More lies from Moore

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.

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.

Just last month, the Star's Peter Howell reported from the Cannes Film Festival that Mr. Moore became irate when Canadian reporters challenged his portrayal of their national health care system. "You Canadians! You used to be so funny!" exclaimed an exasperated Moore, "You gave us all our best comedians. When did you turn so dark?"

Moore further claimed that the infamously long waiting lists in Canada are merely a reflection of the fact that Canadians have a longer life expectancy than Americans, and that the sterling system is swamped by too many Canadians who live too long.

Canada's media know better. In 2006, the average wait time from seeing a primary care doctor to getting treatment by a specialist was more than four months. Out of a population of 32 million, there are about 3.2 million Canadians trying to get a primary care doctor. Today, according to the OECD, Canada ranks 24th out of 28 major industrialized countries in doctors per thousand people.

Unfortunately, Moore is more concerned with promoting an anti-free-market agenda than getting his facts straight. "The problem," said Moore recently, "isn't just [the insurance companies], or the Hospital Corporation and the Frist family - it's the system! They can't make a profit unless they deny care! Unless they deny claims! Our laws state very clearly that they have a legal fiduciary responsibility to maximize profits for the shareholders ... the only way they can turn the big profit is to not pay out the money, to not provide the care!"

Profit, according to the filmmaker-activist, has no place in health care - period.

Moore ignores the fact that 85% of hospital beds in the U.S. are in nonprofit hospitals, and almost half of us with private plans get our insurance from nonprofit providers. Moreover, Kaiser Permanente, which Moore demonizes, is also a nonprofit.

What's really amazing is that even the intended beneficiaries of Moore's propagandizing don't support his claims. The Supreme Court of Canada declared in June 2005 that the government health care monopoly in Quebec is a violation of basic human rights.

Moore put me, fleetingly, into "Sicko" as an example of an American who doesn't understand the Canadian health care system. He couldn't be more wrong. I've personally endured the creeping disaster of Canadian health care. Most unlike him, I'm willing to tell the truth about it.

Pipes is the president and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute and author of "Miracle Cure: How to Solve America's Health Care Crisis and Why Canada Isn't the Answer."

I was recently in Montreal for a week. On Saturday, I went into a McDonald’s for a late breakfast and an attractive older lady sat next to me with an English newspaper (it’s rare to find much in English there).

As I left, I told her to have a nice day. She then asked me if I was from the States. An hour conversation ensued.

She hated Bush and couldn’t understand why anyone had voted for him. She abhorred the war, saying so many men were dying. She couldn’t understand why the US wouldn’t let everyone get medical treatment without insurance.

She then went on to describe how she had malignant breast cancer and how their healthcare system had worked so poorly for her. She had an unusual lump in a mammogram. It took four months to get back to a doctor who took another scan of it and then had her come back a few months later for a biopsy. She got the results of the biopsy about a month and a half later and was told it was malignant, so they scheduled her for an operation about four months later. She freaked and told them she needed the operation earlier (she’d been trying to reduce the times all along) and they were able to get her in roughly two months, instead. When they operated, they realized the cancer had spread quite a bit and had gotten to her lymph nodes.

She had a large portion of tissue ultimately removed and the whole process took over a year and a half. I agree with her that most of that was senseless waiting that had only made her cancer worse.

She was mad at those who would spend their money on private doctors there in Canada (apparently it is legal??), but she had earlier mentioned how she loved travel and had emigrated there from Australia where her brother still lived (but who owned a condo in Florida).

I politely talked with her about her misconceptions of America, the war, President Bush, and our healthcare system. I also told her that I believed people should be allowed to spend their money on fun things such as travel, but should also be allowed to spend their money on their health if that was more important to them than travel.

She couldn’t effectively argue my points (and had no response to my healthcare vs. travel comments), and I have no way of knowing if I actually got through much to her. It was a nice talk with a liberal who was, strangely enough, screwed by the very system she thought was so great.

Montreal is Canada’s California.

"...Profit, according to the filmmaker-activist, has no place in health care - period..."

That statement shows what an ignorant ass Michael Moore is.

