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Kyle Smith Rebuttal of Michael Moore’s “Sicko”
By Kyle | June 25, 2007
Kyle Smith Review: Michael Moore’s ‘Sicko’
Tuesday’s New York Post features my review of Michael Moore’s “Sicko,” a film that will be released in theaters on June 29 but has already been released nationwide, on many Web sites, free, with Moore’s blessing. What follows is a greatly expanded, much more detailed version of the one-star review I wrote for the print edition of The Post.
Michael Moore’s latest documentary “Sicko†is an urgent bipartisan plea. Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, Yankees and Red Sox can surely all agree, says Moore, that our health care system ought to be run by Fidel Castro.The silliness of Moore’s oeuvre is so self-evident that being able to spot it is not liberal or conservative either; it’s a basic intelligence test, like the ability to match square peg with square hole. (I’ll be writing more on Moore on my blog, kylesmithonline.com).
Even Moore does not believe what he says, and his films don’t bring about change-â€â€union membership did not skyrocket nor corporate downsizing trickle off after “Roger and Me,” there was no movement towards banning guns after “Bowling for Columbine,” and John Kerry did not have to fill out any change of address forms in 2004. Moore’s documentaries are mere political slapstick that could have been made by a third Farrelly brother or an eighth Stooge. I will pay him the honor of treating him with his own meds. How else can I deal with a film that calls Hillary Clinton “sexy”?
The bulk of “Sicko” is given over to the stories of Americans who got the run-around from health insurers. These people were told they didn’t qualify for benefits because the requested procedures were too experimental or because of pre-existing conditions. The most absurd example of several is, perhaps, that of the woman who says that after she received benefits, the check was stopped because she had previously suffered an undisclosed yeast infection.
There is no way to know whether this claim is true because Moore’s style is to present whatever information he likes without checking it. He told “Entertainment Weekly” “absolutely not,” when asked whether he felt any need to get the other side of the story. So, over time, his work rusts out from within as the facts eat away at it. The central idea of “Bowling for Columbine,” for instanceâ€â€that the killers were subconsciously driven to their actions by the presence of a weapons manufacturing plant in Littleton—turned out to be not only conceptually insane but literally untrue. The plant did not make what Moore called “weapons of mass destruction” but rather space launch vehicles for TV satellites. “Roger & Me,†which presented Moore as unable to secure an interview with the GM chief Roger Smith, was also a 90-minute lie: Moore did talk to Smith, a fact revealed by Ralph Nader.
One Los Angeles woman in “Sicko†says her daughter died because her insurance company told her to take her daughter to a different hospital than the first one she went to, and there are several other similarly grim tales. Moore is smart enough to know that a depressed audience is an absent audience, so he mixes the genuinely sad cases with ones that are just dopey, such as the one about the young six-foot beansprout rejected for coverage because he was underweight.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 exerciseâ€â€street-marching, banner-hoisting and strikesâ€â€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! “To any Canadian who has ever been forced to go to emergency, this would seem unbelievable,†writes Thomas Malkom, a vehemently pro-Moore columnist for Canada’s paper The Star. The Canadian Supreme Court struck down a law forbidding private insurance in a 2005 decision, ruling that “Access to a waiting list is not access to health care” The decision resulted from a Canadian case in which a man waited a year for hip-replacement surgery, and Canada has started down the road of privatization. Check out the Canadian movie “The Barbarian Invasions” (which is, like “Sicko,” a fiction film) for a view of how Canadians view their system: agonizing waits; trips across the border to Vermont to get access to modern technology; fetid facilities modeled, seemingly, on an American oneâ€â€the Confederate field hospital in “Gone with the Wind.”
Here is Dr. David Gratzer, the Canadian author of “The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save Health Care,” who believes both the US and Canadian systems are deeply flawed:
“Like most Canadians, I believed that we had the best-run health-care system in the world. Because the system was publically owned, I assumed that compassion came before profit and that everyone got good care. . .After I entered medical school, however, my view of Canadian health care changed…I trained in emergency rooms that were chronically, chaotically, dangerously overcrowded, not only in my hometown of Winnipeg, but all across Canada. I met a middle-aged man with sleep problems who was booked for an appointment with a specialist three years later; a man with pain following a simple hernia repair who was referred to a pain clinic with a two-year wait list; a woman with breast cancer who was asked to wait four more months before starting the lifesaving radiation therapy. According to the government’s own statistics, some 1.2 million Canadians couldn’t get a family doctor. In some rural areas, town councils resorted to lotteries: the winners would get appointments with the only general practitioners around.”
