This is interesting, Amigo.
Fidel 'bugbear' Castro often trumpets the superiority of the Cuban
health-care system over other countries including US..!!
Maybe Fidel knows that his country is rotting and just playing a
political game to stay in power.??
ShempMcGurk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 03:45:03 -0000
Subject: [FairfieldLife] Sicko
SICKO
boxofficemojo. com
U.S. Release Date: June 22, 2007
Distributor: Lionsgate
Director: Michael Moore
Running Time: 2 hours and 3 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (brief strong language)
Medical Profession Distorted in Emotionalist Diatribe
by Scott Holleran
The Bill O'Reilly of pseudo-documentarie s, self-promotional blowhard
Michael Moore, presents Sicko, a distortion of reality from start to
finish that purports to address a crucial issue: health care.
Having declined to review Moore's smash, Fahrenheit 9/11, and having
missed his anti-business Roger and Me and anti-gun Bowling for
Columbine, this writer was prepared to laugh, or at least chuckle, at
the mess that constitutes today's mongrel health care system in
America (and I've covered health policy for newspapers and non-
profits). But this hooey, billed as a comedy, is as funny as a heart
attack.
Moore covers health care like Fox News covers religion and the war in
Iraqwithout providing essential facts. He starts with the claim that
18,000 people die each year from a lack of health insurance, an
idiotic assertion. People die. They die of cancer, heart disease and
other causes. Individuals have a right to choose not to buy insurance
(an idea governors Mitt Romney, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ed Rendell
reject)and that means they choose to live without securing a means
of paying for catastrophic illness.
Taking personal responsibility is not among Moore's values. Neither
is disclosing whether he met with communist dictator Fidel Castro or
Cuba's Communist Party officials to obtain special treatment for
those Americans he illegally brought to the island dictatorship for
medical treatment, a low act of depravity, even for Moore, who tacks
on a singularly offensive display of communist propaganda. How many
enslaved Cubans died so that his pre-selected participants could get
cheaper drugs and a new set of teeth? This is a country where kids
are stripped of their milk ration at the age of six.
That the dishonest Cuba portionmorally repugnant to anyone who
recognizes man's rightsprovides Sicko's climax ought to tip the
movie's theme that a society ruled by force is acceptable; the ends
justify the means. That there is no right to speech, travel or
association in Cuba, let alone the right to makeor seea movie, is
lost on Moore and his sick bunch.
Tracked by overbearing music, emotionalist pitchesa diseased couple
with six kids is shocked they can't afford health care in their elder
years yet we never learn about how they chose to spend their money
and what treatment decisions they've madeand a moral premise that
health care is a right, Sicko grates on and on, neither making an
argument or an especially interesting or amusing point.
Key assertions are false. For example, when Moore blasts Health
Maintenance Organizations (HMOs)a term created by a leftist college
professor, which Moore does not discloseusing the Nixon
administration' s HMO Act, he conceals that the bill's primary sponsor
was a liberal Democrat: Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts. That's
right: the leftist intellectuals railing against HMOs are the
bastards who created themby force, requiring that American
businesses include HMOs in employee health coverage.
You'd never know that from Sicko, which also fails to mention that
every world leader from King Hussein to Boris Yeltsin sought medical
treatment in the world's most productive nation with the best quality
health care: the United States of America.
Moore is on firmer ground when he points out that socialized medicine
was expanded by America's current president, a devout Christian who
agrees that health care is a right, though Moore doesn't describe it
that way.
The factdespite manipulative flashes of socialized medicine in
Britain, Canada and Franceis that, for all intents and purposes,
America already has socialized medicine (that is the proper term for
government intervention in the medical profession), and it's
typically instituted by conservatives. Medicaresubsidized care for
every American over age 65is not capitalism. Moore ignores this self-
evident truth and the possibility that government-controll ed health
care is impractical because it is immoral.
Moore is no more interested in exploring morality than are the
conservatives who shoved Medicare drug subsidies down our throats
(emptying our wallets), leaving Sicko holding up one of L.A.'s worst
hospitalsthe dreaded government-run King/Drew medical centeras a
model, harming his subjects with invasive camera crews and praising
the idea that, in Moore's words, "one guy changes everyone's mind."
We've seen that type of political system, dictatorship, in countries
like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, where medicine was controlled
by the state, everyone supposedly had health careand no one had
rights.
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