CNN: Misleading News Headlines

[mbohu 77]

First: I am loathe to play into the storyline that "the mainstream media" is purposefully distorting news, not because I don't think they do it, but for 2 reasons:

1. Mostly they do it for purposes of attracting eyeballs, turning news more into sensationalizing content (see CNN Democratic debate), because they think it gives them more viewers and sells more advertising--so in a word: out of financial and commercial considerations and much more rarely for ideological reasons (but apparently that happens too)
2. Because the "not so mainstream" news sites all over the internet are mostly even worse than that, often having no relationship to factual truth whatsoever

But: This headline at first surprised me and, after some simple research (which included simply reading their own article) started to really get on my nerves:

"Fact check: Bernie Sanders has made the same false claim about health spending for 10 years" ( https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/09/politics/fact-check-bernie-sanders-health-care-spending/index.html )

The statement that they are referring to is: "that the US spends twice as much on health care, per capita, as any other country in the world."

The headline makes it seem like Bernie is straight out lying and the US is probably not spending much more than most comparable countries (if more at all)
Well: Here is the data: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/#item-relative-size-wealth-u-s-spends-disproportionate-amount-health
(the article uses the same data as this link--but most people probably only read the headline)

If you look at that, all but 2 other countries are spending five thousand something per capita or (much) less. The US is spending ten thousand something. The 2 countries that spend more than that are Norway and Switzerland (two small countries with very high standards in socialized healthcare) and even these 2 countries are spending much less than the US.
So, while it is in principle true that Bernie should have said: "The US is spending ALMOST twice as much as all other countries, except for Switzerland and Norway, who are still spending much less and have much better results than the US, and is spending MORE than twice as much as as the great majority of other countries" (...and by now no one would be listening because that is just too much detailed information...)
The headline is MUCH more misleading than Bernie's simplified statement. The essence of the point of his statement is absolutely accurate, and what that article is even about is very suspect. Again, I don't think it's a conspiracy against him as such, but the person who wrote that article clearly had an agenda, as there are sooooo many statements from politicians that would be better candidates for pointing out as truly factually inaccurate.--very frustrating!