The most effective arguments against socialized medicine are the same arguments used against...socialism.

I believe in Free Market Capitalism.

Nothing motivates people like money. Money can buy a roof over your head, food for the table, clothes for your back and a vacation in Tahiti if you have enough of it.

Consequently, the desire for more money can drive a lot of positive behavior in systems that effectively supress the negative behavior that is often manifested by greed.

I have worked in the Health Care Industry since 1985, and I use the term “Health Care Industry” deliberately. When it is frankly referred to by that phrase, people are often offended or horrified. But there is no need to be.

Competition drives costs down, and while there is not competition for health care the same way there is competition for your money that is spent on food, clothes and computers (due to the way reimbursement for services takes place, a GIANT money suck in itself) there is competition at the hospital level.

Unless you have worked intimately with it, you would be surprised by the cutthroat competition hospitals have with each other in a region to get customers, usually by taking them away from your competitors.

Hospitals have to cut costs by streamlining processes to make them more efficient, providing better pre and post-operative care in order to minimize length-of-stay. Hospitals have to shop for the best deals on pharmaceuticals, contrast agents and other materials such as catheters, needles and other consumable items.

Most importantly, hospitals are forced to stay competitive with salaries in order to attract and keep qualified, motivated top of the line personnel. Hospitals, like many other entities in a capitalistic environment, have found that the worst thing you can do is to allow your pay scales to drop below the market norms. It is a cut-throat business, hospitals stealing employees from each other, jacking up salaries to attract those employees. If you don’t pay...your competitor will. Your best people will leave and go to the hospital that is paying well. Their morale and performance at that institution will go up, yours will go down.

The end result is: patient care will suffer. If you have not managed your health care business appropriately, your patients will receive worse care than your healthy competitor.

Your patients will be subjected to rude, stressed, overworked employees.

Your patients will wait longer for a nurse to visit them in their bed.

Your physicians, nurses and technical staff will work longer, more stressful hours for less pay than their competitors, and will be more prone to making a mistake.

Your Information Systems will atrophy and not be upgraded. You will not be able to afford a new digital radiology system and will still work from traditional film. Your competitor WILL put in a new digital radiology system, as well as speech recognition software for dictation AND digital mammography units, and will trumpet that advantage in the advertisements they will pepper the media with in your locale.

Your institution will have a higher post-op mortality rate, there will be more critical mistakes, and the state and federal regulating agencies will notice, and come to inspect your hospital. Articles will appear in the daily newspaper, and you will see your hospital logo on the evening news referring to the poor patient care.

Nursing unions will go on strike, good physicians will leave for greener pastures, and sometimes, the hospital, often a community icon, goes broke. Those people in that community have to now drive 20 miles to a different hospital. Trauma patients have fewer places to be taken to, and stories appear about needless deaths due to ER’s being shut down or on diverson.

THAT is what happens to hospitals that do not run their institutions like a BUSINESS. What makes it a business is money.

But just because you have to run it like a business does NOT mean you have to treat people like widgets on an assembly line. If you do a good job running the business end, pay well, provide a stable, modern environment, people are more efficient and happier, deliver better care, and patients are the beneficiaries.

Sure. Our medical care in America is expensive. And it is not perfect. Just as there are a lot of horror stories about socialized medicine, there are many about horrible mistakes in American medicine. But we do deliver the best care in the world for the most people. Nobody is ever denied care because they cannot pay in this country. That is a myth. You walk into an ER, you get care. You make an appointment to see a doctor and you are uninsured, you get a session with a financial counselor. You may sign a paper in a non-emergent situation stating that you are responsible for paying for treatment, but you still get the care, and in nearly all cases, the quality of care is blind to the amount of money you can pay.

You may have to pay $5 a month for the rest of your life, but it can be done and is done.

If you take money out of the situation, all the benefits of competition disappear. Everyone gets lousy care. Or, sometimes you don’t get that care.

Capitalism works. It is the engine that has driven more prosperity and good for mankind than nearly any other movement. It works in industry. And it works in Health Care. It doesn’t work perfectly, by any means. But it works a heck of a lot better than Socialized Heath Care!

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