Mere anecdotes? Yes, but mine cancel out Moore’s. Where are the stats? Moore emphasizes life-expectancy figures in which the US slightly lags some other Western countries. But life expectancy involves many factors; two that Moore is especially knowledgeable about, obesity and homicide by firearm, are special American plagues. Here’s a stat: The percentage of patients having to wait more than four months for non-emergency surgery is about five times higher in Canada and seven times higher in Britain than it is here. [see Gratzer, 171]
In his EW interview, Moore tacitly admitted that “Sicko” lies about wait times, saying, “Well, okay, let’s set up a system where we don’t have the Canadian wait. Let’s set up a system where we take what they do right and don’t do the things that we do wrong.” Yes, and let’s also make sure that every girl gets to be the prettiest girl in town.
Those who have mastered basic economics can skip this paragraph. Not everyone can have everything they want because there is not an unlimited supply of anything (except maybe air); that’s why Canada and Britain have lotteries to determine who gets treatment. Deciding who gets what and when involves rationing, either by price or by waiting or some combination of the two. If the Mets announced that World Series tickets were free to anyone lining up in front of the Shea Stadium box office, you’d have to go get in line now. Medicare, which isn’t an unlimited benefit, is by itself projected to eat up a third of federal tax revenues by 2030[see Gratzer, p. 7]. There isn’t enough money in the U.S. to pay for free, wait-free top-quality universal health care. The law of supply and demand can no more be repealed than the law that all documentary films must be left-wing. Gratzer’s book suggests a real-world solution: decentralization that gives patients more choice: “both failed options [HMOs and Medicare/Medicaid] share one fatal feature. They remove choices from patients and give them to government or corporate bureaucrats. Restricting patient choices in this way, flouting the laws of basic economics, has been a mistake. It’s the reason why, while pocket calculators have declined in price from $500 to $5, the price of pacemakers keeps rising.”
When Moore visits a British pharmacy in which all drugs cost ten bucks, what he isn’t showing is who invented the drugs: evil American profit-hungry pharmaceutical firms that would effectively be shut down if there were a $10 price limit on all prescriptions. Firms spend hundreds of millions developing and testing a drug while the patent clock ticks down, only to be forced to start over if the drug is rejected by the FDA. If a drug is approved, they have only a few years to recoup costs (and the cost of all the previous failures) by charging “exorbitant” market prices because the drug will soon go generic, i.e. non-exorbitant, i.e. virtually free. The Brits freeload on American technology. Being regulated to death is the reason the once-vibrant European pharmaceutical industry has been lapped by its U.S. counterpart in the last few decades. Want your drugs invented and open-heart surgery performed by the people who gave us FEMA, Amtrak and the CIA? Does the Post Office do a better job than FedEx? I can’t mail a package via the federal government without waiting in line 20 minutes–and the Post Office is the best-run federal agency.
Moore is outwardly a genial buffoon; inwardly he is an authoritarian buffoon. He lets it show in two long episodes: a straight-faced interview with the UK’s infamous Commie, Tony Benn, whom Moore presents as an expert on the transformative power of socialism, and the famous-before-anyone-saw-it sequence, first reported in The Post, in which Moore takes some 9/11 rescue workers with lingering health problems to Cuba.
Moore, at a Havana hospital, says he requested that his group receive exactly the same care as any Cuban who walked in‗and that’s exactly what they got.” As comedy, this statement is on a par with the sex scene in “Knocked Up,” the chest waxing in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and the moment in “An Inconvenient Truth” when Al Gore tells us that the ecology’s no. 1 enemy, China, is in fact “on the cutting edge” of environmentalism.
In the Cuba section of “Sicko,” so many guys in white coats (don’t look at the camera, guys!) scurry around Moore’s patients listening to symptoms, peering at X-rays and firing up high-tech medical equipment that the scene seems to have been co-written by Groucho and Karl Marx. If Fidel himself gets this level of care, it’s no wonder the guy has outlasted nine presidents.
You can’t film anywhere in Castro’s Alcatraz without government say-so, meaning the whole scene was as phony as what happens when Frank Bruni walks into a four-star restaurant, and if there is a Michael Moore of Cuba, he is in jail right now. Reporters without Borders calls Cuba the world’s second biggest prison for journalists after China. But Moore solemnly reports Cuba’s official health statistics, which are of course a fiction dreamed up by El Presidente, because Moore’s motto is to trust no authority figure from cringing corporate spokesman on up to Washington windbags. Except dictators. Dictators, he’ll take your word for it. I expected Moore to protect himself with a thin coat of disclaimer, just a line to say, “Look, I know Cuba is actually a prison nation where nobody’s gotten a new car since Fredo betrayed Michael, but I’m just using this as an extreme example for ironic purposes.” Instead, his irony runs the other way: He plays scare music over an image of Castro to get a laugh. I say that again: he thinks the idea that Castro is evil is so obviously ridiculous that he says it sarcastically and expects you to giggle along. Moore calls Cuban health care among the best in the world. Nonsense. Cuba is short on everything from clean drinking water and aspirin on up.
