Posted on 07/24/2007 7:57:59 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
As the latest installment in Michael Moore's attempt to give rich white liberals a reason to sneer at poor white centrists, the big and cranky one has decided to take on the United States system of health care. This would be all well and good had Moore given the general public the slightest inkling of a reason to believe him in his previous films.
You know, interviews where the time changes back and forth on the wall clock, statements by military personnel spliced out of context, outright false claims - all the stuff that makes for award-winning indictments of the evils of Western Civilization.
Moore's fondness for the Canadian health care system shows either a complete lack of research on the subject - which might be evidenced by the paucity of snow and that alleged Canadian fondness for giant onion rings mentioned in the film - or a nonchalant disregard for reality.
Sally Pipes is a Canadian ex-patriot and is President and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute. In the New York Daily News she relates her experiences with the system in Canada which Moore claims is attracting Americans in need of health care like moths to a flame: "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."
According to Pipes, another Canadian reporter, Peter Howell of the Toronto Star was met with indignation when challenging Moore's appraisal of the Canadian Health system at the Cannes Film Festival. In Moore's world, the wait-times to see a doctor in Canada are due to the vastly longer life-spans of Canadians versus those of Americans. Back here in reality, however, Canada ranks 24th out of 28 major industrialized nations.
Pipes also states that Moore neglects to mention the fact that 85 percent of hospital beds are in non-profit hospitals. Most damning to Moore's anti-free market hissy fit is the fact that in 2005 the Canadian Supreme Court found that the government-run health care monopoly in Quebec "was a violation of basic human rights."
Essentially, one branch of the Canadian government found more reason to criticize the government itself than did a supposedly impartial outside observer, whose sole motive for making his (aptly named) Sicko movie was ostensibly the betterment of health care for low-income people.
In truth, however Moore, in typical form, is more interested in propagating an anti-free market credo than in dissemination of actual facts. He doesn't care that in much of Western Europe the trend is away from socialized medicine. He doesn't care that many in the medical field find socialized medicine to be an inefficient, antiquated joke. He doesn't care that people who have moved from the U.S. to neo-socialist "utopias" often come to the U.S. for health care.
Ask Hollywood "luminary" Gwyneth Paltrow why she didn't have her baby in Britain, where she resided at the time of her pregnancy. If she's not thinking up an object for which to name her next child, to go along with Apple, she'll tell you that it was because the quality of care is higher in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world.
Moore doesn’t even raise my blood pressure anymore. Deal with enough fakes, frauds, and B.S. in my life on a daily basis.
One assumes the writer intended to desribe Sally Pipes as a Canadian “expatriate” rather than an “ex-patriot.”
BTTT
When you hand your wealth and your choice over to the Government you must expect bad things.
I guess Michael Moore doesn’t see any problem with telling us the government is stupid and evil while at the same time saying the government should be responsible for our health, our lives, and one seventh of the economy.
Sally Pipes is a Canadian ex-patriot
s/b
Sally Pipes is a Canadian expatriate
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