Just watched Michael Moores SICKO

[peter may]

and it made me feel kinda sorry for you americans and your lousy healthcare service

[Janice]

When lardass finally has his heart attack or stroke, it will be American doctors managing his health care, right here in the U.S of A. Bank on it.

[Brian Damage]

Originally Posted by Janice

When lardass finally has his heart attack or stroke, it will be American doctors managing his health care, right here in the U.S of A. Bank on it.

[Fleet]

I hope you don't actually believe the garbage Michael Moron puts in his movies! All he does is distort facts. For instance, in that Fahrenheit 7/11 movie (or whatever it's called) there were 59 inaccuracies in it.

Actually, we have the best healthcare (quality of service) in the world.
Thousands of cardiac specialists, for instance.
Emergency room treatment for everyone who walks in whether they can pay for it or not.

I've read that many Canadians come down here for the health service.

[Ireneparalegal]

Just don't visit Martin Luther King/Drew Medical Center's E.R. in Los Angeles:

LOS ANGELES — New 911 tapes released Tuesday reveal that dispatchers refused to send help to a woman ignored by hospital staff as she lay dying on the floor of a Los Angeles emergency room.

Edith Isabel Rodriguez, 43, died after dispatchers on two 911 calls refused to contact paramedics or an ambulance to send her to another facility, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday. The second dispatcher went so far as to argue with the caller over whether it was a real emergency.

Rodriguez died of a perforated bowel on May 9 at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital. Her death was ruled accidental by the Los Angeles County coroner's office.

In the calls — posted after they were released by the county Sheriff's Department under the newspaper's California Public Records Act request — callers plead for help for the woman left bleeding from the mouth and writhing in pain for 45 minutes on the hospital's floor.

"I'm in the emergency room. My wife is dying and the nurses don't want to help her out," he said in Spanish through an interpreter.

"What's wrong with her?" a dispatcher asked.

"She's vomiting blood," Prado said.

"OK, and why aren't they helping her?" the dispatcher asked.

"They're watching her there and they're not doing anything. They're just watching her," Prado said.

The dispatcher told the man to contact a doctor and then said paramedics won't pick up his wife because she already was in a hospital. Later, she told Prado to contact county police officers at a security desk.

Experts have said Rodriguez could have survived had she been treated early enough. The head of the county's Department of Health Services, which oversees the facility, has called her death "inexcusable."

A second 911 call was placed eight minutes later by a woman bystander who requested that an ambulance be sent to take Rodriguez to some other hospital for care.

"She's definitely sick and there's a guy that's ignoring her," the woman told a different dispatcher.

During the brief call, the dispatcher argued with the woman over whether there really was an emergency.

"I cannot do anything for you for the quality of the hospital. ... It is not an emergency. It is not an emergency, ma'am," he said.

"You're not here to see how they're treating her," the woman replied.

The dispatcher refused to call paramedics and told the woman that she should contact hospital supervisors "and let them know" if she is unhappy.

"May God strike you, too, for acting the way you just acted," the woman said finally.

"No, negative ma'am, you're the one," he said.

"What's real confusing … was that she was at a medical facility," Sheriff's Capt. Steven M. Roller, who is in charge of the Century Station, which handled the calls, told the Times. "That poses some real quandaries."

Roller told the Times that the second dispatcher's tone was inappropriate.

"As a station commander, I don't like any of my employees getting rude or nasty with any caller, regardless, and in that particular case, obviously, the employee's conduct could have been better," Roller said, telling the Times the employee received written "counseling."

Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital formerly was known as Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center. The name was changed as part of a reorganization after years of problems including patient deaths blamed on sloppy nursing care and hospital mismanagement that has threatened its federal funding.

[Janice]

MOORE'S SICK RX

MICHAEL Moore's new film "Sicko," a critique of the U.S. health-care system and paean to socialized medicine around the world, premiered amid great fanfare at Cannes last month. Time magazine reviewer Richard Corliss rejoiced, "The upside of this populist documentary is that there are no policy wonks crunching numbers."

Wouldn't want anyone messing up Moore's fantasy with . . . facts.

The American health-care system undeniably has serious problems, and Moore effectively dramatizes the suffering of people caught up in them. Yet he often exaggerates those problems. For example, he frequently refers to the 47 million Americans without health insurance, but fails to point out that most are uninsured for only brief periods, or that millions are eligible for programs like Medicaid but fail to apply.

Moreover, he implies that people without insurance don't get health care. In fact, most do. Hospitals are legally obliged to provide care regardless of ability to pay, and while physicians don't face the same requirements, few are willing to deny treatment because a patient lacks insurance.

