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The first article deals primarily with Moore’s assertions about the nature of Cuban health care, and then goes on to thoroughly fisk Moore’s depiction of European socialized systems. I highly suggest reading the whole article, but these quotes in particular jumped out at me. Be warned - the pictures shown on these links are both graphic and disturbing. Nevertheless, they are certainly things people willing to swallow Moore’s story about the glory of Castro and his socialist health care system need to see.  On the nature of Cuban health care:

I don’t believe Michael Moore is a mere liar. He’s quite well aware that Cubans aren’t as lucky as him to receive first-class treatment when they need it, but he doesn’t care at all, as his everyday sport is going after his native country and get the applause of silly Euro leftists. What “Sicko” purposely didn’t tell you about Cuba is that, other than being a Gulag police state, there are very few—if any—functioning health centers. The rest, as can be seen in these photographs taken and sent in by a non-governamental journalist, are collapsing structures that resemble recently-bombed buildings. This is just the exterior side. Entering a Cuban hospital may be an appalling experience. Hygiene is pratically non-existent, excrements and roaches can easily be found everywhere on the floors and medicines are rarely available for patients. I challenge Moore to support his claims about US healthcare with graphical evidence, but I doubt he’ll be able to find any picture comparable to plenty of others showing the third-world decay of Castroite health. To figure out which side of Cuba’s dual system Michael Moore experienced, you need to scroll down this page from “The Real Cuba.”

Another interesting paragraph from this piece breaks down the actual number of uninsured Americans - a number which is, again, vastly different from the picture Moore paints. These are figures I had been meaning to write about for some time which are appearing in more and more articles that are critiquing Sicko. See for yourself:

As an European fed up with socialized medicine, I would like to express my deepest admiration for American healthcare. Although not perfect and needing more effective free market reforms, the money factor—which “Sicko” lashes out at as source of all imaginary evils—is what keeps it innovative, competitive and efficient. We hear a lot about 45 million citizens who don’t have health insurance. But just who are they? The US Census Bureau couldn’t be clearer:

--38% of the uninsured (17 million) live in households earning over $ 50,000 in annual income

--20% (9 million) reside in households earning over 75,000 a year

--Over 18 million (40%), between the ages of 18 and 34, spend more on entertainment or dining out

--14 million ( 31%) are elegible for health government programs like Medicaid, but choose to opt-out.

So, how many are truly uninsured? Only 18% of Americans.

The second article is a short but again detailed fisking of Moore’s depiction of European health care. According to this journalist, it’s not all roses and sunshine in England and France as Moore would have us believe:

Moore interviewed a physician in the British National Health Service about how wonderful free health care is in Britain, and how satisfied the physicians are in the NHS. He forgot to mention that more than one third of physicians working for the NHS buy private insurance so they don’t have to rely on the “free” care, and that more than 6 million British citizens also buy private insurance for the same reason. He did not mention that this year the health minister admitted that one in eight British patients still wait for more than a year for treatment. He neglected to say that Britain has had to import more than 20,000 physicians in the past three years – chiefly from Middle Eastern and Asian countries – because so few of the British, after sixty years of experience with the NHS, want to enter or stay in the profession.

While praising the superiority of French medical care and the fact that French doctors make house calls – almost as an aside while praising the superiority of every element of French society compared with America’s – Moore forgot to mention that 13,000 Frenchmen died of heat prostration and dehydration during a heat wave in the summer of 2003, when most French physicians were on summer vacation and did not show up in emergency rooms, let alone make house calls.

Beautifully stated. I encourage everyone to read these articles in full and, once again, ask yourself - why isn’t Michael Moore telling us the whole truth?

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Until the last month or so, I have not appeared on a single national TV show for nearly 2 and 1/2 years. After the attacks I had to endure three years ago, from a media intent on questioning my patriotism because I dared to speak out against the war when none in the media would, I decided I had had enough and would simply concentrate on making my next film. I had no desire to participate in networks that were complicit in the war because of their refusal the challenge the commander in chief.

Yeah, I’d stay away from TV too if I was routinely being shown to be a deceptive propagandist. And that darned conservative media. They never give any time to people who were against the war; or filmed anti-war crowds of dozens as if they were thousands; or spent an unseemly amount of time on Mike’s personal inspiration, Cindy Sheehan. But Wolf Blitzer hasn’t called for Bush’s impeachment, so I guess that makes him part of the Right Wing Propaganda Machine.

THAT’S the only thing we should be talking about. How profit and greed are killing our fellow Americans. How profit and private insurance have to be removed from our health care system.

That would be the profits that motivate the creation of anti-retrovirals, cheap insulin, non-invasive diagnostics (think MRIs) and laprocopes.

Damned profits!

Somebody should send a crew to Canada to find out why they live longer than we do, and why no Canadian has ever gone bankrupt because of medical bills.

Being less obese, getting more exercise, not shooting each other and having fewer car accidents might account for the two year difference. I’m not sure what would account for our 8.10 WHO responsiveness index against Canada’s 6.98. Canada is closer to Uraguary in responsiveness than they are to us.

