A Cure for “Sicko”

Michael Moore’s latest documentary film, Sicko is a tedious two hour propaganda infomercial on the merits of government-run socialized medicine, that demonizes the American capitalist free market claiming its systemic greed and evil is epitomized by the blunders of profit driven managed health care. Some of my coworkers, who were falling all over themselves to sing the praises of the wit and humor of Mr. Moore’s new flick, admonished me not to offer my disparaging opinions of Moore until I first saw it.

Fortuitously, I had the benefit of watching the movie Sicko after channel surfing to a live Andre Rieu concert at Radio City Music Hall on WLIW, performing everything under the sun from Sousa marches to Strauss waltzes. The last performance was a breathtaking presentation of "America the Beautiful" by the orchestra and the Harlem Gospel Choir. This spectacle had everyone in the audience up on their feet singing along with tears in their eyes and with applauding arms raised high over their heads. As the hair stood up on the back of my neck, I realized that this multi-racial, multi-ethnic New York audience understood at that moment the vital spirit of freedom and independence which courses through the veins of every red-blooded sovereign American, which is something that Mr. Moore does not appreciate, nor do the lemmings who flock to his socialist causes. Following Andre Rieu’s sensational concert, I did not find Mr. Moore’s new flick humorous or witty.

Sicko seemed to play a single note of sniveling mockery throughout the entire film. The documentary mocked the alleged canards of free market conservatives and their attacks on Mr. Moore’s socialist underpinnings as if the Red Scare was targeting him and his pet socialist projects. His caricature of anti-communist propaganda of the 1950’s reminded me of the frenzied war on drugs of the same decade demonizing Marijuana as the “killer weed.” This hyperbole enabled the legalize Marijuana lobby to deceive the public into believing that Marijuana was the innocuous victim of these overblown scare tactics. Mr. Moore uses a similar deceptive treatment in the film to cast socialized medicine as the blameless and beneficial victim of conservative critics’ McCarthyite red-baiting campaigns.

The prosperous Mr. Moore speaks for the vast uninsured suffering poor of America offering a solution to the high price of health insurance, which allegedly deprives them of treatment and in some cases leads to death. He visits the countries of Cuba, France and Canada in order to emulate their model of state-run health care. But I wonder if Michael Moore would run to these countries for treatment if he were seriously ill.

Rather, here in the U.S. is where he would find the best medical advances and treatment in the world, as well as the finest, though flawed health care system as my own experience can bear out. A former uninsured friend who had a skimpy income and many health problems called and searched the internet to find a decent affordable health care plan a couple of years ago. He found a reasonable $129 per month policy from Vytra, a Long Island based insurance company that allowed access to a wide range of top New York physicians to treat his health conditions. American medical professionals commonly export our medical advances to countries throughout the world. My wife, who has advanced spinal scoliosis, sometimes has to choose other specialists when her current one has often been on tour in other countries that lack the capabilities commonly found here, lecturing at hospitals and treating patients with their expertise in back pain medicine. I’ve never known anyone to be denied health insurance coverage for the treatment of pre-existing conditions from the insurance plans I’ve encountered over the years. Another friend who found health care overpriced, chose to go on Medicaid to obtain affordable health care while she was pregnant and didn’t have a job. However after suffering the indignities of bureaucratic state-run medical care, she opted to go back to the far superior HMO health insurance plans and pay the high costs out of her own pocket. She cautions against the fraud, waste and corruption of government provided health care if the bureaucratic nightmare of Medicaid is any indication of what would happen if Mr. Moore and Hillary Clinton’s dream for universal healthcare would become a reality. If the Medicaid fiasco robs New York taxpayers of up to $18 billion in annually fraud according to a 2005 New York Times report, how much larger would that figure grow if healthcare becomes nationalized?

The purpose of this piece is not to fact check and counter Moore’s dubious use of statistics such as the claim that 50 million Americans are uninsured (most likely that figure, if accurate, reflects mostly immature and uninformed young adults) and that America has a higher infant mortality rate than Cuba (who can believe statistics put out by the Cuban government?), and so forth. Other critics and reviewers have already been weighing in, dismissing it as irrelevant as Michael Moynihan’s review of Sicko in The New Yorker and Reason Magazine calls it “..a clumsy piece of agitprop that will likely have little lasting effect on the health care debate.” Canadian journalists have criticized Moore for taking great liberties with the facts and for his glamorization of their health care system where the claim that patients wait mere minutes for medical care is simply untrue. Peter Howell, of The Toronto Star said, "Sicko makes it seem as if Canada's socialized medicine is flawless and that Canadians are satisfied with the status quo." Mr. Moore’s comparison of the Cuban health care system to ours is a joke according to other reviewers. The impressive Havana Hospital and sparkling medical facilites that Mr. Moore films are set up as propaganda showcases for Hollywood that cater to a select few party officials and the military. As National Review editor Rich Lowery writes:

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 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.”

Pandering to the French, Sicko portrays the inland “paradise” where mothers enjoy dollar a day child care and free government laundry services, and workers have the luxury of a 35-hour workweek, which actually cost the French economy their Airbus contact. While visiting France and praising a nationalized heath care system that takes care of everyone, Moore laments the failure of American capitalism to provide free health care for all stressing that people should be "taking care of each other, no matter the differences." However Mr. Moore doesn’t mention France’s unemployment rate of 9% and an economy that fosters a sky-high youth unemployment rate of over 20% which has fueled the riots throughout France. Obviously France doesn’t take care of its youth and the unassimilated North African immigrant population which has spread uncontrolled violence, unrest, and car burnings to Paris and over 300 French towns. Mr. Moore doesn’t discuss the vast exodus of workers seeking better opportunities in foreign lands. Nor does Mr. Moore mention that the people of France were so fed up with the government ownership of the economy and welfare state mentality that they recently elected Mr. Sarkozy in a landslide over Socialist Party contender Ségolène Royal, in order to immediately transition to market driven reforms.

As it is well known, the managed health care system where the insurance company rather than the physician controls all aspects of the patient’s medical care is clearly not working. However Mr. Moore’s solution for government care for all is jumping from the frying pan into the fire. The better solution, as Rudy Giuliani proposes, is allowing competitive markets to fix the problem, in contrast with a big government takeover, as Hillary’s universal healthcare plan requires. Medical choice and competition will lower the costs and improve the quality of medical services. Giuliani’s plan proposes tax incentives of $7500 in exemptions to individuals and $15,000 to families to help pay for the costs of private health coverage that they choose themselves, rather than their bosses choose for them. His plan will also bring down the costs of medical insurance by putting a cap on the sky-high malpractice and frivolous lawsuits, which have caused the insurance rates to soar. As Giuliani recently told New Hampshire voters:

"America's health-care system is being dragged down by decades of government-imposed mandates and wasteful, unaccountable bureaucracy. To reform, we must empower all Americans by increasing health-care choices and affordability." Giuliani describes Democrats'...health proposals "heavily influenced by Marxism. We've got to solve our health-care problems with American principles, not the principles of socialism."