The health care industry could not ask for a more ideal opponent than Moore; the idea that US health should go to a single-payer model is held by plenty of reasonable people, but Moore is not one of them. Despite his apparent belief that he can seem moderate by narrating the film in a sing-song, I’m-talking-to-a-child-or-moron tone, the man can no more hide his Marxism than his belly. He presents not only Tony Benn but Che Guevera’s daughter as voices of sanity and, through a French doctor, Moore sneaks in the Marxist slogan “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Everyone who has ever lived in a country that put this idea into practice has found that it actually means this: Give the country whatever it asks for and take back whatever it gives you, and do so without complaint or go to prison. Moore also runs lots of old Soviet propaganda footage with comical music on the soundtrack as if to suggest that Stalin was just another campy, overhyped entertainment figure–Martin Short with a mustache.
Moore has been along long enough that his ideas are starting to contradict one other; on his Web site, he once said of Al Qaeda’s grunts in Iraq, “They are the REVOLUTION, the minutemen,” but in this film he tries to jog around to the right of Paul Wolfowitz: He pretends to be aghast that the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay (is any other group of 380 people in the world receiving as much attention as these guys?) get top medical care. So, Mike: don’t these heroes, these minutemen, deserve a doc?
Moore comes up with a few zingers, though fewer than in previous films. There’s a funny montage of a Congressman making speeches on health care in which he keeps tearing up on cue and talking about how much he loves his mama. Even I laughed when, following an American north of the border to get some CanuckCare, Moore said, “We’re Americans. We go into other countries when we need to.” The founder of socialized medicine in Canada is described as the most important man in the country’s history, “even more than Wayne Gretzky!”
Let’s not give too much credit to Moore, though, for what he did about a guy who runs an anti-Moore Web site who was going to be forced to shut it downâ€â€because of a health crisis he couldn’t afford. When Moore found out about it, he anonymously sent a $12,000 check, or .0005 of the money he was paid to make this movie. An anonymous check is not actually anonymous if you announce it in a movie; then it becomes simply a bargain method for buying stories in the press that paint you as a nice guy. Moore, of course, has a Castro-ish history of suppressing dissent But he is free to prove himself a patron of the loyal opposition. He can send my check in care of the Post.
August 4th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
[...] you thought I was tough on Michael Moore and his silly health-care fantasy “Sicko,” which is to socialism fanboys what [...]
August 5th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
This displayus your ignorance…
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.
August 9th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
agree with your criticisms of Moore.
Equally disagree with your comments on health care. The health care question these days is so convoluted that it is near impossible to get to the core, which seems to be the goal of the pharmaceutical companies, and unending fodder of media, which, again, seems to be the goal of the pharmaceutical companies.
i would really respect the first publication i see to represent an “unbiased” view with respect to pharmaceutical companies….in society it doesn’t exist. everybody from the U.S., to France, England, Canada and even to South Africa, Brazil and Thailand, believe all life’s ills can be cured by private or public insurance, and are convinced that they can afford to buy it, or have already bought it.
For shame on the media for convincing them of that! I have yet to see much representation from reasonable media with any understanding of the costs assosciated with what the media seems to promote. Are you all owned by the pharmaceuticals, or just ignorant? neither is a valid excuse. I propose some of you get out and do some responsible, minimally-educated journalism and stop feeding the fire.
August 10th, 2007 at 10:58 am
My husband and I lived in Scotland from 2003-2004. Right after we moved there,I was seen by a doctor right away, at no cost. My medications did cost me just $10. My husband, who is over 60, got his meds for free. I needed a chest x-ray, which I got right away and didn’t cost me a cent. When my husband had back pain, a doctor came right to the house on a Sunday morning, examined my husband for an hour and gave him some pain pills. Didn’t cost us a thing. Did I mention we were living way out in the countryside? Kevin, you don’t “wait two years to be seen for strep throat.” Simply not true…
August 16th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
[...] enjoy: http://kylesmithonline.com/?p=306 Add to del.icio.us! Seed Newsvine leave a comment [...]
