Mikey isn’t very NYSE.

On June 28, Mikey was interviewed by CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo outside the New York Stock Exchange. Apparently, the interview was supposed to have been held on the NYSE’s trading floor. But, yet again, Mikey’s “people” seem to have forgotten to file for the proper permissions. (DAMN those complicated forms!)

So, if Moore really had wanted to infiltrate the big, bad, evil fortress of kkkapitalist death-dealing, all he had to do was ask the day before. But no, I’m sure it was just another example of the Bush regime stepping in to try to suppress the truth. That makes much better copy, after all. In the end, whether is was just a minor filing goof, or something a little more, shall we say, staged… it still afforded our beloved Manatee of Misinformation the opportunity to do one of his very favoritest things; play the poor, oppressed truth-seeker.

Jon Stewart falls all over himself loving Moore

Wow.  I mean...wow.  Not once did Jon even consider asking him anything like a question.  By the way, I could not get Comedy Central’s Motherload player to work with Firefox, so you may need another browser to view it.

Three things:

1. Moore’s right that it’s crazy and dangerous that barely-trained “medical professionals” make decisions in a cubicle a thousand miles from your doctor.  Moore is wrong, however, because single-payer is a complete mistake.  Summary: Problem?  Yes.  Solution?  Not yet.  We’re working on it.

2. “They’ve done a good job of scaring people into thinking that the federal government is bad...” Hey Mike; THAT WAS YOU.  You spent your entire career up to this point telling us that the government is bad.  Now you want us to trust them so you can move one step closer to the socialist utopia you so desperately want to create?  Or rather, the socialist utopia you pretend you want to create in order to make money by the bucketful in the capitalist system you use to full advantage while at the same time disparaging and denouncing it?

3. He’s gaining the weight back, and quickly.  This is not an insult or a fat joke, it is purely an observation - one designed to give you pause the next time you read about his “successful” battle with weight and his advice on what you should do.

Now This Is Compassion

And this is what Michael Moore wants for America.

No thank you, Mikey.  Oh, for what it’s worth, on Wednesday I went to the doctor, and he told me he wanted me to have an MRI of my head.  I have to get prior approval from my insurance company, which usually takes a day.  I didn’t hear from the doctor yesterday so I called this morning.  Apparently there’s been some kind of a clerical error, because the department at the insurance company couldn’t find my record.  So the delay in this case is a common paperwork error.  I would imagine that I will be approved for the MRI today, and should have it sometime early next week.

The poor bastard in the film is in Canada.  Guess how long he had to wait?

Update: As it turned out I didn’t need a precertification from my insurance company at all.  They said, “No, you’re all set. Just call the MRI place and make an appointment.” Right now it’s 4:30pm on Friday.  My MRI is at 8:30am on Monday.

I feel so bad.  I’d much rather live in a compassionate society like Canada, where I have to wait six months to get my MRI, than here in the eeeeeevil kapitalist USA, where I can get damn near same-day treatment.

The French Connection

With the volumes of hate mail we’ve been receiving lately I’m glad this one didn’t slip through the cracks.  Here’s what a French guy living in America noticed about the “average” French family portrayed by Moore in Sicko.

Europe’s Beleaguered Drug Companies

RomneyCare in the Hot Seat

The Cato Institute has released a paper on Massachusetts’ public/private universal health coverage system.  Here’s the summary.

In spring 2006, Massachusetts enacted legislation to ensure universal health insurance coverage to all residents. The legislation was a hybrid of ideas from across the political spectrum, promoted by a moderately conservative Republican governor with national political aspirations, and passed by a liberal Democratic state House and Senate. Groups from across the political spectrum supported the plan, from the Heritage Foundation on the right to Families USA on the left, although the plan had detractors from across the political spectrum as well.

This study briefly describes the basic structure of the Massachusetts plan and identifies the good, the bad, and the ugly. Although the legislation, as Stuart Altman put it, “is not a typical Massachusetts–Taxachusetts, oh–just–crazy–liberal plan,” there is enough “bad” and “ugly” in the mix to raise serious concerns, particularly when the desire to overregulate the health insurance market appears to be hard–wired into Massachusetts policymakers’ DNA.