Treatment for the uninsured may well mean financial hardship, but by and large they do get care.

Moore talks a lot about life expectancy, suggesting that people in Canada, Britain, France and even Cuba live longer than Americans because of their health-care systems. But most experts agree that life expectancies are a poor measure of health care, because they are affected by too many other factors like violent crime, poverty, obesity, tobacco and drug use, and other issues unrelated to a country's health system. Americans in Utah live longer than those in New York City, despite having essentially the same health care.

And when you compare the outcome for specific diseases, like cancer or heart disease, the United States clearly outperforms the rest of the world. When former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi needed heart surgery last year, he didn't go to an Italian hospital or to France, Canada or Cuba. He came to the Cleveland Clinic.

While overly critical of U.S. health care, Moore overlooks the flaws of national health-care systems. He suggests, for example, that Canada's waiting lists are mere inconveniences, interviewing apparently healthy Canadians who claim they have no problem getting care. Yet nearly 800,000 Canadians aren't so lucky. The Canadian Supreme Court has pointed out that many Canadians waiting for treatment suffer chronic pain and, "Patients die while on the waiting list."

Similarly, Moore shows happy Britons who don't have to pay for their prescription drugs. But he didn't talk to any of the 850,000 Britons waiting for admission to National Health Service hospitals. Every year, shortages force the NHS to cancel as many as 50,000 operations. Roughly 40 percent of cancer patients never get to see an oncology specialist.

Delays in getting treatment are often so long that nearly 20 percent of colon-cancer cases considered treatable when first diagnosed are incurable by the time treatment is finally offered. Perhaps Moore could have talked to some of these folks?

Visiting France, Moore waxes ecstatic about the government's willingness to pay for nannies to help care for newborns. He apparently doesn't notice that the taxes necessary to pay for such a system have given France one of the lowest rates of economic growth in Europe or that many of the country's best and brightest are fleeing.

Moore also slides over the facts when he implies that the French system is "free." It's funded through a 13.55 percent payroll tax, a 5.25 percent income tax and other taxes on tobacco, alcohol and drug-company revenues. And the system is still running a $15.6 billion deficit.

And French patients still have to pay high copayments and other out-of-pocket expenses, and physicians can bill patients for charges over and above what the government reimburses. As a result, 92 percent of French citizens have private health insurance to complement the government system. Yet there remain shortages of modern health-care technology and a lack of access to the most advanced care.

America needs to have a serious debate about how to fix our health-care system. But Moore's demagoguery and refusal to address the numbers will do little to contribute to that debate. Maybe he could've used a few policy wonks after all.


NY Post
Michael Tanner is director of health and welfare studies at the Cato Institute.

[Janice]

http://newsbusters.org/node/13169

John's Partner Blasts Michael Moore and 'Sicko'

Maybe Michael Moore should listen to people who actually have socialized medicine—at least those who are allowed to disagree with their government’s policies. Singer Elton John’s partner David Furnish slammed Michael Moore and his latest docuganda “Sicko” for misrepresenting the quality of the US health care system. On June 02, Furnish stated, ”[America] was the only place to get good treatment”(emphasis mine):

Elton John's partner David Furnish has hit out at filmmaker Michael Moore for criticising the US healthcare system.
The star - who lives in England - insists new movie Sicko is inaccurate, and has praised America's medical services - branding it "the only place to get good treatment".

He says: "I completely disagree with Michael Moore. With my own father, when he was ill, the only option was to hire a jet and fly him to America. It was the only place to get good treatment."

Furnish flew his father, who lives in Canada, to America for the fast, advanced quality care that he does not believe can be had elsewhere.
According to Canadian journalists who saw “Sicko,” Moore gave “lavish praise” Canada’s socialized health care system in comparison to the US, but once Canadian journalists challenged those claims, Moore changed his tune about Canada's medical utopia and began bad-mouthing the country’s program. Although he now criticizes the Canadian system, he still states that it is better than ours, although to “insult” it, he claimed, “The Canadian system…if not that far above us…The French system is the best in the world.”

If Canada is that much better than the US, why would Furnish leave the country? If socialized medicine that better than the free-market system, then why didn’t Furnish take his father to the UK or France for the “best in the world” level of treatment? Instead, he chose the US. It could have even been free of charge in France.