August 16th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
Congrats, Kyle. I’ve lived in England 22 years, I spend 4 months a year in France every year for 18 years, I’ve lived over 3 years in Canada and my sister has lived in Canada 20+ years… So i can comment first hand on what the movie discusses… and i agree with most of what you say
I really enjoyed the read…
As a reply to Darlene Ensor (comment above mine). I think that precisely because you lived in a small place way out in the countryside, that’s precisely why you didn’t have to wait. I lived DOWNTOWN London (Marble Arch, dead center), and trust me, I once waiting 6 hours when I had a brochitis that was making me spit up blood (because my case was not considered urgent).
I think Kevin was using a tad bit of sarcasm there when he mentioned 2 yrs for a step throat…
But the point is exactly this: your experience and my experience of the British healthcare system are opposites. What does that mean? It means that there is no such and as black OR white. All i wanted from MM’s movie was for him to show us the good AND the bad from all systems concerned… If he only shows us the good from the British system, then how am I supposed to believe that there is ONLY bad in the US?
August 18th, 2007 at 1:04 am
Some of your comments are childish - idiocy of claiming that French people’s main hobbies are protesting and striking, really!?
Can’t you figure out, yet, given that the US spends double per capita what westen countries spend with socialised medicine,that supply and demand factors are distorted in health care - that’s Economics 101 from PC, USA.
Tony Benn is not a Commnist but even if he was he is not discredited by that label alone. Take your white pointed hat off and think rationally.
August 18th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
“The Brits freeload on American technology”? Give me a break! The British Government (like most first-world governments) substantially subsidises the cost of most pharmaceuticals so that its citizens can afford to use them, i.e. big pharma still makes their profits. At the end of the day, big pharma wouldn’t bother selling its drugs in countries other than the US if this wasn’t the case, would it? Futhermore, only an idiot would state or imply that the government and beaureacrats would be involved in inventing new drugs under a universal health-care system. I enjoyed reading your article but you are employing the same selective tactics that you accuse Michael Moore of employing in his film. And that’s unfortunate.
August 19th, 2007 at 12:11 am
Concerned Citizen, thank you for bringing up this point as many people don’t understand why drugs can’t be free or cheap for everyone.
US pharma companies pay massive amounts to develop a drug and they have to charge a sufficient amount to make a profit. Americans pay these costs through their insurance companies. Other governments such as Canada and the UK negotiate lower prices with the drug companies. The US companies sell the drugs to these countries for whatever they can get; once you’ve developed the drug at a cost of, say, $250 million, any additional money you can make, you take–even if it’s ten cents a pill–because your costs are already sunk into the drug. Otherwise you’d fail to sell any pills at all in the UK and that doesn’t help you pay back your nut.
A lot of people say, hey, then why can’t the US government negotiate lower prices with the drug firms? Well, nice idea, we’d all like to have high-tech items being developed for us and then given to us. Except no company stays in business if it doesn’t make a profit. If
there were a maximum price of $10 for a bottle of prescription drugs in the US, it would have a devastating effect on the drug industry. They just can’t make their development money back at that rate. As it is now, US consumers might pay, through their insurers, $200 for a bottle of pills, while Brits are paying a fraction of that. Pills aren’t like cars, each one of which costs lots in labor and parts to put together; once you’ve developed and tested the drug, which can take decades of extremely expensive research, producing them costs virtually nothing. So a pharma company makes “a profit” in this sense if the UK forces them to sell drugs that cost pennies to manufacture for $10.
Most European countries have drug policies like this, and as a result the European pharmaceutical business has greatly suffered while US firms have taken the lead in the last three decades. That’s what I mean by Europeans benefitting from the fact that Americans pay huge prices for drugs, usually through insurers but sometimes not.
September 10th, 2007 at 9:37 am
You must either be as dumb as a brick or a ‘W’ A–hole!
Moore’s films have shown the other side of an administration that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Corporate America and the Saudis. If you haven’t experienced ANY of what Moore describes in Sicko, then you are just ‘lucky & healthy’. I have had to do battle with my insurance provider for such simple things as an ocassianal visit to the chiropractor for my arthritus (in my neck) They hired a second company who reviews my visits and has cut me off. When I speak to them, I get nowhere except referred to my provider (UHC) and they send me back to them. (ANC) A ‘royal run-around’, but you think Moore is, what?…Un-American.
You, sir, are just plain ignorant and/or selfish.
