Free Republic

Havana, August 6, 2007.-There is no doubt that the Cuban authorities will not allow the Cuban people the possibility of watching this documentary by Michael Moore, a leading movie producer and ideological ally of the Cuban regime. Although it might look contradictory, the propaganda used in the film to discredit the USA health system while trying to highlight the excellence of the Cuban health system, turned out to be considered “subversive” by the Cuban regime. It so happens that he based his arguments on gross lies that do not represent at all the Cuban health drama. It is well known...

A grandfather died after a blister caused by tight new shoes led to blood poisoning and massive organ failure. Peter Catterall, 60, was given dressings by a district nurse and told the sore on his toe should heal by itself. But just over a week later, the retired electrician suffered two heart attacks. [snip] But according to his youngest daughter, Sara, 21, the sore continued to weep, and when she went to see him a week later on July 1 he confessed: "This toe is killing me." Miss Catterall said yesterday: "I am no nurse, but I immediately knew he...

The Wall Street Journal editorial-page editors are upset that Wisconsin's state Senate passed "Healthy Wisconsin", which will give health insurance to every person in the state.... In addition, as the Journal put it, "Wow, is 'free' health care expensive. The plan would cost an estimated $15.2 billion, or $3 billion more than the state currently collects in all income, sales and corporate income taxes."... As usual, most of the new taxes will be imposed on employers. Progressives believe money taken from them doesn't cost anything... The WSJ writes about a "last line of defense against" Healthy Wisconsin, but I say,...

Does President Bush really believe what he's saying about the effort from congressional Democrats and some leading Senate Republicans to provide health coverage for millions of uninsured children? He's portraying it as the first step on a slippery slope toward "government-run healthcare," as if senior senators in both parties were conspiring with Michael Moore to import Cuban doctors to inoculate and indoctrinate American children. In fact, Congress is moving responsibly to remove a blot on the nation: the 8 million children without health insurance. It is doing so by expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, a state-federal...

In his new movie "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 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...

Woman, 108, must wait 18 months for hearing aid Thair Shaikh Monday July 30, 2007 The Guardian A 108-year-old woman has been told she must wait at least 18 months before she receives a new hearing aid. Olive Beal, who has failing eyesight and uses a wheelchair, finds it difficult to hear with her five-year-old analogue aid and needs a digital version that cuts out background noise and makes conversation easier. Mrs Beal, a former piano teacher who was involved in the suffragette movement, would be 110 by the time she gets her new hearing aid. "I could be dead...

A woman aged 108 has been told she must wait 18 months before the Health Service will give her the hearing aid she needs. Former piano teacher Olive Beal, one of the oldest people in Britain, has poor eyesight and uses a wheelchair. The delay could mean she will be unable to communicate and listen to the music she loves. Now her family have said that realistically Mrs Beal is unlikely ever to receive the digital hearing aid that will save her from isolation. The one-time suffragette is one of hundreds of thousands of older people made to wait up...

Maybe Michael Moore isn't paranoid, because it sure seems like the government really is out to get him. The firebrand filmmaker says he has been served with a subpoena by the federal government for a trip to Cuba for his hit healthcare documentary, Sicko. The Treasury Department confirmed two months ago that it was probing Moore's visit to Cuba, during which he was accompanied by some ailing 9-11 rescue workers. Appearing Thursday on NBC's Tonight Show with Jay Leno, the Oscar winner said that he had just learned backstage that he had been served with an order compelling him to...

You now have the opportunity to print and carry your very own "'SiCKO' Health Care Card." Playing the 'SiCKO' card has worked for a family in DeBary, Florida, whose daughter suffered profound hearing loss and was denied a cochlear implant. Her father sent a letter to Cigna asking, "has your CEO ever been in a film before?" Before he knew it, his daughter's denial was overturned. It also worked for a family in Flint, Michigan who was stuck with a $66,000 medical bill until they posted their healthcare horror story on YouTube. Click here to see what happened next. Download...

Michael Thursday said the Bush administration has served him with a subpoena regarding his trip to Cuba during the making of his new film, "Sicko." The Oscar-winning filmmaker, who appeared Thursday on NBC's "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," said he was notified about the subpoena at the network's studios in Burbank, Calif. "I haven't even told my own family yet," Moore said. "I was just informed when I was back there with Jay that the Bush administration has now issued a subpoena for me."