If we want to make health insurance more affordable and avoid the “bad” and the “ugly” of the Massachusetts plan, Congress — or, barring that, individual states — should consider a “regulatory federalism” approach. Under such an approach, insurers and insurance purchasers would be required to subject themselves to the laws and regulations of a single state but allowed to select the state. As with corporate charters, this system would allow employers and insurers to select the regulatory regime that most efficiently and cost–effectively matches the needs of their risk pools. The ability of purchasers and insurers to exit from the state’s regulatory oversight (taking their premium taxes with them) would temper opportunistic behavior by legislators and regulators, including the temptation to impose inefficient mandates and otherwise overregulate.

A little light reading for ya.  Enjoy.

Cleaning out my folder

I have all these links that I keep meaning to post...so to get them out, I’m just going to throw them all in one post...after the jump.

In this post by Artmonkey, he mentioned that Moore said anyone who claimed he spoke to Roger Smith was a “fucking liar.” Moore tried to downplay the conversation we can prove he had as not useful, but you can judge that for yourself.  The folks at Premiere sent me this link that contains a transcript of the conversation Mike had with Roger.  As you can plainly read for yourself, Moore asked some serious, detailed questions and received real, serious answers in return.  This was absolutely essential to Roger & Me, and yet is was left out.

One has to ask why.

Next, it’s Free Market Cure Their “mission statement” sounds right to me.

Free Market Cure is dedicated to correctly diagnosing the problems with the U.S. health care system and promoting solutions which preserve and extend individual liberty.

Now, I see which way the wind blows.  I know we will get some kind of “universal” coverage, and probably before whoever wins in 2008 is out of the White House.  But.  BUT.  I want whatever we get to be the plan that costs the least, helps the most and gives us as much freedom and liberty as is possible while still improving the general health of the population.  Places like Free Market Cure (and Moorewatch) will help to hash out ideas and keep the system honest.  We hope.

Moving on...Want to see absolute evidence that Moore is glorifying Castro, Cuban health care as a system and at the same time demanding single-payer ONLY in America?  Look no further One of the highlights:

It’s a very poor country, as you know. And I was very impressed. And, you know, with what little they have to use with their healthcare system, they end up living longer than we do. They have a better infant mortality rate than we do. On a number of issues, they’re the same or better than us.

Yeah.  Castro sure worked Moore good, didn’t he?  I can almost see Fidel’s hand up Mike’s ass, moving the lips.

Speaking of murderous Cubans from history that are glorified by the American left, take a small peek into Che Guevara’s past.  Note also that while Moore did not in any way use Che directly to bolster any point in the film, he did use Che’s daughter, which as we all know, will get you instant street cred in Berkeley and San Francisco and any other place where the far, radical left runs the streets wearing communist dictator tee shirts and flashing peace symbols, completely unaware of the contradiction.

Why note that she’s Che’s daughter?  How does that improve the content of what she’s saying?  Can her credentials not stand on their own?  Why use the name of a mass murderer?  I’ll tell you why: because as I said, it gives him cred on the loony end of the left, but most people wouldn’t even notice it flash by.  In fact, neither DonnaK nor Lee saw it when they watched Sicko.

Lastly, don’t forget to read this post by DonnaK about Moore lying when he says he never intended to go to “Cuba proper.” We’ve been productive here at MW lately and I didn’t want that one to scroll away and be forgotten.

That’s it for now.  At least the “Blog this at Moorewatch!” folder is empty now.  :)

Less...

Club Sandwich

Note:  This is my opinion only.  I believe Jim and Donna and the other participants here will be in general agreement with this, but until they officially sign on let’s keep this as being solely the opinion of Lee.

The always-brilliant Cato Institute have come up with an idea.  Since many people on the right are warming to the idea that some form of suckle-at-nanny’s-ample-teat statism is necessary to provide healthcare to Americans, they’ve come up with a novel counterweight:  The Anti-Universal Coverage Club.  Here are the rules.

1. Health policy should focus on making health care of ever-increasing quality available to an ever-increasing number of people.