And all of the media should start saying how much it costs to go to a doctor in these other top industrialized countries: Nothing. Zip. It’s FREE. Don’t patronize Americans by saying, “Well, it’s not free—they pay for it with taxes!” Yes, we know that. Just like we know that we drive down a city street for FREE—even though we paid for that street with our taxes. The street is FREE, the book at the library is FREE, if your house catches on fire, the fire department will come and put it out for FREE, and if someone snatches your purse, the police officer will chase down the culprit and bring your purse back to you—AND HE WON’T CHARGE YOU A DIME FROM THAT PURSE!

These are all free services, collectively socialized and paid for with our tax dollars. To argue that health care—a life and death issue for many—should not be considered in the same league is ludicrous and archaic. And trust me, once you add up what you pay for out-of-pocket in premiums, deductibles, co-pays, overpriced medicines, and treatments that aren’t covered (not to mention all the other things we pay for like college education, day care and other services that many countries provide for at little or no cost), we, as Americans, are paying far more than the Canadians or Brits or French are paying in taxes. We just don’t call these things taxes, but that’s exactly what they are.

I quoted this in full, including Moore’s shouting, because I don’t think I can do justice to it. First, taxes are involuntary, Mike. I didn’t raise my marginal rate this high. And my one-month old has had no voice in the crushing taxes she will be forced to pay to finance Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. If a sheep is eaten by three wolves, is that voluntary because it was outvoted?

Second, you can’t get “a dime from that purse” when the purse is empty in the first place.

Third, the ignorance of basic economics astounds me.  As a rich guy, Moore knows that the rich pay most of our taxes.  There are four ways money gets spent and the least efficient is when you spend one person’s money on another person.

Mike is again buying into the “socialized medicine is efficient” nonsense.  The only way it can be efficient is to ration care and force people to die.  I’m preparing a massive analysis of the WHO report on my own website, which link I’ll to from here.  Suffice it to say, the evidence that a socialized system gives you better “bang for your buck” is, um, zero.

See you all when I’m back on CNN tomorrow—where the discussion will be not be about whose statistics are right, but rather about the guy without insurance who died while I was writing this letter.

And Moorewatch will be waiting.

P.S. Oh… I forgot to tell you about Paris Hilton. Apparently cooped up for too long at home since getting out of jail, she decided to head out for a night on the town. But where does she go? Clubbing? Cruising down the Strip? No! She and her sister decide to go see “Sicko.” Now THAT’S news! So, no more bad words about Paris Hilton!

Well, that does seem about the intellectual calibre of Michael’s audience. Maybe he’s found a muse to replace Cindy Sheehan.

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The medical care in countries with socialized medicine is still free. Gupta doesn’t seem to grasp that. Here in America, when you go to the library and check out a book, it’s free. When the fire department puts out a fire at your house, it’s free. In Canada, when you go into the hospital for chemotherapy, it’s free. You don’t walk out with a bill. Yes, citizens pay higher taxes in countries with socialized medicine, but they don’t pay the premiums, co-pays, deductibles and other out-of-pocket medical costs that we face in America. Moreover, in other industrialized countries citizens are not bankrupted by huge bills during a medical crisis – as is the case in America, where the leading cause of bankruptcy is medical bills.

Apart from the absurdity of the semantic games, there’s another cost that Michael’s not including, as I have said many times—opportunity cost.  There is no cost in this world greater than opportunity cost. And no cost harder to see. For example, the citizens of socialist countries don’t see the incredible healthcare systems they’d have had they remained private—because they don’t exist.  All they is the great slime engine edifice of “single payer healthcare”. 

Eliminating the evil profits in medicine will destroy innovation.  The biggest cost of a socialized system will be the revolutionary drugs and surgical methods that we won’t get in the future because the profit motive is gone. The motto of our modern political culture seems to be: “Children are the future . . . today belongs to me!” Socialized medicine may get us “free” pills and surgeries. But the price may be our grandchildren dying of drug-resistant TB or never getting a cure for Alzheimer’s.

That’s not a price I’m willing to pay.  Especially as I won’t be one getting the bill.

The Pravda Squad then gets into Paul Keckley.  Apparently, Keckley is full of crap because he once worked for the same organization as Tommy Thompson, donated some money to Republicans and worked for EBM, which has healthcare clients.

I despise these guilt by association arguments that Moore is so fond of.  And I hate it when Republicans do it too. It’s a pure opponent slime.  Don’t respond to their arguments, imply they are biased because of a distant relation with someone else. So we can ignore what Pat Michaels says about global warming because Cato gets a small amount of money from oil companies.  On the flip side, global warming skeptics say we can ignore the issue because the environmentalist movement has some old Commies in it.

Michael Moore is essentially saying that we can’t trust the fact-checking of anyone who is connected to politics (or maybe it’s just Republicans) or the healthcare industry.  By my count, that means the only person we can trust is . . . Michael Moore.

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DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN: “(Moore says) the United States slipped to number 37 in the world’s health care systems. It’s true. ... Moore brings a group of patients, including 9/11 workers, to Cuba and marvels at their free treatment and quality of care. But hold on - that WHO list puts Cuba’s health care system even lower than the United States, coming in at #39.”

THE TRUTH: “But hold on?” ‘SiCKO’ clearly shows the WHO list, with the United States at number #37, and Cuba at #39. Right up on the screen in big five-foot letters. It’s even in the trailer! CNN should have its reporter see his eye doctor. The movie isn’t hiding from this fact. Just the opposite: CNN hid the facts on Cuba But ‘SiCKO’ has the facts right up front.