Reed Kalisher
September 11th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
first, thanks for writing this. the american system is a mess for sure, but Moore’s movies are so one-sided they need to be balanced. unfortunately most reviewers can only manage spitting hate or adoring praise. i guess having a clear opinion sells, as Moore’s popularity shows.
the fact that americans subsidize drugs around the world by paying inflated prices is true, and sounds to me like just another symptom of a broken system. it seems to hearten you to say U.S. pharmaceutical companies are doing laps around european ones. I’d rather europeans made the drugs and OUR grannies got them cheaper. its the huge profits of these companies that drive people nuts, not that they make a profit, or recover their r&d expenditures. huge profits unevenly billed to americans, as you point out.
in the same way articles like yours help balance Moore’s biased propoganda, Moores movie was needed to counter the years or television propoganda we’ve all seen. conservative pundits and politicians stoically defending the status quo, pocketing cash, and demonizing our “enemies”.. like France and Cuba.
the real shame is people need to go to a theater and pay $10 to see stuff that should be reported (more fairly) on the nightly news. most americans dont know a damn thing about foreign systems, they just assume theirs is the best. When i saw Farenheit 9/11 it kind of outraged me that americans had to pay $10 to see footage of soldiers and dead in Iraq that was unvetted by the Fatherland. where is the news on this? do we now get news in the theater, once every 3 years? its shameful.
September 11th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
This is the most ridiculous and partisan review disguised as neutral commentary I think I’ve ever read. Thank God I don’t read the NYPost and this mindless dribble drabble everytime I want an honest, unbiased opinion of my films. Kyle Smith - check the tomatometer on RT… I think you’ll find the truth has emerged from the abstract guidelines of film criticism, something that will never be found eminating from your fouled pen. If you want the facts, they are easily available and trackable…and to date not a single right winger has been able to refute any single hard fact presented in any MM film. True, MM has never pretended to be the dry, unentertaining documentarian his detractors would prefer him to be… rather, his oeuvre showcases the man behind the camera quite well and paints him to be the extremely gifted documentarian the halfway intelligent can derive from a single viewing of this wonderful film. Finally, to say that his films do not make a difference is absurd. Do some research and get YOUR facts straight before penning this garbage. Finally, I’d like to add that it came as no great shock that you made a reference to MM’s weight. Ultimately, it’s the only real criticism of him that ever stands up. Bravo.
September 12th, 2007 at 8:07 pm
Well, about Big Pharma and European profits. I have to say you have not quite understood how things work here in Europe…if a drug costs $10 to the patient, it does NOT mean that the corporate does receive only $10 from the selling of the drug. Rather, it recevies the whole price - only difference is, the rest of it is paid by the government. So if the company decides to sell the drug at $200 a box, the state pays $190 and the patient $10. Same for medical tests. They are not miracolously cheaper here in Europe than they are in America, nor do our governments illegaly put a cap on the price. Simply, the expense is split, and governments pay most of the bills. This is not always true - for example, here in Italy (2nd best system in the world, although we do have our big share of problems, we are far from perfect - but as a constant hospital visitor, let me tell you, we are damn near) drugs are subdivided in three categories - category A, you do not pay it, it’s free and paid by the state, category B, you do provide some money but most is paid by the state, category C, you pay it on your own. The category into which a drug falls is decided based on the importance of the drug - a cancer-treating chemotherapic agent will not cost you anything, while you will have to pay an aspirin full cost.
And about queues. True, often people have to wait too much. But it is also true that queues are generally based on the seriousness of the injury. If you arrive at the ER with a light headache, and while you are waiting there arrive a person with a serious trauma to his leg, someone in a coma, and someone else who has got fever, even if you arrived earlier you will lag behind and have to wait. Simply put, those people need to see the doctors more than you, and there are strict guidelines to decide to which category, as a patient, you belong. It is annoying to wait, and sometimes secretaries do make mistakes. But all in all, I think that the seriousness of the injury should be the most important factor in deciding who gets treated first.
Same goes for medical exams. True, some people have to wait months before getting one (if they do not to private institutions; there IS this possibility, our system is not purely public). But that’s because people with more serious injuries do get the best places, and can displace people from queue if need be. Again, I find it quite correct. If someone is a medical emergency or has in any case a grave illness/condition, there is no argument I can oppose saying that myself, with my light headache, should go first. Also, as Michael Moore pointed out in his movie (which I did like, although I do know he is partisan and that not everything he said can be true, but I’d bet a very good bit is) private health system does not mean you get to do necessary medical exams early - if ever. I guess nobody has refuted that point.
I think you Americans should ask yourself how come that you pay double pro-capita in comparison to other countries about health systems. When both sides of Atlantic do make R&D in medical areas (it may be that you Americans are catching on, but European corporates are still pretty big and good at their business, it’s not like they are agonizing). We do not have a perfect system - but at least, in our countries, if someone gets to the hospital and discovers he has cancer, he gets to hear “ok, we are treating you, do not worry about anything, these are the tests you will make in the next three weeks, treatment beginning immediately after” and not “ok, the beginning tests will cost you $2000, that is 10% of their costs, later we will talk about the cost of the treatment” (anedoctical, but true, direct comparison of an Italian who got diagnosed there in America and went back to Italy to get treated).
