Michael Moore vs. CNN

Michael Moore vs. CNN, by Brent Bozell. July 18, 2007:

Let's be blunt: Michael Moore is one ungrateful leftist hack. CNN had showered him with three hours and 10 minutes of face time (repeats included) on "Larry King Live" and "The Situation Room," helping him sell his latest socialist film, "Sicko." That kind of attention would make a conservative drool. But when CNN aired a "fact check" piece on his documentary, adding a fraction of balance, he declared jihad, promising in a letter to be CNN's "worst nightmare."

CNN medical reporter Dr. Sanjay Gupta put together a fairly mild report taking issue with some of Moore's cinematic claims. For example, Moore gauzily promoted the health-care promise of communist Cuba. In the film's most publicized stunt, he traveled with Americans suffering from 9/11-related symptoms and had them treated in Cuban hospitals. Gupta pointed out that while Moore highlights that the United Nations World Health Organization cites the United States as 37th in the world for health care, the same study ranks Cuba as 39th.

This is the kind of fact checking that drives Moore into a frenzy. He cannot tolerate someone insisting that the infallible Michael Moore would ever mangle a fact. In a response on his Website, . . .

New York Times: "What's Lacking in 'Sicko'"

What's Lacking in 'Sicko', by Dan Mitchell. New York Times July 7, 2007:

WHEN it comes to economic decisions, there are always trade-offs. Gain one thing and you lose something else. This is particularly true in health care, a market in which a scarce good is ridiculously expensive, but needed by everybody.

The central argument of Michael Moore’s movie “Sicko” — that the cure to the nation’s health care problems is a single-payer system — is hardly novel and is certainly worth consideration, whether or not you agree with it. But in comparing the American system with single-payer plans of other countries —Britain, France, Canada and Cuba — Mr. Moore left out the trade-offs, characterizing those countries as health care paradises.

The elisions have been noticed — and criticism is coming not just from Mr. Moore’s most bellicose and dogmatic detractors. . . . READ MORE

"Socialized Medicine is SICKO"

"Socialized Medicine is SICKO", by Stuart Browning.:

I'm an independent filmmaker with no ties to the health insurance or health care industry - only a personal concern about American liberty and medical freedom. I've made a number of short films about health care policy - specifically for the internet - and featured on a new website: www.freemarketcure.com.

Michael Moore's new movie Sicko is set to inject a large dose of misinformation and propaganda into our national dialog about health care policy. A case in point is Howard Fineman's column in the June 18 edition of Newsweek. Having just attended a Washington press screening of Sicko, he writes about the increasingly urgent calls for government-run health care:

It would be nice to think that the urgency is the result of outrage at our mediocre infant-mortality and life-expectancy numbers, which are among the worst in the developed world.

The truth, however, is that even if we were to adopt a single-payer system, our infant mortality and life expectancy numbers would still compare unfavorably with Canada and other OECD countries for the simple reason that they have little or nothing to do with the quality of our health care system. . . .

Sally Pipes: "Moore adores the Canadian system. I do not."

More Lies from More, by Sally Pipes. New York Post July 6, 2007:

In "Sicko," Michael Moore uses a clip of my appearance earlier this year on "The O'Reilly Factor" to introduce a segment on the glories of Canadian health care.

Moore adores the Canadian system. I do not.

I am a new American, but I grew up and worked for many years in Canada. And I know the health care system of my native country much more intimately than does Moore. There's a good reason why my former countrymen with the money to do so either use the services of a booming industry of illegal private clinics, or come to America to take advantage of the health care that Moore denounces.

Government-run health care in Canada inevitably resolves into a dehumanizing system of triage, where the weak and the elderly are hastened to their fates by actuarial calculation. Having fought the Canadian health care bureaucracy on behalf of my ailing mother just two years ago - she was too old, and too sick, to merit the highest quality care in the government's eyes - I can honestly say that Moore's preferred health care system is something I wouldn't wish on him.

In 1999, my uncle was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. If he'd lived in America, the miracle drug Rituxan might have saved him. But Rituxan wasn't approved for use in Canada, and he lost his battle with cancer.

But don't take my word for it: Even the Toronto Star agrees that Moore's endorsement of Canadian health care is overwrought and factually challenged. And the Star is considered a left-wing newspaper, even by Canadian standards. . . . READ MORE

Who's the real sicko?, by David Gratzer. July 6, 2007:

'Ihaven't seen Sicko," says Avril Allen about the new Michael Moore documentary, which advocates socialized medicine for the United States. The film, which has been widely viewed on the Internet, and which officially opened in the United States and Canada on Friday, has been getting rave reviews. But Ms. Allen, a lawyer, has no plans to watch it. She's just too busy preparing to file suit against Ontario's provincial government about its health care system next month.

Her client, Lindsay McCreith, would have had to wait for four months just to get an MRI, and then months more to see a neurologist for his malignant brain tumor. Instead, frustrated and ill, the retired auto-body shop owner traveled to Buffalo, N.Y., for a lifesaving surgery. Now he's suing for the right to opt out of Canada's government-run health care, which he considers dangerous.