2. To achieve “universal coverage” would require either having the government provide health insurance to everyone or forcing everyone to buy it. Government provision is undesirable, because government does a poor job of improving quality or efficiency.  Forcing people to get insurance would lead to a worse health-care system for everyone, because it would necessitate so much more government intervention.

3. In a free country, people should have the right to refuse health insurance.

4. If governments must subsidize those who cannot afford medical care, they should be free to experiment with different types of subsidies (cash, vouchers, insurance, public clinics & hospitals, uncompensated care payments, etc.) and tax exemptions, rather than be forced by a policy of “universal coverage” to subsidize people via “insurance.”

This is where I am coming from.  Moore has done this country a service by pointing out the glaring flaws in our system.  The question now becomes, do we use ingenuity and intelligence to come up with a novel solution?  Or do we merely sign up to become nothing more than the latest country to buy into the great socialist lie?

Update from JimK

Three Years Ago

This is a subject I originally blogged on three years ago.  I’d be fascinated to see Michael Moore ask Gwynneth Paltrow and Madonna about this.

Pregnant actress Gwyneth Paltrow has been scared off giving birth in a British hospital, thanks to her famous pal Madonna. The stunning Sylvia star - who is expecting her first child with rocker husband Chris Martin - is now shunning the prospect of entering a London hospital on the special day after Madonna reportedly relayed terrifying stories of medical blunders to her. And the Material Girl hitmaker, who caused outrage when she labeled British hospitals “old and Victorian” while pregnant with son Rocco, evidently had an influential effect on Gwyneth - the screen beauty’s now decided to give birth at her mother Blythe’s Hollywood home. A source tells Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper, “Madonna told her all these horror stories about how bad the English hospitals are. So now she has decided to give birth in Los Angeles. She has always wanted a home birth so she didn’t think it would make much difference where she had it. But Madonna, who had lots of complications with son Rocco, told her that if something went wrong America would be the best place to be.”

Fascinating, isn’t it.  Two women who could afford to buy their own hospitals both choose to come back to the world’s 37th worst healthcare system to give birth to their stupidly-named spawn.  I wonder why that could be?

You Can’t Spell “Moore” Without “Moo”

Via Perez Hilton, of all places.  (Tip of the hat to my girlfriend, who reads that site like the Pope reads the Bible.)

Dear Mike,

Congratulations from PETA on the reviews for SiCKO. Although we think that your film could actually help reform America’s sorely inadequate health care system, there’s an elephant in the room, and it is you. With all due respect, no one can help but notice that a weighty health issue is affecting you personally. We’d like to help you fix that. Going vegetarian is an easy and life-saving step that people of all economic backgrounds can take in order to become less reliant on the government’s shoddy healthcare system, and it’s something that you and all Americans can benefit from personally. Vegetarians weigh, on average, up to 20 percent less than their meat-eating counterparts—meaning less weight-related problems like heart attacks and strokes—and live about eight years longer. I’m sure that your fans would appreciate having you around longer! By going vegetarian, you would also provide a powerful message of personal responsibility for one’s health, allowing others to become less reliant on a system that doesn’t care about them. As they say at Nike (sorry!): “Just do it.” We can help, but first, here are some facts:

• Vegetarians suffer far fewer heart attacks than meat-eaters. Cholesterol, the principal culprit in clotted arteries, is found only in animal products. Thus, those of us who forgo the flesh, milk, and eggs of animals have a heart disease mortality rate one-tenth the rate of our flesh-eating counterparts. In fact, a healthy vegan diet has been shown to reverse heart disease.

• Vegetarians have far lower rates of cancer than meat-eaters. Ninety-five percent of the toxic chemicals that humans are exposed to come from meat. Thus, women who eat meat daily have 3.8 times the breast cancer rate of women who don’t. Men who eat meat daily get fatal prostate cancer at 3.6 times the rate of vegetarian men.

• Vegetarians are not as likely to be obese as meat-eaters. Obesity kills about 112,000 people per year in the U.S., according to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and makes many more people sick. It can also lead to serious diseases like diabetes. The CDC also reported that overweight and obesity accounted for nearly 10 percent of all American medical expenses in a recent year. On average, vegetarians weigh up to 20 percent less than meat-eaters.