So it’s shown on screen, but not mentioned in blazing great letters.  And not shouted at the top of their lungs.

The fact that the healthcare system in an impoverished nation crippled by our decades-old blockade (including medical supplies and drugs) ranks so closely to ours is more an indictment of the American system than the Cuban system. Although Cuba ranks lower overall than the United States, it still has a lower infant mortality rate and longer life span. (see below) And unlike the United States, Cuba offers healthcare to absolutely everyone. In an independent Gallup poll conducted in Cuba, “a near unanimous 96 percent of respondents say that health care in Cuba is accessible to everyone.”

As I noted in a previous post, you can’t just take the WHO rankings and not know what they mean. Cuba is only ranked as high as it is because the medicine is “fair” - i.e., it’s equally crappy.  Hell, I’d agree their crappy care is “accessible to everyone”. But in the same WHO report Cuba ranks 115th in responsiveness and 33rd in overall health (we’re 22nd).  It’s comparitively high ranking is because it is 118th in spending. It’s always cheap to die.  And a totalitarian system will always keep gun violence and over-eating down.  It also keeps the AIDS rate down by jailing anyone who tests positive.

CNN: “Moore asserts that the American health care system spends $7,000 per person on health. Cuba spends $25 dollars per person. Not true. But not too far off. The United States spends $6,096 per person, versus $229 per person in Cuba.”

THE TRUTH: According to our own government – the Department of Health and Human Services’ National Health Expenditures Projections – the United States will spend $7,092 per capita on health in 2006 and $7,498 in 2007. As for Cuba – Dr. Gupta and CNN need to watch ‘SiCKO’ first before commenting on it. ‘SiCKO’ says Cuba spends $251 per person on health care, not $25, as Gupta reports.

Gupta admitted his error on $25—see, Michael, that’s what responsible people do. 

And the BBC reports that Cuba’s per capita health expenditure is… $251! This is confirmed by the United Nations Human Development Report, 2006. Yup, Cuba spends $251 per person on health care. As Gupta points out, the World Health Organization does calculate Cuba’s per capita health expenditure at $229 per person. We chose to use the UN numbers, a minor difference - and $229 is a lot closer to $251 than $25.

Gupta is quoting numbers from the same report—he is comparing apples to apples.  Michael Moore is mixing sources to deliberately make the US look as bad as possible. Mike, you can’t just pick the highest number you can find for the US and the lowest you can find for Cuba.  According to the 2000 WHO report which everyone loves, the numbers are $131 and $4187, respectively.  According to the UNHDR you cite above for the $251 figure, America spends $5,711.  But that apparently wasn’t bad enough, so your scrambled around until you could find a bigger number.

Besides, Michael, do you think your movies would be better if you were paid a 20th of what you currently are?

CNN: In fact, Americans live just a little bit longer than Cubans on average.

THE TRUTH: Just the opposite. The 2006 United Nations Human Development Report’s human development index states the life expectancy in the United States is 77.5 years. It is 77.6 years in Cuba.

Again, you have to take into account the source.  Gupta was using a different source.  Notice Michael switches again to the resource that shows the worst case for the US. According to the 2000 WHO report that Mike uses when it suits him, Cuba’s life expectancy was 73.5 and 77.4 for men and women, respectively.  It was 73.8 and 79.7 in the United States. Not bad for what Moore himself would call the violentist place on Earth.

Where is Michael getting his figure from?  An obscure publication having mostly to do with development and public health.  They get their numbers from an obscure 2005 United Nations conference.  Much as I criticize the WHO report, I’ll take their numbers.

CNN: The United States ranks highest in patient satisfaction.

THE TRUTH: True, but even when the WHO took patient satisfaction into account in its comprehensive review of the world’s health systems, we still came in at #37.

More dissembling.  Gupta acknowledged we rank 37th. And I noted below, we rank 37th because our healthcare system isn’t socialized.

Patients may be satisfied in America, but not everyone gets to be a patient. 47 million are uninsured and are rarely patients - until it’s too late. In the rest of the Western world, everyone and anyone can be a patient because everyone is covered. (And don’t face exclusions for pre-existing conditions, co-pays, deductibles, and costly monthly premiums). It’s not that other countries are unhappy with their health care – for example, “70 to 80 percent of Canadians find their waiting times acceptable.”

The health care wonks have backed off their claim that “no one gets healthcare” since people like me have pointed out that it’s illegal to turn away patients.  But Moore is deceptive when he says our numbers are inflated by leaving out 47 millions people—who are patients, by the way—because the #1 ranking comes from a household survey, not a patient survey.

CNN: Americans have shorter wait times than everyone but Germans when seeking non-emergency elective procedures, like hip replacement, cataract surgery, or knee repair.

THE TRUTH: This isn’t the whole truth. CNN pulled out a statistic about elective procedures.

Um, which part of “non-emergency elective procedures” did you not understand, Mike? 

Of the six countries surveyed in that study (United States, Canada, New Zealand, UK, Germany, Australia) only Canada had longer waiting times than America for sick adults waiting to schedule a doctor’s appointment for a medical problem. 81% of patients in New Zealand got a same or next-day appointment for a non-routine visit, 71% in Britain, 69% in Germany, 66% in Australia, 47% in the U.S., and 36% in Canada.

