Posted on 07/06/2007 6:03:16 AM PDT by knighthawk
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.
Moore adores the Canadian system. I do not.
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."
Michael Moore is a fat, obnoxious child. He is neither clever, nor funny, nor perceptive. Just a fat, ugly guy who has to act obnoxious to get attention.
ping
I predict less than $1.5 million this weekend, and less than $1 million next weekend. This will be in part due to the lack of an anti-Bush theme, and the fact that there's a lot of GOOD movies this summer.
Given that the film cost $9 mil to produce, there may be a good chance that the film will lose money, especially given that foreigners aren't particularly interested in American healthcare and that the Euros know the "benefits" of socialized healthcare that Moore glorifies.
We lost a dear family friend in Toronto because he couldn't get by-pass surgery. He was in the hospital for 4 weeks waiting for the surgery when he died. He only had to more weeks to wait. They looked into going to Detroit for the surgery but the hospital wouldn't take them unless they had insurance. Insurance couldn't be bought because of the "pre-existing condition." They couldn't afford the needed down payment to be admitted without insurance for the pre-existing condition.
They actually considered driving down there and going to an emergency room with a "heart attack" to get the care and surgery needed. They could have gone to jail afterwards as they would have had to lie about a number of things but Norman would likely still be alive because he would have received the needed surgery in 24 hours.
I hope everyone is well.
It irks me to hear people have a right to health care. Oh really, where do they think it comes from? Health care, it seems to me, is expertise of people who have devoted time and effort to develop it. Nobody has a right to that.
At my follow-up visit with my doctor after testing revealed that I should consider having a defibrillator implanted. The office visit was on a Wednesday. He implanted the device on Monday, five DAYS later and my PRIVATE insurance paid for it. The bottom line is that our system works pretty damn well.... A few months ago I required lazer surgery on my eye. Delay could have caused major surgery and possible blindness. Three and a half hours after calling my optomologist I was returning home with the lazer surgery completed and yes my private insurance paid for all but the co-pay. America has the best healthcare.
My mother's sisters would literally wait 7-14 months for CRITICAL tests whereas my mom got the same tests w/i hours.
Anyway, Moore is nothing but a FAT PHONY, who got rich preaching socialism and hate to the left-wing dolts across the western world.
While I agree with this, I think that it might be a good thing to for the government to pick up catastrophic situations that bankrupt families, such as some rare cancer. FEMA on a family level.
Like my views on welfare - not a right, but allow society to pick someone up off the ground so they can get out and help pull others out of the mire.
Unfortunately, politicians have a habit of turning safety nets into hammocks, and take tax dollars from the productive to buy votes. Utilitarianism is held hostage to the Kennedys and the Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton poverty pimps.
The key phrase is "with money". Anyone with money gets more and better of everything. The problem with the health care system in the US is that it is not based upon free market forces.
Prices are determined by several forces, the buggest of which are the real cost of the item/service and the second is the price that the market is willing to pay.
When I go to the doctor and pay out of my pocket I have to compete with the hugely inflated prices that are paid by the big insurance companies. You pay $10 for an aspirin because Blue Cross says that is what they are willing to pay, so everyone pays that.
The only way to make the health care system responsive to the market is to make insurance illegal. We would all have to pay out of pocket and the service provider would have to compete with other providers by being effective and cost competitive.
What we have now is pseudo-socialism but the insurance "collective" is "for profit" interested in maximizing profit, sometimes by shorting the clients on services.
Which, as I understand it, is illegal under the current Canadian system. I hope all is well with them today.
True.
Prices are determined by several forces, the buggest of which are the real cost of the item/service and the second is the price that the market is willing to pay.
No such animal as "real cost". We have free enterprise prices, and varieties of regulated and restricted unfree prices.
When I go to the doctor and pay out of my pocket I have to compete with the hugely inflated prices that are paid by the big insurance companies. You pay $10 for an aspirin because Blue Cross says that is what they are willing to pay, so everyone pays that.
The current insurance system has vast amounts of regulation and restriction, which usually benefits the surviving players, by acting like an herbicide on smaller competitors.
The only way to make the health care system responsive to the market is to make insurance illegal.
Wrong. You have just said, in effect, that the only way to to restore the market is to ban the market.
We would all have to pay out of pocket and the service provider would have to compete with other providers by being effective and cost competitive.
The "service provider" doesn't compete much now, because of a vast array of anti-freedom laws, regulations, giveaways, and credit card government.
What we have now is pseudo-socialism but the insurance "collective" is "for profit" interested in maximizing profit, sometimes by shorting the clients on services.
We do have socialism or psuedo-socialism, but it comes from the criminalization of free enterprise medicine.
Profit through free enterprise and charity through free association would bring down the cost and increase the quality of medicine for all.
Agreed. Plus the experts don't have a right to restrain competitors, save through competition in free enterprise.
You confuse “medicine” with health insurance. Free market forces will only regulate the cost of medical care when the financial relationship is between the recipient and the provider. Problems come from the third party, insurers, who come in between. The cost is no longer what I am willing to pay, but what a corporation is willing to pay on my behalf. This raises the cost for all, insured or not.
It is my understanding that a very big element in cost is the mandates of state legislatures. They require that everybody have Cadillac insurance policies when a real insurance market woud allow people to buy policies that meet their needs and priorities. I would never pay what the government is paying for my Medicare HMO, for instance, if it came out of my pocket.
ClaireSolt has it right. We don’t have a free market in health insurance.
I’d get the government completely out of health care, except as court of last resort for contract violations.
“Profit, according to the filmmaker-activist, has no place in health care - period.”
The profit incentive = competition = best service/product for the money = advantage for the consumer
THAT’S the thing he has a problem with. ‘Profit’ is such a dirty word for socialists.
I don’t understand this guy. He complains about a free market, yet that is what he has used to make his millions. Liberal guilt?
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