• Vegetarians don’t run the risk of getting sick from contaminated meat. Sure, they may get sick when animal waste is sprayed on vegetables and fruit, but meat is the big hazard. Just as dead humans rot and attract maggots and bacteria, so do other dead animals. Millions of people in the U.S. get sick—and thousands die—each year from eating meat contaminated with salmonella, campylobacter, E. coli, or one of the many other bacterium found on animal flesh—even after it’s been cooked.

Yes, America’s health care system needs to be fixed, but personal responsibility is a big part of why people look and feel as ill as they do. We hope that you will focus your personal lens on the benefits of vegetarianism—which can satisfy you easily—stop turning a blind eye to meat’s impact on America’s health, and lead the charge for a healthier America by taking our 30-Day Veg Pledge. You can find tips on going vegetarian and recipes for meatless meals like faux fried chicken at GoVeg.com.

Very truly yours,

Ingrid E. Newkirk President and Founder

There you go, you fat bastard.  Think of it as the “Cuban Starvation Diet.” Rather than spend tens of thousands of dollars at some swanky fat farm the next time you decide to drop a couple of pounds, why not go work in Castro’s sugarcane fields?  You’ll be down to a svelte Auschwitz size in no time.  And if there’s any medical problems, you’re in a tropical hospital paradise!  It’s win-win!

The nature of deception

The tagline of Moorewatch.com has always been “Watching Michael Moore’s every move”. As of late more people, perhaps more than ever before in this site’s history, have stepped forward and demanded to know why we all feel Michael Moore should be watched. What is it about Michael Moore that needs to be watched, observed, critiqued and analyzed for errors and mistakes? It’s simple, really. Michael Moore’s work is designed to provoke a reaction and stimulate discussion about particular topics. In order to enjoin you to his cause de jour, Moore employs the medium of the documentary to deliver information and reasons why you should think and believe as he does, or, at the very least, consider the topics at hand in the light he creates by his work.

The problem lies in Moore’s delivery of said information. A journalistic endeavor built on half-truths and deceptions is as stable as a castle built on sand. It has no real foundation upon which to stand and its sturdiness is illusory at best, disastrous at worst. Counteracting Moore’s falsehoods with honestly gotten facts creates a stable platform for the issues upon which Moore expounds. And given that, more often than not, the issues Moore raises are ones that could use good, honest debate and discussion, injecting as much honesty as possible into the discourse can only serve to help the problems Moore raises. Given all that, one must wonder why Michael Moore would be dishonest at all? Many, of course, think that Moore does not employ falsehoods in his arsenal, but I believe that the track record of Moorewatch of ferreting out and displaying the fabrications in Moore’s work speaks for itself.

Once more, in promoting his newest work Sicko, Moore’s dishonesty rears its ugly head. In a NewsBusters article about Sicko, Moore is shown to have been less than honest about his trip to Cuba:

The most significant untruth in this article was Moore’s carefully vague and misleading claim that he didn’t intend to go to Cuba “in the first place,” and only after being turned away from his real destination, the Guantanamo Bay detention center, by that heartless US military, did he go to communist Cuba (bold mine throughout):

Moore dismissed the controversy surround his visit to Cuba with a group of 9/11 responders seeking medical treatment, documented in his new film. He said he had not intended to go to Cuba in the first place. “I didn’t go to Cuba. We left Miami to go to Guantanamo Bay — to American soil.” Only after being ignored at the mouth of Guantanamo Bay did he instead dock and disembark on Cuban soil. Since then, he says, he has been harassed by the U.S. government. “The Bush Administration sent me a certified letter 10 days before the Cannes Film Festival that I was under investigation for criminal and civil penalties,” Moore said.

That’s just fantasy. Other sources have revealed that Moore planned to go to Cuba from the beginning. The Smoking Gun website obtained a letter to Moore from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) which stated that before filming even began, Goldflat Productions, which included Moore, applied to OFAC on October 12, 2006 for permission to travel to Cuba—not “to American soil” at Gitmo, but Castro’s Cuba.