When we’re talking about wait times, we’re not talking about whether it takes one days or one week to get an appointment with your PCP (another artifact of our unhealthy nation is doctors being swamped).  We’re talking about getting surgery in a week against getting it in a year.  And no one would question that it’s easy to see a doctor in a socialized system.  We’re questioning the difficult of getting complex expensive treatment.

But do you want to fix this?  Remove the laws that limit the number of doctors our nation can graduate or give visas to.  Wait times in Texas are plunging because our malpractice reform is bringing them in.  Loosen the restrictions on nurse practitioners to allow them to act as cheaper PCPs.  In other words, get the government to stop doing certain things.

“Gerard Anderson, a Johns Hopkins health policy professor who has spent his career examining the world’s healthcare, said there are delays, but not as many as conservatives state. In Canada, the United Kingdom and France, ‘three percent of hospital discharges had delays in treatment,’ Anderson told The Miami Herald. ‘That’s a relatively small number, and they’re all elective surgeries, such as hip and knee replacement.’

“Three percent of hospital discharges had delays in treatment”.  That phrase should trigger alarm bells in the left side of your brain.  If people die on the waiting list or in the hospital, they don’t get counted.  If people are just getting their knee prodded, that counts as a non-delay.  The proper figure is what percentage of serious health ailments have to wait months for treatment.  And as we’ll see below, it’s quite high.

One way America is able to achieve decent waiting times is that it leaves 47 million people out of the health care system entirely, unlike any other Western country. When you remove 47 million people from the line, your wait should be shorter.

Notice that Mike contradicts himself here.  He says that our wait times are only good for elective surgeries but then says we’ve left 47 million people out.  But would those 47 million people be getting prompt elective surgeries under a socialized system?  What the hell is he arguing—that if we socialize medicine and bring elective surgeries to 47 million people, our wait times will get worse?  That’s what we’re saying!

And there are even more Americans who keep themselves out of the system because of cost - in the United States, 24 percent of the population did not get medical care due to cost. That number is 5 percent in Canada, and 3 percent in the UK. 

24 percent of Americans don’t get healthcare because of cost? That sounds a bit high, considering that only 16% are uninsured and 50% are on the government’s dime.  And did they not get care or did they merely delay it or forgo certain treatments? That’s not necessarily a bad thing.  If people were more aware of the cost of medicine, they might forgo unnecessary doctor visits and tests—as I did when I was uninsured.  I’ve also delayed buying a television, buying a car and seeing movies because of cost.  And of course people in socialized medical systems are not hindered by costs—they’re not paying the bills!

One more thing.  The survey Mike cites on people delaying care because of costs?  It also shows that only 5% of Americans wait more than four months for care—against 27% in Canada, 38% in the UK, 23% in Australia and 26% in New Zealand.  And notably, all five systems have gotten worse between 1988 and 2001 due to aging populations.  But he’ll leave that tidbit out.  He’ll quote a Johns Hopkins researcher on healthcare delays, but quote this report on costs.  Again, he’s mixing sources to make America look as bad as possible.

CNN: (PAUL KECKLEY-Deloitte Health Care Analyst): “The concept that care is free in France, in Canada, in Cuba - and it’s not. Those citizens pay for health services out of taxes. As a proportion of their household income, it’s a significant number … (GUPTA): It’s true that the French pay higher taxes, and so does nearly every country ahead of the United States on that list.”

THE TRUTH: ‘SiCKO’ never claims that health care is provided absolutely for free in other countries, without tax contributions from citizens. Former MP Tony Benn reads from the NHS founding pamphlet, which explicitly states that “this is not a charity. You are paying for it mainly as taxpayers.” ‘SiCKO’ also acknowledges that the French are “drowning in taxes.”

OK, I’ve now got to see the movie soon.  Does he really claim this?  Anyone?

Comparatively, many Americans are drowning in insurance premiums, deductibles, co-pays and medical debt and the resulting threat of bankruptcy – half of all bankruptcies in the United States are triggered by medical bills.

Socializing our medical system will not magically make it more efficient—as I’ve shown, Medicare’s overhead is more like 20-30% than 1-3%.  The high-paid insurance execs will be replaced by high-paid government hacks. Note that by Moore’s own argument, taxes will have to rise to equal our current expenditures.

The only way to cut costs is by rationing or stiffing the providers.  Stiffing the doctors is a popular meme.  And maybe you want to go to a doctor who is being paid as much as a gas station attendant.  But I don’t.

CNN: “But even higher taxes don’t guarantee the coverage everyone wants … (KECKLEY): 15 to 20 percent of the population will purchase services outside the system of care run by the government.”

THE TRUTH: It’s not clear what country Keckley is referring to. In the United Kingdom, only 11.5 percent of the population has supplementary insurance, but it doesn’t take the place of NHS insurance. Nobody in France buys insurance that replaces government insurance either, although a substantial amount buys some form of complimentary insurance.

Again, missing the point.  Keckley didn’t say that they were replacing socialized medicine.  He said they are supplementing it.  And there is a range of values for various nations.  Moore disputes the 15-20 percent range with a figure from a single country.  Also, keep in mind, Moore wants private insurance to be illegal.

