Not only that, but there's no small amount of academic fraud figuring into this as well. I recently picked up a book on Economics aimed at the general public. I figured it would be good to complement the books I had on the subject that were filled with math. This book, however, was filled with accounts like this woman's. When you checked the sources, you found that the author had cited opinion articles from very pro Free Market magazines and news papers. The whole thrust the his point was the government healthcare systems are inherently capricious and that unregulated free markets correct for fraud and abuse automatically. The supporting evidence was pure crap, but I'm professional Librarian and know how to do citation chasing. The layperson does not. Anyway, there's a fair amount of this type of thing going on. The authors are usually fairly respected professors who also hold positions at think tanks like the Cato Institute and American Enterprise Foundation. When they submit things for peer review, their work doesn't have much politics, but when they write for a popular audience, or write textbooks, their political opinions are passed off as facts.