Also, statements by several 9/11 responders that were made to the New York Post confirmed that this promotional stunt to treat the responders with Cuban healthcare was planned by Moore and his film company before they left the US:

Responders were told Cuban doctors had developed new techniques for treating lung cancer and other respiratory illness, and that health care in the communist country was free, according to those offered the two-week February trip.

Indeed, a quick look at The Smoking Gun and The New York Post bear out NewsBuster’s assertions. Moore indeed lied when he said he never intended to go to Cuba proper. From the documents presented, it is clear that Moore had always intended to travel to Cuba. The fact that Moore lied about this is unquestionable. So the question now becomes why did Michael Moore lie about Cuba? Why not simply admit he planned the trip all along? Why build his house on sand instead of facts?  The only tenable or understandable reason Moore would have to lie about such a fact would be if the deception somehow bolstered his argument or lent his facts some credence. The perplexing thing about this particular falsehood is that lying about intending to travel to Cuba does *not* bolster Michael Moore’s case in the slightest. If anything, this falsehood only serves to damage his credibility, thus tarnishing the issue as a whole. In the end, this lie gains him nothing and does not serve his argument in any reasonable or tenable way.

Given all of this, we wind up back in the same place we began. Why would Michael Moore lie in such a fashion? What does it gain him? And, perhaps most importantly, what do we as an audience and a people have to gain by allowing him to do so unchecked and unanswered?

The Real Cuba

Watching Sicko you might come away thinking that Cuba was a healthcare paradise, where all medication costs five cents.  Didn’t you see those doctors?  How attentive, and calming, telling the patient over and over that everything was going to be okay.  (This despite the fact that the woman clearly spoke fluent Spanish.  Gee, it’s almost like that reassurance was for the viewer at home.  But I digress.) So, is this typical Cuban medical care, or is it the type of care that Castro’s propaganda factory doles out when a willing stooge like Moore comes along with his cameras?  Via Reason we see The Awful Truth.

[T]hese pictures, published in the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter, … were taken at a nursing home in the Cuban province of Pinar del Río in June 2004.

This is the real Cuba.  You fans of Sicko:  MICHAEL MOORE IS LYING TO YOU.  If you want to see more photographic evidence of the wool he is pulling over your eyes, click here.

Hate Mail Hoser

This one is brilliant.

From: Kevin Moorman ([email protected])
Subj:You owe Michael Moore $12,000!!!

Dumbasses!
Hey why not just pay him back then you don’t have to look like such total
idiots with your ridiculous “chain of facts”.
Here’s a chain of facts: you’re stupid, you’re broke, Michael bailed your ass
out for ya, “here you go, Fool!”.  End of story until you give the money back!
Laughing at how pathetic you are…
Sincerely Yours, K Moorman

Kevin, a word of advice.  When sending hate mail, don’t (a) use your real name, (b) use your real email address, or (c) use an email which contains volumes of personal information. 

Dumbass?  Pot.  Kettle.  Black.

Indicative, Not Exceptional

An article in Reason, on a subject completely unrelated to Moore or healthcare, contains the following line.

This would seem to be Shalit’s modus operandi: Choose an unusually sexually progressive pocket of American culture, declare it indicative rather than exceptional, and launch a heroically irrelevant crusade for change.

I can’t think of a better description of Michael Moore’s tactics.  I mean, you guys should read some of the hate mail we get from foreigners whose impressions of the US healthcare system are coming solely from Moore’s film.  Here’s one example.

i recently saw michael moore’s SICKO. and was really shocked as to the state of your dictatorship insurance health care system. as i live in the UK. which has its problems health care wise. my father passed away 3 years ago due to MEDICAL PROBLEMS. but i have to say americas health care is now hot topic worldwide. THANKS TO MOORE. i was aware of your site way back when. you have some valid points some of the time. yes michael does skirt some issues. but if you’ve ever noticed, its usually for the greater good. and the fact is that his three features were right. GUNS WRONG, BUSH A LIAR, AND CRIMINAL HEALTHCARE SYSTEM.