September 15th, 2007 at 7:05 pm
[...] night John Stossel of ABC News made many of the points I did in my original take on Michael Moore’s Sicko, but with the big plus that Stossel managed to score an interview with Moore, who like the CEOs and [...]
September 15th, 2007 at 11:08 pm
[...] Finally, Michael Moore is put in his place. John Stossel calls out Moore for the innaccuracies and misrepresentations in his mockumentary, SiCKo. News Busters has a lot more. Update: Kyle Smith excoriates Michael Moore. [...]
September 25th, 2007 at 12:16 am
Couldn’t post this at the actual link, so I guess we’ll try to spread some truth here instead…
**************************************
(groan)
Perhaps we all watch too many reality shows for our reality and have subsequently become disconnected from the world of the living. Hey - but I gotta say - nice try John Stossel. You really gave it your all. But I’m afraid that like too many brain-dead Americans you’ve decided that Moore is glamorizing Cuba in this film when, in reality, he’s doing nothing of the sort. For instance, let’s examine the seemingly out-of-place, sunny musical piece being played while panning through the impoverished streets of Cuba. Here, Strossel is quick to discredit by accusing Moore of sugar-coating - unfortunately, John missed the class where they discussed “irony” and consequently missed the entire point. But again - the real point of the film is lost on most critics. At one point Moore actually demands that Stossel begin asking real questions and talk about the points actually being posed in the film, as opposed to launching one rehearsed, innane accusation after another. Show of hands - who can actually cite one single fact stated in the film that has been discredited here? Don’t waste your time thinking about it - you can’t.
October 2nd, 2007 at 2:40 pm
Michael Moore uses the same techniques to make a point, as Bush did to invade Iraq. ‘Fight the enemy with his own weapons’ is his motto. While using these methods to do bad, like starting a war, is just not done. Doing this to make life better for people: please, give me Mo(o)re!
On a side note: I live in Belgium. Healthcare here is great and cheap, as it should be in every country. Even before Moore’s film, I had already figured something was wrong with America’s system. Healthcare is not something that should be profitable, period.
October 5th, 2007 at 9:07 am
just a few add-ons, being french and having lived in the UK.
Both systems (french and britsh) are very costly to the tax payer. BUT these waiting lists you go on about are non-existant in france and the level of care is top-notch. In the UK, although there is a lot of critism of the NHS, it is in practice perfectly OK, even if you have to wait a few weeks for non-urgent surgery.
The elderly that died in france in the heatwave were in majority at home and alone. And you seem to see this year q
October 5th, 2007 at 9:19 am
oops, follows from above,
yes, that year was not just any old summer. It was extremely hot and any country in the world would have seen its hospitals suffer to cope with a large influx of elderly.
You seem to say that these systems turn into “give the money to the governement and then shut up or go to prison”,…i don’t know how people can still believe in this argument, Stalin died more than 50y ago, and you contradict yourself by writing that the french are always on the streets. And on that matter, a capitalist society is in no less danger of putting everyone in prison, althgouh they have to do is come up with, say , terrorism threats.
October 7th, 2007 at 11:53 am
Hey
Really funny to read. I must say as a Belgian very funny to read your criticism. Yes, the French don’t think things go well in their country, but if you do the poll about changing their care-system to something more American, you’d get a more than convincing ‘Non’ (no way).
I’m not aware of which position you take towards universal health care, you’re kinda shying away from the subject by obvious rants and silly criticisms. But accepting the fact that Americans live in a twisted system where doctors are being forced to ignore the oath of Hippocrates seems very dangerous to me.
Life apparently isn’t as precious if your insurance companies are thinking about its profits.
I see you taking swings at Canadian, French, Brittanic & Cuban health care, and though it doesn’t sound very convincing in light of the problems of American health care, I’m willing to admit that there are faults there.
Therefore I dare you to rebute the case of Belgium where there is universal healthcare and people live a lot (A LOT, mr. Smith) longer, a lot healthier, don’t have the long waiting lines (people come from across the border to go to our hospitals) and yes even, our pharmaceutical companies are prosperous. It may be hard to imagine for you, but some countries are better at certain things than the US of A. Need some other statistics? We spend 10 to 11 percent of our national budget on health care. Oh and the US? 16 %. Very efficient, I must say.
So please, rebute this, make some kind of sharp reply, try to find some statistics. Look for some poll. And after you can’t seem to find anything, rant about communism. Yes, you should do that. Definitely not admitting mistakes or imagining that other systems may perform better.
