The Sicko circus comes to D.C.
Michael Moore is in Washington today for a screening of his crockumentary, Sicko. What’s alarming is not his pre-school level of comprehension about the health care market and pharmaceutical industry–but the fact that so many share and swallow his uninformed views.
The NYPost’s Kyle Smith has a devastating review here. An excerpt:
Regardless of whether any particular claim in “Sicko” is true, no one doubts that lots of insured and uninsured Americans face health-care crises. So far, Moore is master of the obvious. We all hate insurance companies and red tape, and we all want to improve the system. Where do we go from here?
To France, Britain and Canada, says Moore, who presents each of them as a health-care paradise. But lots of people in those countries have health-care nightmares of their own. Here’s how easy it is to lie by anecdote: Say I wanted to make a film about gay black Republicans who live in Chelsea. I find ten of them, make a film about them, and you walk out of the theater thinking: Wow, so many gay black Republicans in Chelsea! The six years it took me to find these ten guys will go unnoted.
All three countries are edging away from how Moore portrays them. Moore knows that in France, where he praises not only the health service but limits on working hours, expansive unemployment benefits and the country’s three preferred forms of exercise—street-marching, banner-hoisting and strikes—a new conservative president was just elected by promising to cut back on such nonsense. (According to Moore, if you need a babysitter or help with the laundry, the French government will send a trained professional right over.)
Everywhere he looks, Moore finds French happiness. But this phrase is as close to an oxymoron as French rock. In a poll, 85 percent of the French recently said their country is heading in the wrong direction. Right direction? Nine percent. In France in 2003, 15,000 mostly elderly hospital patients died in an August heat wave–because hospitals lack air conditioning and doctors were on vacation. The French parliament blamed the health care system. That’s five times 9/11’s toll, all of it preventable, all of it unlamented by Moore.
Moore knows that in Britain, where National Health Service spending has more than doubled since Tony Blair was elected, with little to show for it, there is a two-tier health system: the smart set carry private insurance, which Moore wants to outlaw in the U.S. The cliché in London (check out this story and this one) is that the well-shod go to the same doctor as the suckers on the National Health Service. The difference is that private clients get treated right away while the NHS losers wait two years to get their strep throat looked at.
Moore glosses over wait times, hoping his audience is too stupid to notice. He asks a handful of Canadian patients how long they had to wait to see the doctor. Oh, 20 minutes, 45 minutes, everyone says. So if Moore finds five people who didn’t have to wait, there’s no waiting for anybody!
Carter Wood further dismantles Moore’s fantasy propaganda here. And the innovators in the pharmaceutical industry aren’t going to lie back.
Reality-based documentarian Stuart Browning, who has chronicled health care woes in Canada, has a new video out that tackles the myth of the uninsured in America. Watch it.
The real “Sicko,” he says, is socialized medicine. Indeed.
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Thank you for your highlighted opinion on moore’s new film. But i would like to precise a point about France and French health care system as I am as a French citizen directly concerned. It is true that our system is not perfect and that it has its problems. I would say that we have some problem to maintain its cost stable as the medical offer compared to the insurance is not socialized. In other words our system has been covering a very large kind of medical practice which are not all admitted as being of the prime necessity . I would like to say that thermal cure, massage cure, non necessary medical transport and any kind of offer were being covered without any control. this led to an explosion of the expenses as new practitioner had just to settle somewhere and develop his business. Today there are a lot of concern concerning the responsible management of our health system by sensitizing the patients and the practitioners for good habits. Also the “Securite Sociale” put efforts to stop covering known ineffective drugs and to promote the adoption of generic drugs which are less expensive. And all theses evolution are needed cause our population get older due to the age pyramid and it is important to work all together concerning the preservation of our fair system and make sure who can keep it viable. Despite this we still have one of the best quality medicine in the world cause people in France have no limitation to see a doctor whenever they need it and it allows to have a better preventive medicine as medical problem could be identified earlier. The health should not be a merchant service and therefore we should make sure private companies and interest do not take it over. Because when private interests enter the game it is only to make profits and it can become a system of waste like the one in United States of America.
Thank you for letting me post
Kind regard
Florent
As a health insurance agent, I don’t agree that health care is a ‘right’. I can take care of myself and my health care expenses are zero. If someone doesn’t take care of their own health, I have to pay for their health care under a universal (single payor) system.
Having said that, I conclude that there is only ONE way that it could be done successfully. I’ve been reluctant to publish it before because I hate when my ideas get stolen. But since I like Michelle and her work on the immigration issue, and I doubt anyone will read this anyway. . . I’ll post the main plan here (world premier)!
Expand the VA to encompass the ENTIRE health care system. ie. You can fund the health care system through MILITARY funding. Train doctors through the MILITARY. Use free VA services to entice more enlistment into the military, and allow civilians to buy into the system.
The key is the massiveness of such a program. The only way it will work is to tie it with an already massive institution – the military.
This way the military industrial complex will be fed dollars (albeit for medical care equipment and facilities instead of bombs and bullets). AND we have enough doctors trained through the military, we have enough soldiers who want this program for free.
This is a complex issue, but it could be worse than immigration if we let Congress start overhauling with a holy trio of Clinton, Pelosi, and Reid.
Here in the US it is against the law to go untreated if you but present yourself at any emergency room. That fact alone has bankrupted several Southern California hospitals out of existance, owing to the flood of illegals who use emergency rooms as their primary source of health care. How is it, illegals who don’t even speak our language are better informed than our general populace?
I would like to see hard numbers of those who feel as though they have been left out in the cold on health care. I would venture a guess the socialists in our Democrat Party, have manufactured the statistics just as they have manufactured Graeme Frost’s beleagured familys finances. All bogus!!