Here you go.  Someone who has probably never set foot in this country has declared our healthcare system to be a criminal dictatorship, all because of the way it is portrayed in Moore’s film.  And why?  Because Moore chose the worst examples he could find of the flaws in our system, portrayed them as indicative rather than exceptional, and then launched his crusade.  Interestingly he did the inverse with Europe:  he portrayed all the positives, did not mention a single negative, and then portrayed Cuba as a healthcare paradise where all drugs cost five cents.

Remember this, gentle reader:  Nobody floats on an inner tube through shark infested waters to get away from 5¢ medication.

Feedback - the documentary filmmaker edition

Lee and I received an email from a documentary filmmaker who asked that their name be withheld.  I will honor that request because they asked politely and I know how hard it can be in the industry when you cross certain people, even mildly.

Text after the jump.  (Plus an update from Lee.)

Ways to improve the health care system…

...without going single-payer.

I have two ideas that were floated to me via email, upon which I have expanded.  Both people asked that I not publicize their address or names, and they were extremely polite about it, so in deference to them...just the ideas.  After the jump, the two plans.

Site changes *UPDATED*

The HTML formatting buttons work again!  Thanks to Derek at Ellislab (the creators of ExpressionEngine, which powers the site) for finding the problem over the weekend.

As you may have noticed, some things have changed around here.  A slightly tweaked layout, I hope it makes things more readable.  The comments page has changed...I upgraded the back-end software and it broke the HTML button formatting.  Until I figure out why, or find a replacement plugin, I’ve changed it so that you MUST preview a comment before posting it.  I think this will not only help you figure out if you forgot to close a tag, but it will also force people to slow down and read what they wrote before hitting submit.

Also - big change here - you may edit your comments for up to three minutes after you’ve posted them.

Tomorrow I upgrade the forums.  And try to find out why the formatting buttons are so evil all of a sudden.

The Awful Truth About Sicko

Michael Moynihan’s link-rich review of Sicko in Reason is oh-so worth reading.  Here’s a taste.

Take the case of four-year-old Elias Dillner. In 2004, Dillner’s parents were told by doctors that their son too would benefit from cochlear implants. After being fitted with the first implant, Dillner’s insurance provider said the second operation could not be “prioritized.” The family would have to wait. “We will do anything,” Elias’s mother told reporters, “even if it means that we have to take out a loan for the operation.” Without insurance, the second procedure would likely cost $40,000.

But Dillner’s truculent insurance provider was not Aetna or Kaiser, but the notoriously generous Swedish welfare state, where health care is “free.” And because there is no private clinic in Sweden that could perform the operation, Elias will sit in a queue, hoping, in lieu of privatization, for prioritization. Swedish legislator Robert Uitto said that the Dillner case was unfortunate, but “People shouldn’t, on principle, be allowed to purchase care in the public system.”

Sicko also introduces us to Diane, whose brain tumor operation was initially denied by Horizon BlueCross because it didn’t consider her condition “life threatening.” She eventually received treatment, but “not without battling the insurance companies,” Moore says.

Jack Szmyt found himself in a similar situation. After waiting two months for his initial diagnosis—he too had a brain tumor—Szmyt was told that it would be another month until doctors could start the necessary treatment. Rather than wait in a queue, he borrowed $30,000 from a friend, and flew to a private clinic in Germany. Had he not sought private treatment abroad, his German doctor said, he would likely have died. When contacted by the media, his insurer, again the Swedish government, said it didn’t consider the assigned waiting period “unreasonable.”

But wait, there’s more!

Viewers are taken to London’s Hammersmith Hospital, held up as a shining example of socialized care, where doctors are well-paid and patients well looked after. Moore ambles through the corridors interviewing patients that acclaim the NHS’s ‘free care,’ and express horror at the barbarism of the American system. Indeed, the facility’s “cashier” exists to give money to patients—for travel reimbursements—rather than taking it from them. But as is often the case with Moore’s films, the reality is more complex.