Afterwards: make a little trip to Belgium. Don’t be afraid to have an accident, our doctors’ll take good care of you. For something like twenty dollars, so you’re still able to buy some chocolate and beer.
October 10th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Kyle, I think you are mixing two totally different things up: 1. business practice that makes enough money to cover the cost of running the business; 2. businesses that maximize profits by sacrificing human lives (and it’s the business owner or CEO who benefit from the maximized profits, and the politians they buy).
I am not against presenting facts and stats to rebute a point of view. However, whoelse would have stood up and revealed the nastiness of the American health care industry if it wasn’t for MM’s movie? If it wasn’t for this movie, would we have known how evil these companies are? Even if there is misleading information in the movie, the fact that it stood up against the industry and critized them for the wrong doings, way outweighs the possible erroneous info it brought to the public. What is revealed in the movie should have been told on daily news, which wasn’t.
Does MM do more harm to the Americans or do the drug and insurance companies do more harm? If we think about it, which party should we spend more time on scrutinizaing and criticizing?
For the benefit of the American public, if you spend more of your time scrutinizing the true evil doers, instead of picking and choosing the facts that work for you to critize someone and his movie that intend to help the American public. I am surprised you are not paid by the health care industries (or do you?), or maybe you just don’t have anything else to talk about to make a living as a commentator.
October 27th, 2007 at 9:35 am
Where does Kyle Smith get his “facts” about the British freeloading off the US pharmaceutical industry. We are actually a major exporter of pharmaceuticals with a trade surplus running into billions of pounds a year (see http://www.abpi.org.uk/statistics/section.asp?sect=1). Guess who runs the largest trade deficit…
And as for life expectancy, take a look at this to see that we in the UK live longer healthy lives than US citizens. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_hea_lif_exp_at_bir_yea_tot_pop-expectancy-birth-years-total-population.
So there!
November 10th, 2007 at 10:57 am
Jeez your’e either stupid or being paid to be stupid, I suspect the latter.
The difference that you are missing is universal health care- I’m betting your not poor and ill in the US.
A society should be judged by how they protect the weakest members- the US health care system gravely lets down the American people- all for profit. The American healthcare corporations are desperate to break into the UK market not to bring better healthcare but simply because they see the extra money in the system and cant resist a buck. In the UK we already suffer from American foreign policy I pray we don’t inherit your healthcare.
November 16th, 2007 at 12:55 am
I was going to write an entire commentary on this article and what responses I had to each of the sections mentioned, but I decided that my time was better spent sleeping. Propaganda has its downsides, but it can have a motivating effect on the right people. I wish you well with your health insurance and political motivations, but I also wish you better health care than I received, perhaps even free, with no political arguments attached.
I will say that it is articles like these that drown the point of a documentary, be it Michael Moore or not, and the idea behind the emotional topic is lost to political arguments and production critique.
The point of the movie that I grabbed was: Whether you waited a long time or perhaps didn’t receive the best care in the world, both things that happen in our country now, how much did you pay for your care? My mother paid $4000 for two MRI scans because the insurance company refused (afterward) to pay for them when nothing appeared on the film (How would I know without those scans?). She made $14,000 annually at the time and I still suffer migraines, by the way. I suppose I did comment more than I thought I would, but I will sleep well knowing that Michael Moore made a movie and you did not, Kyle. Best of luck.
November 17th, 2007 at 6:29 am
All I have to say is, having lived in France and the French Caribbean for several years, dealing with the French health care system and the people. Waiting times were about the same as American waiting rooms. There are tons of dentists because there is so much demand for it since it’s very inexpensive, supply will meet demand too after all. Therefore getting into the dentist and seeing general practitioners was about the same.
I’ll admit I didn’t have a lot of experience with cutting edge type medical treatment while I was there, but I think most would agree that if it’s a matter of regularly occurring problems, free health care is nice, but if you are the “spare no expense” kind of person, the US is gonna be a better fit.
Oh, by the waym, believe you me, French people do love demonstrations and strikes if they’re not happy about something, it seems like Steven Colbert’s right on this point, Americans have lost their balls since the 60’s and 70’s when we used to take a stand when we weren’t happy with government policy. (This coming from a child of the 80’s) that was one of the first words I learned when I got there, they call it a “Manifestation”.
One last comment, having lived in Oregon all my life, and having dealt a little bit with the Oregon health care plan (slightly more toward the socialist spectrum) and it’s supply and demand type ramifications, and knowing a little about the downright ungodly amounts of money our country spends on medicare and medicaid and all of the government subsidized funds going to healthcare through welfare etc. There is no way in HELL we could create a universal health care system as prices stand right now. Find a way to adjust prices to a more comfortably expensive price and we might be able to talk. Just my speculation, for what it’s worth, Hillary Clinton’s Universal Health Care would have financially bankrupted our country. I mean, I’d like to be able to go to the hospital for free as much as the next guy, but you can’t make a bad situation worse. Just mho.