CNN: “But no matter how much Moore fudged the facts, and he did fudge some facts…”

This is libel. There is not a single fact that is “fudged” in the film. No one has proven a single fact in the film wrong. We expect CNN to correct their mistakes on the air and to apologize to their viewers.

Pot.  Kettle.  And as we’re documenting on this website, you can fudge the facts plenty without getting any “facts” wrong.  Just mix up your statistical sources, leave out critical information and imply things that aren’t true.  It’s the sneaky lies of a child—“Gee, I can’t tell you who broke that vase!”

I’ll tell you what, Mike.  I’ll join your call for CNN to apologize (although they already did apologize for the $25 mistake).  When you apologize to the NRA for implying they were part of the Klan. Or apologize to Charleton Heston’s spirit for editing his quotes together to make him look bad.  Or apologize about the war plaque.  Or saying the Columbine factory made nukes. Or of the hundreds of people you have unfairly maligned, quoted out of context. Or apologizing for your distortion of the Mychelle Williams situation.  Or…

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“That’s the object of the health-insurance companies,” explains Henry Kahn, a physician, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention epidemiologist and Emory professor. “They make obscene profits by not paying for health care when people need it.”

This non-sequitur comes after a description of disability insurance, not health insurance.  But you always know you’re going into dangerous waters when the phrase “obscene profits” comes up.  If this professor or this writer can articulate the difference between a profit and a profit margin, I will eat my copy of Free to Choose.

I would also note it would be far more difficult for insurance companies to behave this way if the consumer’s power had not beenstripped away by the Feds.

The Smiths had health insurance. But as the illnesses claimed their toll on the Smiths’ health, America’s evil – that’s the only suitable word for it – system of medicine undermined the lives they’d worked decades to build.

This is the quote that practically has me shaking with rage.  Evil?  Evil?!  Evil?!?!  What precisely makes our healthcare system “evil”? That it has made AIDS, MS and diabetes controllable ailments? Or that it worsens its infant mortality and lifespan numbers by trying to save premies other nations let die? Oh, I know!  It’s the free care that millions of uninsured people get every day in hospitals around the country.

As much as I loathe HMOs, I can’t bring myself to call them evil.  Greedy, yes.  Stupid, no question.  But evil?  I can’t stand socialized medicine. I’ll call it stupid, misguided, destructive. But evil is quite a word to be opening up—and one that is particularly galling in a movie (and an editorial) that smiles approvingly on the murderous, thieving Fidel Castro.

Finally, Sugg’s talking about the Donna Smith sob story.  This is a 52 year-old woman who was ruined when she developed uterine cancer while her husband had arterial problems. I guess they’d be better off in a socialized system, where they probably would have been allowed to die. But at least they would have died cheaply.

Yes, those evil Fidel-loving commies have a wonderful health-care system – and they live an average of three years longer than Americans. The Cubans provided care comparable to anything in America – the same care every Cuban receives.

I don’t think I can say anything that will match the utter stupidity and moral vacuousness of this statement.  Well one thing. Sugg’s lying about their lifespan. I think he has Cuba confused with France, which does indeed have three years on us. This is an understandable mix-up (at least per-Sarkozy).  But I would argue the tragic French lack of violence, drug abuse and obesity might be a bigger factor than our “evil” healthcare system.

According to the World Health Organization, we spend proportionately more of our gross national product on health care than any other nation – yet we rank 37th in the performance of our medical industry. France, Italy, Spain, Oman, Austria and Japan top the list.

The big problem is the 30-some percent of our health-care dollars that are wasted on the insurance companies. By comparison, Medicare, the health program for oldsters, operates with about 3 percent administrative costs.

I dealt with these Numbers in the Dark in my Ebert Fisking. In short, Medicare doesn’t administer Medicare; and our 37th ranking is partially because we’re not socialized.

Here in Georgia, the rubes live under the illusion of rugged individualism – a myth propagated by those who steal our money. In voting for George Bush, Gov. Sonny Perdue and the rest of the GOP, middle-class Georgians elect pickpockets and thieves.

Yes, Democrats are so honest and true, it makes me weep. But notice that we now get the elitist condescension.  Those who oppose socialized medicine are just deluded “rubes” who don’t know no better, no sir. And “rugged individualism” is a four-letter word.  We’re all in this together—one big family. I’m sure Michael Moore feels our pain, too.

Kahn, for example, heads a group of physicians who tallied Georgia health-care expenditures for 2003 at $37 billion. By eliminating the insurance companies, Kahn says, we’d save $8 billion. “With that we could provide health care for everyone in Georgia, without decreasing what’s paid to doctors and hospitals, and we’d still save at least 2 percent of that $37 billion,” he says. “Everybody is covered and costs go down.” U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., has proposed a similar national plan.

I’ve been spent half an hour trying to find an analogy to make a joke with.  I can’t.  The statement is so ignorant, it’s as if he said our healthcare system would be better off run by Martians. Again, this is based on the myth that Medicare’s overhead is 2% (but wait, earlier he said it was 3!). I’m sure that a money-vomiting government program with no supervision will be beautifully efficient.

Never ask a Leftist for financial advice, that’s all I can say.

