system. You don’t fix a broken healthcare system by letting MORE people have access to it (as this leads to a multitude of other problems); you fix it by reducing its overhead, costs, and endless red tape and regulations. You make it more efficient. And THEN if you feel like making it more accessible to more people, knock yourself out.
Anyways, whenever Crowder brings up healthcare, he also mentions that other countries do appear above the U.S. in healthcare rankings, but that those rankings are subjective and therefore, he implies, meaningless. So far I’ve heard him say twice or three times that Colombia always ranks higher than America and jokingly retort with something along the lines of, “How could a third-world country be doing better than the best country in the world??!!”
(I mean, there are many things other countries are better at, but that’s also for another day.)
Well, after hearing this bit last week, I had had it, because I realized that he’s NEVER explained what could possibly make Colombia’s healthcare system better or worse. He only dismissed these claims with his own claims that those rankings are “subjective,” but NEVER has he actually gone a little farther in his own argument and found out even one way it could actually be doing better than the United States.
I plan on putting a stop to that faulty logic.
So I reached out to the Louder with Crowder team this week and sent them this message explaining how they’re wrong. I also gave them a piece of my mind in regards to references to Pablo Escobar. Whether they ever got that message or see this post, I don’t care much about. I mainly now want you all to see how someone who many support can still be wrong by not having all his research ducks lined up in a row.
Here’s my message to Crowder’s team on why they’re wrong about American and Colombian healthcare
(The bolding wasn’t included in the original message.)
Hello Steven and Crew!
My parents and I moved to the US legally in 2002 to flee the political unrest and persecution they were facing in our native Colombia. We were granted Asylum and years later became naturalized US citizens. We LOVE it here. Although we can’t deny our strong ties to Colombia, we know that America’s the greatest and I’m blessed my Alabamian husband and I will raise our future kids here.
We unabashedly love almost everything about this country–I even tear up while listening to the Star-Spangled Banner. However, there IS at least one thing that we wish WAS different about America: its healthcare.
I’ll preface the following bit of constructive criticism with, “We’re huge fans of your show and as MugClubbers, we’re happy to support your work!” Whenever the subject of healthcare comes up on your show, you always find a way to demeaningly bring up Colombia, wondering how in the world could the US be below such a country. More recently you even said something along the lines of Pablo Escobar performing root canals, blah blah.
A few things: To Colombians, Pablo Escobar jokes not only are tired and overdone, but also show the person’s ignorance–as if EVERYTHING about Colombia was wrapped up in such a monster who we all know is in Hell, and the person who made the joke didn’t bother to see other great things that Colombia is internationally recognized for. But this isn’t about that.
In this message, I wanted to tell you a bit about Colombian healthcare b/c it seems that you never look up some facts that might show that yes, perhaps, they do do healthcare OBJECTIVELY better (gasp!). In a nutshell, our family prefers Colombian healthcare so much, they’ll actually go get procedures done at state-of-the-art-facilities there, and the cost of the treatment + the flights + the 5-star hotel stays + the amazing food, COMBINED, are all LESS THAN the cost of those treatments alone here.
Colombia is also a place where everyone gets SOME government-sponsored healthcare, but those who want more and can afford it can pay more. This is easy to those of us in the upper middle class b/c the cost of living there is way less, and we have access to the best doctors, including ones who make house calls. More recently, my dad began getting his US-MADE insulin in Colombia(!): Yes, the flights, hotel, American insulin, etc. all cost less than just the same insulin here. (FYI the same insulin obtained here costs 10-30 times MORE than that obtained there. He’s not T2 so he doesn’t need as much, but still.) My mom is also having some dental work done there, and again: That, combined with the flights, the lodging, the food, etc. is still much, MUCH less than the cost of the mere treatment here in the U.S. Hell, MRIs at world-renowned facilities there cost a fraction of what they do here!
OK granted, Colombia’s much smaller, and despite its issues, healthcare for everyone there is, I imagine, still easier to manage than in this great land of ours. But it’s still way AFFORDABLE, and the wait times are also non-existent.
In conclusion, please research more about Colombian healthcare before denigrating it without justification. You know a LOT about many things, but for some reason, whenever Colombia and its healthcare come up, you forget to look up basic info and end up appearing extremely ignorant and unaccepting of the fact that some countries are capable of doing some things better than the US.
Lastly, thank you for all you do and sorry for writing more than 400 words :). (But please reconsider your tired Escobar and baseless Colombian healthcare jokes.)
What do I want to get from all of this?
That was important for me to say not only because you know I always speak up about issues or points of view that don’t seem to have a voice, but also because, as I mentioned earlier, it’s about time someone who claims to know so much about a particular subject finds out that perhaps he doesn’t know a whole lot to make judgments.
As entertaining as I may find him, I don’t respect his opinion enough on much to (choose to) get offended by whatever he alleges. Therefore, I don’t seek apologies or corrections. But I still thought those who believe the same old misconceptions about Colombia should begin to see that they’re wrong. And when someone keeps unjustifiably criticizing something they don’t know much about, they end up coming across as ignorant and not really worth my time.
After all, if someone doesn’t know what they’re talking about, does their opinion still hold merit? Not in my mind. And I suspect many others agree. (As an example, that’s why Greta Thurnberg’s 15 minutes of fame ended a quickly as they began.) On the other hand, if someone’s been known to be an expert on a certain subject, their opinion on it should be heard: Whether we agree is irrelevant; at least they (hopefully) have evidence to back up their argument.
Crowder isn’t an expert on healthcare across the globe and he doesn’t have evidence that the US is objectively THE best at it. Therefore, he should either find out more about Colombia or stop dissing it without reason.
[bctt tweet=”If someone doesn’t know what they’re talking about, does their opinion still hold merit? Not in my mind.” username=”msanniepaul”]