Ever think that Michael Moore would come to a Republican's home and personally wash that Republican's laundry. Well, Michael Moore is holding a contest where he will wash a randomly chosen Republican's laundry if they go out and watch his new movie SICKO this weekend. Part of me thinks that this is some cheap marketing trick. However, the thought of talking crap to Michael Moore as he is washing my dirty smelly socks is very tempting. Rules for the contest are posted on his website: http://www.michaelmoore.com Thanks for reading, I'm Joe Voter! Are you a Voter too?

HAVANA (AP) - Eight Americans who graduated from a Cuban medical school say they will put the education paid for by Fidel Castro's communist government to use in hospitals back home. Four New Yorkers, three Californians and a Minnesotan, all from minority backgrounds, have studied in Havana since April 2001, forming the first class of American graduates from the Latin American School of Medicine. One other American previously graduated from the school after transferring from a U.S. university, but the six women and two men graduating Tuesday were the first Americans to complete the entire six-year program since Castro offered...

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...

Sicko Propaganda Humberto Fontova Monday, July 23, 2007 "We cannot, for a second, abandon propaganda" wrote Castro in a letter to a revolutionary colleague in 1954. "Propaganda is vital — propaganda is the heart of all struggles." Michael Moore claims that Cuba's Stalinist regime played it as straight with him during the filming of Sicko as he plays it with its viewers. "I asked them to give us [the 9/11 workers featured in the documentary] the same care they give their own Cuban citizens," he assured us "No more, no less. And that's what they did." You cringe at having...

I drove to the local multiplex the other night to see Michael Moore's latest movie. My wife came along, but she wisely choose to see the latest Harry Potter flick instead. I envied her. Michael Moore has always seemed to me to embody the es sence of the middle-class socialist as described by George Orwell. "The underlying motive of many socialists, I believe, is simply a hy pertrophied sense of order," Orwell wrote. "The present state of affairs offends them not because it causes misery, still less because it makes freedom impossible, but because it is untidy." That certainly seems...

The unassuming international champion of universal health care, Michael Moore, was asked (New York Sun, June 29) whether, while filming "Sicko," he inquired about the condition of Cuban journalist Normando Gonzalez, a political prisoner since 2003. He has contracted severe chronic illnesses while in a Castro gulag. Moore answered that he asked only about Cuba's health care system while he was there. Among other suffering prisoners in Cuban cells who would have added further dimension to "Sicko" are independent librarians, put away for more than 20-year sentences for the crime of giving Cubans access to books and other publications forbidden...

'I haven't seen 'Sicko,'" says Avril Allen about the new Michael Moore documentary, which advocates socialized medicine... She's ...preparing to file suit against Ontario's provincial government about its health-care system... Her client... would have had to wait for four months just to get an MRI, and then months more to see a neurologist for his malignant brain tumor. Instead... [he] traveled to Buffalo, N.Y., for a lifesaving surgery. Now he's suing for the right to opt out of Canada's government-run health care... In the U.S., 83 House Democrats voted for a bill in 1993 calling for single-payer health care. That...

Drug addicts to be given i-Pods if they beat their habits By JAMES SLACK Last updated at 16:37pm on 22nd July 2007 Drug addicts could be offered food vouchers and the chance to win prizes such as i-Pod music players by the Government body refusing treatment to Alzheimer's sufferers. The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) wants to offer heroin and crack addicts 'incentives' to quit their habit. The users - many of whom commit crime to feed their habit - will be offered vouchers if they test clean for the illegal substances. The size of the taxpayer-funded gift will...

In the interest of your fetish with the poorly named "Fairness Doctrine," I have decided to spend a little "equal time" giving the party of FDR some friendly advice. Free of charge. First and foremost, if you want to get into more power (after all, that’s the goal of every politician, right?), try standing for something. For the last thirty years, I have only heard of what you are opposed to. Opposing your opponent is no longer enough to convince voters what you plan to do with the power bestowed upon you by the "consent of the governed." You have...

RUSH: Let's talk about this cigar tax, this cigarette tax. The President says he going to veto it. He "reiterated today his threat to veto Senate legislation that would substantially increase funds for children’s health insurance by levying a 61-cent-a-pack increase in the federal excise tax on cigarettes." This includes that whopping 20,000% increase on the tax on cigars. The tax on cigars right now is five cents. It will go to ten bucks on large cigars. By the way, for those of you who are not cigar aficionados as am I, a large cigar is defined as anything that...