I wonder if Michael Moore will call Sir Elton’s partner a greedy corporate dupe for spreading the capitalist lie that American health care is better than the rest of the world's. Surely, he’ll chastise Furnish for not dutifully waiting in line for months for treatment, even though survivability rates for many diseases like breast cancer (fatal to 46% in UK vs. 25% in US) and prostate cancer (fatal to 57% of Brits, 25% of Canadians and 19% of Americans) are significantly lower in Canada and the UK than in the US.

David Furnish and Elton John are a popular celebrity couple in the UK and Europe. Any time that a celebrity bashes Bush or the US or supports Moore, the media are quick to cover it. Will they cover this celebrity attacking “Sicko” and Michael Moore? So far, not in America, and only minimal coverage in Europe. It is still early, so it is possible.


Update 06/04 06:40 EST:
The UK's the Times apologized for criticizing Furnish for supposedly flying his father to the US on a private jet, which for some reason was an indcation of wrong doing. WENN reported that "Furnishes father took a commercial Air Canada flight."

If a son can afford to send his sick father to a hospital on a private jet instead of a crowded plane so he is comfortable, then why should UK'sTimes care? What Furnish was rumored to have done for his father sounded rather compassionate and thoughtful to me, but not everyone feels the same way. A "Sicko" fan in England contacted me to say he agrees with the Times' criticism of Furnish over the "guff" about the private jet. Since the dad actually flew on Air Canada and not on a private jet, the point is moot.

[Nighthawk76]

Michael Moore rocks! It's nice to see someone who tells it like it is.

[Janice]

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_5961927

Lowry: Michael Moore's 'Sicko' rehashes tired leftist propaganda
Salt Lake Tribune

Is all that ails the U.S. health-care system that it's not run by a communist dictatorship? That has long been a premise of apologists for Fidel Castro who extol the virtues of medical care on his totalitarian island nation.

Left-wing documentary filmmaker Michael Moore is reviving this Cold War relic of an argument in his new movie on health care, ''Sicko,'' which premieres in a few weeks and favorably compares the Cuban health-care system to ours. Moore ostentatiously took a few sick 9/11 workers to Cuba for care. ''If they can do this,'' Moore told Time magazine, referring to the Cubans, ''we can do it.''

All that the Cuban government has done, however, is run a decades-long propaganda campaign to convince credulous or dishonest people that its health-care system is worth emulating. These people believe - or pretend to believe for ideological reasons - that a dictatorship can crush a country's economy and spirit, yet still deliver exemplary medical care.

Cuban health care works only for the select few: if you are a high-ranking member of the party or the military and have access to top-notch clinics; or a health-care tourist who can pay in foreign currency at a special facility catering to foreigners; or a documentarian who can be relied upon to produce a lickspittle film whitewashing the system.

Ordinary Cubans experience the wasteland of the real system. Even aspirin and Pepto-Bismol can be rare and there's a black market for them. According to a report in the Canadian newspaper the National Post: ''Hospitals are falling apart, surgeons lack basic supplies and must reuse latex gloves. Patients must buy their sutures on the black market and provide bed sheets and food for extended hospital stays.''

How could it be any different when Cuba embarked on a campaign of economic self-sabotage with the revolution of 1959? It went from third in per-capita food consumption in Latin America to near the bottom, according to a State Department report. Per-capita consumption of basic foodstuffs like cereals and meat actually has declined from the 1950s. There are fewer cars (true of no other country in the hemisphere), and development of electrical power has trailed every other Latin American country except Haiti.

But the routine medical care, we're supposed to believe, is superb. The statistic frequently cited for this proposition is that Cuba has the lowest infant mortality rate in Latin America. Put aside that the reflexively dishonest Cuban government is the ultimate source for these figures. Cuba had the lowest infant mortality rate in Latin America prior to the revolution and has lost ground to other countries around the world since. It also has an appallingly high abortion rate, meaning most problem pregnancies are pre-emptively ended.

Other countries in Latin America have made advances in health without Cuba's vicious suppression of human rights (which, no doubt, contributes to the island having the highest suicide rate in Latin America). The way public health works in Cuba was nicely illustrated by the case of Dr. Desi Mendoza Rivero, who complained of an outbreak of dengue fever that the regime preferred to ignore in the late 1990s, and was jailed for his trouble.

As is always the case with Cuba, anything that's wrong is blamed on the United States. If there is a shortage of medicine, well, that's because of the U.S. embargo. But the United States is not the only country in the world that sells drugs. Cuba could buy them from Europe or elsewhere, and the U.S. embargo makes an exception for medicines.