But in some ways, this is precisely what free-marketers are suggesting.  With HSAs and greater insurance freedom, the consumer would have more money in his hands and more control over it.

Hello, Karl Marx. Call it socialized medicine if you want.

Thanks, I will!

But America is on life support that only a single-payer, no-insurance-company system, one that also regulates drug companies like utilities, can cure.

America is getting really stupid editorials written in alternative magazines.  It’s a crisis that only government regulation of the media can cure.  Calling the Fairness Doctrine!

And regulating drug companies like utilities? This would be the same regulation that caused massive blackouts in California and, according to the Left, is destroying the planet with fossil fuels.

But the comparison is just plain stupid.  My water company puts water in my house.  Water is not terribly complicated. The universe pretty much got it down 300,000 years after the Big Bang. It’s not going to suddenly mutate into a human-resistant strain of water. And plumbing goes back thousands of years. The biggest challenge my water company has is a burst main.  The water company is not going to invest millions of dollars into some experimental water only to get the daylights sued out of them when it turns out that, here’s a surprise, people with heart conditions have heart attacks.

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I want you to put aside your self-affixed label of Republican/conservative/born-again/capitalist/ditto-head/right-winger and just talk to me as an American, on the common ground we both call America.

What common ground on America, Mikey.  You hate America as it is.  You love America only in the context of its potential to become some kind of pacifist, neo-socialist shithole like most of Europe.  So don’t ever speak to me about your great love of America, Mikey, because we both know it isn’t there.  (For more of my thoughts on this, see this post.)

Are we safer now than before 9/11? When you learn that behind the horse show runner, the #2 and #3 men in charge of emergency preparedness have zero experience in emergency preparedness, do you think we are safer?

See, this is so typical of Mikey’s agitprop technique.  He asks one question, then answers it with something that has nothing to do with the first.  Are we safer now than before 9/11?  Yes, absolutely.  It’s going to take 20 or 30 years for our current Middle East strategy to truly bear fruit, but in the long term it will most definitely be worth it.  Is our disaster preparedness ability better after 9/11?  No, absolutely not.  Two questions, with two different answers, and Michael Moore’s drooling fans won’t for a second see the way they were just manipulated.

When you look at Michael Chertoff, the head of Homeland Security, a man with little experience in national security, do you feel secure?

Nope, not at all.  He’s next on my hit list.

When men who never served in the military and have never seen young men die in battle send our young people off to war, do you think they know how to conduct a war? Do they know what it means to have your legs blown off for a threat that was never there?

Nope, but I can point you to someone who had his arms blown off, and let him answer that question.  His name is Peter Damon.  You should recognize him, Mikey, you used him in Fahrenheit 9/11.  He’s the guy in hospital who had his arms blown off.  You remember him, right?  You whored him out without his permission.  For all the camera crews you had at your disposal, you somehow couldn’t manage to get one over to interview him.  Hell, you didn’t even ask his permission to use his image, you bought the rights to the interview footage from NBC.  Well, there was one filmmaker who had the courage and integrity to let Damon say his piece.  Mike Wilson, in his brilliant film Michael Moore Hates America went to Damon’s house and let him have his say.  I’m sure you didn’t watch that film, Mikey, so if you or any of the drooling retards you count as your fans have the personal integrity to want to get Damon’s opinion, you can read it here.  But, hey, why actually do the right thing, when you can continue to whore out people who despise you and your message, right?

Do you really believe that turning over important government services to private corporations has resulted in better services for the people?

Yes, absolutely.  There is no institution in the history of mankind more incompetent, bloated, and unaccountable to the people than government.  If anything, the Katrina disaster had shown us just how inept government actually is. But don’t take my word for it, Mikey, ask Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish.

We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water, trailer trucks of water.  FEMA turned them back.  They said we didn’t need them.  This was a week ago.  FEMA--we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish.  The Coast Guard said, “Come get the fuel right away.” When we got there with our trucks, they got a word.  “FEMA says don’t give you the fuel.” Yesterday--yesterday--FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines.  They cut them without notice.  Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, “No one is getting near these lines.” Sheriff Harry Lee said that if America--American government would have responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn’t be in this crisis.

Government, no matter which party or which president happens to be in power, is totally incompetent.  I will always, always trust private individuals and companies over some bloated, inept government bureaucracy.

Why do you hate our federal government so much? You have voted for politicians for the past 25 years whose main goal has been to de-fund the federal government. Do you think that cutting federal programs like FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers has been good or bad for America? GOOD OR BAD?

Totally false.  Conservatives aren’t anti-government, Mikey.  We understand that there are certain functions and needs that can only be met by government.  National defense, building roads, picking up garbage, providing fire and police rescue, that sort of thing.  What we object to is the European, neo-socialist nanny state that you are so fond of.  We believe in empowering the individual to provide form himself, whereas you beelieve in empowering the state to provide for the individual.  We believe in teaching a man to fish, whereas you believe in stealing money from one group of people to create a behemoth government fish-distribution bureaucracy to keep poor people sucking at the ample, fishy teat of government for the rest of their lives.  Our way is better than yours.

With the nation’s debt at an all-time high, do you think tax cuts for the rich are still a good idea? Will you give yours back so hundreds of thousands of homeless in New Orleans can have a home?

