{"id":2384,"date":"2007-06-01T10:47:46","date_gmt":"2007-06-01T15:47:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2007\/06\/01\/moore-stupidity\/"},"modified":"2007-06-01T22:26:38","modified_gmt":"2007-06-02T03:26:38","slug":"moore-stupidity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2007\/06\/moore-stupidity\/","title":{"rendered":"Moore Stupidity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Opinio.nu<\/a> | Jonathan Price | June 1, 2007<\/p>\n

In his new propaganda piece, Sicko, Michael Moore uses interview, anecdote, and the editing room to full effect. He attacks the American healthcare industry not so much about those without health insurance (around 40 million), as about the quality of the healthcare that the insured receive. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

One woman is forced to pay for an unapproved ambulance ride. She was unconscious when the ambulance picked her up, making phoning for permission difficult. There is a man who chopped off two fingers and only has the insurance money to re-attach one. <\/p>\n

But the capstone of Sicko is the 9\/11 first responders who have been \u201cfailed\u201d by their government. Some developed serve respiratory problems. They do have government healthcare but with waiting lists. Moore brings them to Cuba, where they receive free, immediate care. <\/p>\n

You should listen to Moore. There is a problem. <\/p>\n

Moore\u2019s solution is something akin to the British NHS, which he romantically portrays through a series of smiling NHS customers, one of whom says that everything is free, after all \u201cthis is not America.\u201d Moore\u2019s solution is also a 6.7 trillion dollar proposition. Sicko is not the first time he has recommended it. <\/p>\n

It is difficult to take Moore\u2019s counterexamples seriously. Last year, even Castro sent to Spain for a cancer specialist and medicine. In Britain, the NHS is notorious; many British now understand that \u201cfree\u201d is not synonymous with \u201cgood.\u201d Moore could merely Google \u201cTony Blair and NHS\u201d to read a few articles about its failures. <\/p>\n

In his anti-American myopia Moore also forgets a few facts about the large, free, or nearly-free, American health system. The poor have Medicaid (federal health coverage), and the elderly have Medicare, including a large prescription drug plan (an improved version of which Bush signed into law). Additionally, hospitals deny no one emergency care. It is not free, but if you cannot pay, there are government and charitable programs to help forgive the debt. <\/p>\n

Nevertheless, it is often the top of the lower class, and bottom of the middle class who fall outside of government help, and who do not have robust private insurance. 40 million are uninsured and many more are underinsured. Yet Americans have an extreme amount of discretionary income, even the relatively poor. Additionally, everything beyond that comes on credit. Christmas, Disneyland, new cars, bigger than necessary houses, competitive luxuries. Americans buy everything privately but healthcare. <\/p>\n

A large part of our healthcare problem is priorities. We have come to believe that somebody else should pay\u2014employers or the government\u2014thus, we don\u2019t even try. A bad idea, entitlement, has infected an otherwise do-it-yourself society. And the lower middle class doesn\u2019t have a social program to make up the difference. <\/p>\n

If Americans began to take the healthcare into our own hands (first by requiring everyone to purchase insurance), market forces, and the injection of fresh capital into the healthcare system would likely provide three results: decreased costs, increased availability, and increased medical research. <\/p>\n

The problem is not only big business, and the solution is certainly not to model after Britain or Cuba.<\/p>\n

Mr. Moore should remember that Cuba also puts its free health services to other uses. Another documentary film maker, Nicol\u00e1s Guill\u00e9n Landri\u00e1n, who insinuated that Castro was a fool, was given a free stay in a mental institution, free electroshock therapy, and at least six months of complimentary interrogation. Universal healthcare is not a good measure of the health of any state.<\/p>\n

J. David Price works for a medical imaging company in the Netherlands. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Clarion Review: a journal for life in the Body<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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