December 3rd, 2007 at 1:28 am
I just watched Sicko and immediately read your review and found that, like his films, one has to take your review with a grain of salt (ok, well, maybe a bucket of salt). As a Canadian who has experienced both cancer AND a headache in the waiting room, there is one thing that is certain in my country - you may spend a while waiting to get treated for your headache, but you certainly won’t have to spend the rest of your life paying it off.
December 4th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
It is clear that your ignorance writes your reviews. Instead of trying to appreciate what MM does, you are merely attacking him, probably because you had not thought of the idea yourself first. As a writer, I have a few suggestions. For one, do not attack a person’s character. The credibility is all but shot. It makes you sound like a bratty child who is spoiled. Review the facts, only the facts. Sure, MM does show one side of it, and he probably could show the oher side as well. SICKO is a snapshot of what the healthcare siutations are like in all countries featured. The majority of the time, the US system is atrocious. The majority of the time, the UK, Canadian, and French systems work. The overarching point is that of thouse four countries, all residents in three of them have coverage. America is the only civlized country in the world that has so many people without health insurance. Why? Because the HMOs are run for a profit. Plain and simple. If they were not, then you would not have so many mergers into order for the HMOs to keep their heads above water.
Neither system is perfect. Several Canadian critics scolded MM for glamourizing their socialized system. MM responded by asking if any of the critics would rather have US insurance. Not one critic said yes. Case closed.
Kyle, yopu are clearly in the minority in your hatred-filled, irrational, and unfocused review. Do not review the film maker. Review the film. SICKO’s point? The US system is broke. End of story.
December 22nd, 2007 at 4:01 am
The comparison in Sicko is not between wait times in the US and Canada. The comparison was between being denied treatment and being given treatment. The reason wait times was addressed in the film was because reactionary idealogues use them to justify the gross inequalities that exists in the US. I would rather wait for treatment and get it than be dumped on the sidewalk in front of a shelter. Of course if you’re rich, you shouldn’t have to wait for anything, and it would be better to have someone else do without than for you to have to wait.
January 7th, 2008 at 12:34 am
This American writer displays in his article proof of Moore’s point about the “there’s a red in the bed” rhetoric existing in the US regarding socialized health care. Like or lump it Cuba has an excellent health care system. I don’t know if it’s even possible to have such a system in a country with such a monstrous rich poor divide - one cause of the US “red in the bed” scaremongering perhaps?
April 14th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Here’s a few anecdotes for you:
I live in New Brunswick, Canada. It is one of the poorest provinces in the nation. Our doctors and nurses are among the lowest paid as well. Last year, when i had tonsillitis, I chose the emergency room over an appointment with my family doctor for sheer convenience. I waited for 7 hours to see a doctor, was prescribed penicillin, and sent on my way. I considered it time well spent and I got some good reading done despite my burning throat.
Also last year, we took my one-year-old son to the emergency room because he had laboured breathing. He was considered a priority and seen immediately, kept in the pediatrics ward for 3 days under observation, treated with that misty air through a tube thingy (all asthmatics know what I’m talking about) and we were sent on our way.
The penicillin cost 10 bucks. Everything else was totally free. How much would these two hospital trips have cost in the states with no insurance? I’m guessing less than I paid through my taxes.
I’m not sure where the writer got his info on our hospitals being old-fashioned and run-down. I found the facilities to be modern, clean and efficient. I was especially impressed that pumping my baby full of
drugs wasn’t the pediatrician’s first inclination. Yes, that was meant to be a most unsubtle slam on you crazy, drug-obsessed Yankees. Aww, don’t get too upset; here, have some Prozac. And don’t complain about the price: after all, cheap drugs hurt corporate America don’t you know?
Anyhoo, I should reiterate something here:
Universal healthcare, even when implemented poorly, is better than none at all. The idea that the richest country in history can’t even take care of the medical needs of its poorest citizens is sad, befuddling, and distasteful.
Or, as Will, my British coworker put it, “It’s barbaric.”
March 15th, 2009 at 1:12 am
This is the direction the entire economy is going, better jump on in now.
April 26th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Thank you, thank you, thank you for this. My liberally-biased sociology teacher made us watch this horrid movie in class, and all of a sudden, everyone wants to move to France.
Now I’ll be able to stand up for what I believe in, despite what everyone else in the class thinks.