Ah, the classic non sequitur logical fallacy.  Once again Mikey asks two questions with two different answers, thus implying that there is a connection between giving people tax cuts and other people being denied housing. 

Tax cuts are a good idea, always.  There is no such thing as a bad tax cut, ever, under any circumstances.  However, for tax cuts to be effective they also must be tied to cuts in spending.  Bush has cut the taxes, but has increased spending to unbelievable levels.  Bush is as big a spender as any rabid left-wing liberal in Congress, he just spends on different stuff.  And since “the rich” are the only people in this country who actually pay any taxes, then they are the only people who will receive tax cuts.  So, yes, I believe they are still a good idea, provided we cut government spending.  The answer to this discrepancy isn’t to raise taxes, it’s to cut spending.

As far as giving back the tax cut goes, you’ve thrown down the gauntlet.  You’re a multi-millionaire, Mikey.  What did you do with your tax cut.  Did you give it back to the government, as you are asking others to do?  If you did, prove it to us.  Show us a copy of the cancelled cashier’s check to Uncle Sam, proving that you gave back your tax cut.  What’s that, Mikey?  You didn’t give it back?  Then you’ve proven to the world that you’re nothing but a fucking hypocrite.

Do you believe in Jesus? Really? Didn’t he say that we would be judged by how we treat the least among us? Hurricane Katrina came in and blew off the facade that we were a nation with liberty and justice for all. The wind howled and the water rose and what was revealed was that the poor in America shall be left to suffer and die while the President of the United States fiddles and tells them to eat cake.

This is the latest attempt by Mikey to somehow tie in quotes from Jesus to support his nanny state message.  Tell me, Mikey, where exactly in the Bible Jesus commands his followers to give money to Caesar, and for Caesar to create a huge entitlement bureaucracy to redistribute this wealth?  Jesus was speaking of man being judged for his actions on an individual basis.  What have you done, Mikey?  I mean, apart from check into a fat farm and write these emails.  What have you done?  How many dirty, impoverished black families are currently shacked up in your Park Avenue penthouse?  Does “zero” ring a bell?  How will Jesus judge you for your lack of compassion?

Oh, right.  Being compassionate doesn’t mean doing something on an individual basis, it means empowering the government to do it.  How very Jesus-like.

That’s not a joke. The day the hurricane hit and the levees broke, Mr. Bush, John McCain and their rich pals were stuffing themselves with cake. A full day after the levees broke (the same levees whose repair funding he had cut), Mr. Bush was playing a guitar some country singer gave him. All this while New Orleans sank under water.

Look, the idea that Bush was out of the loop here is preposterous.  He was in Air Force One, for Christ’s sake.  He went to a pre-sheduled event.  The president is never, ever out of touch.  Now, if you want to argue that Bush shouldn’t have done this for the sake of appearing in a leadership role, I totally agree with you.  (See my previously linked post on Katrina.) It was a short-sighted, asinine thing to do, but what else was he supposed to do?  Fly down there and stop the hurricane with his bare hands?

It would take ANOTHER day before the President would do a flyover in his jumbo jet, peeking out the widow at the misery 2500 feet below him as he flew back to his second home in DC. It would then be TWO MORE DAYS before a trickle of federal aid and troops would arrive. This was no seven minutes in a sitting trance while children read “My Pet Goat” to him. This was FOUR DAYS of doing nothing other than saying “Brownie (FEMA director Michael Brown), you’re doing a heck of a job!”

Note, gentle reader, the incredible lack of any criticism for the monumentally inept job done by Governor Blanco.  Oh, that’s right, she’s a Democrat.  Mikey has to protect them at all costs, especially when there’s a Bush he’s trying to blame.

My Republican friends, does it bother you that we are the laughing stock of the world?

Nope.  I’ve been to the rest of the world.  I don’t give a flying rat fuck what they think of us.  Besides, you’ve done more to play to that anti-American sentiment than any living person.  You’ve used it to make yourself millions and millions of dollars.  When you fly your fat ass around the world fomenting hatred of America, how can you turn around and then criticize America for the hatred that you yourself helped to create?

And on this sacred day of remembrance, do you think we honor or shame those who died on 9/11/01? If we learned nothing and find ourselves today every bit as vulnerable and unprepared as we were on that bright sunny morning, then did the 3,000 die in vain?

Of course not.  What it shows is that,, at its barest element, you cannnot count on government.  Government routinely fails us, yet your solution to the problem is more government.  More money, more spending, more control over the individual.  How do you honor the dead, Mikey, when every single thing you propose will do nothing to make us any safer or any better prepared?

Our vulnerability is not just about dealing with terrorists or natural disasters. We are vulnerable and unsafe because we allow one in eight Americans to live in horrible poverty. We accept an education system where one in six children never graduate and most of those who do can’t string a coherent sentence together. The middle class can’t pay the mortgage or the hospital bills and 45 million have no health coverage whatsoever.

And here we go with the socialism, tying into his 9/11 message things that have absolutely nothing to do with terrorism or natural disaster preparedness or anything else.

Are we safe? Do you really feel safe? You can only move so far out and build so many gated communities before the fruit of what you’ve sown will be crashing through your walls and demanding retribution.

So says a guy who lives in a Park Avenue penthouse.  Man of the people, eh Mikey?