Ms. Allen figures the lawsuit has a fighting chance: In 2005, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that "access to wait lists is not access to health care," striking down key Quebec laws that prohibited private medicine and private health insurance. . . . READ MORE

Kurt Loder: Moore's Sicko 'Heavily Doctored'

'Sicko': Heavily Doctored, by Kurt Loder. MTV.com. June 29, 2007:

Unfortunately, Moore is also a con man of a very brazen sort, and never more so than in this film. His cherry-picked facts, manipulative interviews (with lingering close-ups of distraught people breaking down in tears) and blithe assertions (how does he know 18,000* people will die this year because they have no health insurance?) are so stacked that you can feel his whole argument sliding sideways as the picture unspools. The American health-care system is in urgent need of reform, no question. Some 47 million people are uninsured (although many are only temporarily so, being either in-between jobs or young enough not to feel a pressing need to buy health insurance). There are a number of proposals as to what might be done to correct this situation. Moore has no use for any of them, save one.

As a proud socialist, the director appears to feel that there are few problems in life that can't be solved by government regulation (that would be the same government that's already given us the U.S. Postal Service and the Department of Motor Vehicles). . . .

The problem with American health care, Moore argues, is that people are charged money to avail themselves of it. In other countries, like Canada, France and Britain, health systems are far superior — and they're free. He takes us to these countries to see a few clean, efficient hospitals, where treatment is quick and caring; and to meet a few doctors, who are delighted with their government-regulated salaries; and to listen to patients express their beaming happiness with a socialized health system. It sounds great. As one patient in a British hospital run by the country's National Health Service says, "No one pays. It's all on the NHS. It's not America."

That last statement is even truer than you'd know from watching "Sicko." In the case of Canada — which Moore, like many other political activists, holds up as a utopian ideal of benevolent health-care regulation — a very different picture is conveyed by a short 2005 documentary called "Dead Meat," by Stuart Browning and Blaine Greenberg. These two filmmakers talked to a number of Canadians of a kind that Moore's movie would have you believe don't exist. . . .

What's the problem with government health systems? Moore's movie doesn't ask that question, although it does unintentionally provide an answer. When governments attempt to regulate the balance between a limited supply of health care and an unlimited demand for it they're inevitably forced to ration treatment. This is certainly the situation in Britain. Writing in the Chicago Tribune this week, Helen Evans, a 20-year veteran of the country's National Health Service and now the director of a London-based group called Nurses for Reform, said that nearly 1 million Britons are currently on waiting lists for medical care — and another 200,000 are waiting to get on waiting lists. Evans also says the NHS cancels about 100,000 operations each year because of shortages of various sorts. Last March, the BBC reported on the results of a Healthcare Commission poll of 128,000 NHS workers: two thirds of them said they "would not be happy" to be patients in their own hospitals. James Christopher, the film critic of the Times of London, thinks he knows why. After marveling at Moore's rosy view of the British health care system in "Sicko," Christopher wrote, "What he hasn't done is lie in a corridor all night at the Royal Free [Hospital] watching his severed toe disintegrate in a plastic cup of melted ice. I have." Last month, the Associated Press reported that Gordon Brown — just installed this week as Britain's new prime minister — had promised to inaugurate "sweeping domestic reforms" to, among other things, "improve health care."

See, here’s the thing. It’s not like . . . the US healthcare system is perfect. You’d have to be a moron to look at a system this flawed and hold it up as an example to emulate. There are a lot of really good things about our system and also a lot of really bad things. The same goes for socialized medicine. Moore, rather than create a film which will initiate debate on the state of healthcare in this country, merely made a 90-minute informercial for socialism. There are so many things wrong with the Canadian, British, and French healthcare systems that books can (and have) been written about it. Moore treats these countries as if they’re some fantastical mystery lands, with rivers of chocolate, where children laugh and dance and play with gumdrop smiles, knowing that all the healthcare they could ever want is right there at their fingertips for the taking.

Moore will claim that he’s interested in initiating debate. Far from it. The debate is already going on, he just wants to skew it towards his side. (Which is fascinating in an of itself. Michael Moore is a guy who thinks that the same government which can’t be trusted with your library records should be trusted with your health records.)

-- Lee @ Moorewatch.com

I've seen the movie and "90 minute infomercial for socialism" sounds about right. Nary a counter-argument in sight.

AP: "Michael Moore gives the accused little say in 'Sicko'"

Michael Moore gives the accused little say in 'Sicko' International Herald Tribune July 1, 2007. [The Associated Press]:

. . . At one point, Moore notes where the U.S. ranks in terms of health care around the world.

"The United States slipped to No. 37 in health care around the world, just slightly ahead of Slovenia," he said.

That ranking is based on a 2000 report from the World Health Organization that some health analysts viewed as misleading.

Moore does not say that one of the countries he highlighted, Cuba, is ranked 39th, below the U.S. Among the others, France is ranked No. 1, the United Kingdom ranked 18th and Canada ranked 30th. He does not give those rankings, either.

The report, based on 1997 data, measured not just the quality of care provided, but how well the countries prevented illness and how fairly the poor, minorities and other special populations are treated. . . .