In 2005, London’s Evening Standard reported that Hammersmith Hospital would slash hundreds of jobs; the hospital, the most debt-ridden in Britain, was hemorrhaging money and desperately needed to cut costs. And while the hospital was “downsizing”, Hammersmith’s CEO—yes, even the NHS has an executive class—collected a year-end bonus of close to $20,000. Small beer by American standards, but enough to provoke tabloid headlines in Britain.

Much like the American hospitals Moore excoriates, Hammersmith Hospital, the Evening Standard reported, faced pressure from administrators to limit the number of patients treated in order to cut spending. In a country where the government promises to winnow down queues to 18 weeks, this isn’t an anomalous problem. A recent BBC documentary accused the NHS of using dangerously high doses of radiation on patients “to save time and money.”

After the critical reaction to his previous films, Moore opts for elision over outright falsehood. So when he marvels that a doctor working in the NHS owns an Audi and “million dollar home,” it is hardly in his interest to point out, as The Independent did in January, that “soaring salary levels of doctors are worsening the NHS cash crisis.” And while bitterly lamenting the U.S. system of “wage slavery"—American students, Moore says, are saddled with debt and, thus, “won’t cause [employers] any trouble"—he ignores a recent report from the British Medical Association suggesting that, by their fifth year of medical school, British students “have accumulated an average debt of” $39,000.

None of this will make the slightest difference to Moore’s fans, of course.  They’re not called Moore-ons for nothing.

Cuban Reality

There are two scenes in Sicko of which I would like to make you aware.  The first is in the UK, where Mikey interviews a British doctor.  The doctor lives in a gorgeous house, and drives a brand new Audi.  The second is on Mikey’s disgusting propaganda visit to visit Cuba, where the finest doctors on the island were shown giving first-rate “free” medical care to 9/11 victims.

I just received the following email from a Cuban who, for reasons which will become apparent, will remain nameless.

This is what a doctor in Cuba drives (I left the ones out with her family and the ones with the license plates).

What car was the UK doctor in “Sicko” driving again?

Regards,

[Redacted]

The email contained three attached images of a beat-up old white car.  I was going to post them when I received a second email from this same person.

By the way, I just wanted to make it clear that I prefer that these photographs not be posted on your sites as my wife is scared that someone from the government will recognize the car. That’s how bad things are over there.

This is a picture of a Yugo, a car which was available in America for a short time about 20 years ago.

This car is similar in quality, size, style, and most likely age, to the pictures the original emailer sent over.  (NOTE:  This is NOT the original picture.  This is a Yugo I found through Google.  The doctor’s car was not a Yugo, but it reminded me of the car in the original picures.) Astonishing, isn’t it.  I can’t even post photos of a nondescript car owned by one of Cuba’s doctors because of the fear of what El Presidente will do in retribution.

So, healthcare is free in Cuba.  And all the people have to do to get it is live under a brutal communist dictatorship.

Update: Here’s one more from the Cuban.

i’m sorry about that, lee. you have to understand that the island is only so big and there are only so many doctors driving those types of cars. someone living here (or someone who has cable access in the island that’s with the government) could see this and you never know.

thanks for all you do.

Ah, a communist police state. Michael Moore’s idea of paradise.

I Gotta Be Free

Tax Freedom Day is the day of the year when Americans have earned enough money to satisfy their tax burden for that year and can start keeping what they earn.  This year that day fell on April 30.  In other words, on average every cent earned by every American between January 1 and April 30 was stolen by government.

Our good friends in the Great White North, however, aren’t so lucky.  Their Tax Freedom Day is June 20.  In other words, everything every Canadian earned between January 1 and June 20 was stolen by the government.

Starting tomorrow, Canadians have paid off the total tax bill imposed on them by government and can finally start working for themselves, according to The Fraser Institute’s annual Tax Freedom Day calculations. “If you look at the average Canadian family’s total tax bill, each and every dollar they earn before June 20 would be required to pay the taxes owing to all levels of government. It takes until June 20 before they begin earning money for themselves,” said Niels Veldhuis, The Fraser Institute’s Director of the Centre for Tax Studies.

When you watch Sicko and you hear Moore repeatedly refer to Canada’s “free” healthcare system, keep in mind that there is no such thing as free healthcare.