Do you really want to wait until that happens? Or is it your hope that if they are left alone long enough to soil themselves and shoot themselves and drown in the filth that fills the street that maybe the problem will somehow go away?

Do you think that their poverty could, ya know, maybe just possibly have anything to do with some of the poor choices they have made in their lives?  Like getting pregnant, dropping out of school, becoming addicted to drugs, joining a gang, that sort of thing?  Because here’s a shocker, Mikey: white people who engage in that sort of behavior are poor too.  Funny how that works.

I know you know better. You gave the country and the world a man who wasn’t up for the job and all he does is hire people who aren’t up for the job. You did this to us, to the world, to the people of New Orleans. Please fix it. Bush is yours. And you know, for our peace and safety and security, this has to be fixed. What do you propose?

I have an idea, and it isn’t a horse show.

I’ll close with this one thought.  We didn’t “give the world” Bush.  We had a choice to make, Bush or Kerry.  It’s fair to say that, even among Republicans, there were a lot of people who didn’t like Bush.  I could name 20 people I’d rather see as president than Bush.  If the choice were to vote Bush or Not Bush, clearly Not Bush would have won.  But that wasn’t the choice we were given, it was Bush or Kerry.  To use a South Park analogy, we had to choose between a Giant Douche or a Turd Sandwich, and no matter who won the election we were going to end up with either a douche or a turd.  The 2004 election could have easily been won by the Democrats if they had nominated a less detestable candidate.

Ironically, Mikey, it was you and your meddling that put Bush back in office.  You campaign for the most extreme left candidates in every election.  You, and your ilk in MoveOn, are working feverishly to push the Democrats to the radical left: support for gay marriage, gun control, the massive socialist welfare state, appeasing our enemies, worshipping the United Nations, and so on.  And because we only have a choice between two candidates, those of us whose primary focus was on national defense voted Bush, because there isn’t a doubt in my mind that Kerry would have cut and run in Iraq.  So think about that the next time you get a hard-on for someone like Dennis Kucinich.

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For you to throw Linda Ronstadt off the premises because she dared to say a few words in support of me and my film, is simply stupid and Un-American. Frankly, I have never heard of such a thing happening. I read that you wouldn’t even let her go back up to her room at your hotel! Are you crazy? For crying out loud, it was a song DEDICATION! To “Desperado!” Every American loves that song! Sure, some people didn’t like the dedication, and that’s their right. But neither they nor you have the right to remove her from your building when all she did was exercise her AMERICAN right to speak her mind.

Who loves Desperado, Mike?  The “dumbest people on the planet,” a group of people too “ignorant” to “rule the world?” Odd that you seem to think that you have your finger on the pulse of America when you make yourself finthy rich denigrating Americans in front of foreigners at every possible opportunity.  But I digress.

Actually, Mikey, they have every right to toss her ass out of the building.  It’s private property.  Besides, there is more at work here than her support of you.

1. The concert was billed as a “Greatest Hits Tour.” When the guests got there she informed them that it wasn’t the Greatest Hits Tour, which undoubtedly pissed off a lot of people who came to hear her greatest hits.  (And let’s face it, for a has-been like Linda Ronstadt, what else is there?)
2. The concert was, in the words of the journalist reporting on it, “generally lackluster, unenthusiastic performance.”
3. After pissing off the audience, she then proceeded to alienate half of them by invoking the name of Michael Moore, who is second only to President Bush as the most polarizing figure in American public life today.
4. She finished by ending the concert 20 minutes early.
5. A large portion of the audience stormed out, throwing drinks on Ronstadt’s pictures in the lobby.

Now, how is an employee—Ronstadt—who inspires this kind of reaction in the audience good for the Aladdin?  How many of those people in the audience were so incensed that they left and went gambling at another casino?  How many millions of dollars in lost revenue did she cost them?  So how can anyone sit there and claim that they didn’t have the right to throw her out on her ass?  As the hotel manager said, “If she wants to talk about her views to a newspaper or in a magazine article, she is free to do so. But in a stage in front of four and a half thousand people is not the place for it.”

Of all the things that go on in Las Vegas, this is what creates the need for serious action? What about the other half of the crowd at the Aladdin who, according to the Las Vegas Sun, cheered her when she made her remarks? Did you throw them out, too?

That’s not the point, idiot.  The point is that Linda Ronstadt wasn’t hired to give her political opinions and piss off half the crowd, she was hired to sing and entertain.  She failed to do either of these, from the sound of the article.

I think you owe Ms. Ronstadt an apology. And I have an idea how you can make it up to her—and to the millions of Americans you have offended. Invite her back and I’ll join her in singing “America the Beautiful” on your stage. Then I will show “Fahrenheit 9/11” free of charge to all your guests and anyone else in Las Vegas who wants to see it.

I think Ronstadt owes an apology to everyone in the audience who came to hear her sing and be entertained and instead were treated to a mediocre performance and a political tirade, after which the concert was cut short.

Mr. Timmins, as the song “Desperado” says—“Come to your senses!” How can you refuse this offer? I await your reply.

Probably he’ll refuse it the same way that you’ve refused to sit down for an interview with Mike Wilson.  Come on, Mikey, you’re a big champion of free speech, why don’t you have the balls to submit to an interview by an unknown filmmaker?  How can you refuse that offer?

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