The only reason to fantasize about Cuban health care is to stick a finger in the eye of the Yanquis. For the likes of Michael Moore, the true glory of Cuba is less its health care than the fact that it is an enemy of the United States. That's why romanticizing Cuban medicine isn't just folly, but itself qualifies as a kind of sickness.

[Janice]

Originally Posted by Blair's Number #1 Fan

Michael Moore rocks! It's nice to see someone who tells it like it is.

You think Cuba has better health care than the United States?

[Nighthawk76]

Originally Posted by Janice

You think Cuba has better health care than the United States?

No, I don't. But the heath care in this country is not what it should be.

[Janice]

Originally Posted by Blair's Number #1 Fan

No, I don't. But the heath care in this country is not what it should be.

You said Moore rocks for telling it like it is. He's saying that health care in Cuba is superior to the U.S. Still think he rocks? I think he's got rocks in his head.

[Janice]

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=264727916191999&kw=michael,moore

Less Of Moore

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Hypocrisy: Propaganda filmmaker Michael Moore is wondering where America's soul has gone. He could get the answer by engaging in a little bit of introspection.

Moore is being feted and toasted at the Cannes Film Festival for his latest manipulative movie "Sicko" just as he had been for "Fahrenheit 9/11." Imagine that: Garnering applause at a snooty international event for anti-American movies.

Naturally, the media treat Moore as if he's a serious person making serious movies, which lets him explain his higher motives in creating an opus with a schoolyard title.

"I'm trying to explore bigger ideas and bigger issues, and in this case the bigger issue in this film is who are we as a people?" Moore told reporters after a press screening.

"Why do we behave the way we behave? What has become of us? Where is our soul?"

Speaking of "soul," the real soul-destroying problem we have in this country comes from a cadre of hostile culturati who harbor malice for the virtues that made America strong and proud. Moore is mainly an ego-driven opportunist, but he fits in neatly with the sneering elitists since he speaks their language so well.

The elitists — who are always on the left — trade in lies, half-truths and disinformation. They're anti-capitalists (except when it benefits them).

Their goal is to undermine our American tradition of free men, free markets and individuality that has served better than any other system in history. They dreamily long for progressive (or more precisely, statist and socialist) policies to regiment human behavior. They are nostalgic for a time that never was in this country but regrettably was in the Soviet Union.

The elitists' rejection of our time-honored values has torn at our souls, assaulted our sensibilities, eroded our work ethic, softened our attitudes about responsibility and increased our sense of entitlement. The last insult is in their mainstreaming of mushy thinking.

The insufferably narcissistic Moore, who lives on the ritzy Upper West Side of Manhattan while portraying himself to be just another working man, has helped the cause by using the art of distortion to paint America as a villain.

In "Sicko," his critique of the U.S. health care system, Moore tries to claim that U.S. medical care is a captive of free-market "greed." Nearly 20 years earlier, he used "Roger & Me" to try to paint General Motors and then-CEO Roger Smith as cogs of a rapacious American corporate machine that devours the weak and the poor.

Moore was most dishonest when he made "Fahrenheit 9/11." He accused President Bush of using the 9/11 attack as a rah-rah excuse to go to war with Iraq. It was propaganda. Dave Kopel of the Colorado-based Independence Institute documented 59 deceits in the movie.

In his Riefenstahl-ish "Sicko," Moore tries to make the argument that Cuban health care is superior in both quality and cost to U.S. health care.

But if it were Moore's own health at stake, would he choose Cuba or the U.S.? This year even dictator Fidel Castro had to call in a doctor from abroad to get proper medical care for a relatively uncomplicated illness.

But don't say anything negative about the island-prison's health care. Doing so has landed many a Cuban in prison — assuming the care itself didn't put him in the ground — as would making a film that criticized the Cuban government, even on milder terms than Moore criticized the U.S.

It's reasonable to think that Moore himself may have considered the irony. But his greed and ego override it.

Were Moore merely poking at an ossified establishment, were he a modern-day Will Rogers or H.L. Mencken, then his work might have value.

But he has tried to pass off his fiction as fact. He goes for the emotional at the expense of the rational. He stages scenes and takes cheap shots. His is the work of a pretentious auteur looking for his own soul. That such a man should be praised is a shame on everyone involved.

[Nighthawk76]

Originally Posted by Janice

You said Moore rocks for telling it like it is. He's saying that health care in Cuba is superior to the U.S. Still think he rocks? I think he's got rocks in his head.

I don't agree with everything he says, but I do agree with a lot of what he says.

[AKA]

I've grown quite cool on Michael Moore. I don't think I'll be seeing this movie.