Yet another decimation of Moore’s depiction of Cuba
I’ve just come across a simply stunning article which slices and dices Moore’s rosey depiction of Cuba to tiny pieces. This article is incredibly informative and shows you, step by step, how and why the figures and images that Moore paints of Cuban health care under Castro is not simply wrong… it’s downright shameful.
I strongly encourage you all to read the whole article, but here are some highlights for your perusal.
On the subject of Moore’s claim that Cubans live longer than Americans:
In “Sicko,” Moore parrots the Castroite claim that Cubans live longer than Americans. In fact the figures are practically identical, which actually casts Cuba’s vaunted health care in a negative light. In all nations with high emigration rates, longevity rates skew high. This occurs because the birth is recorded but the death gets recorded in the nation migrated to. So it seems like fewer people die. Naturally, the opposite effect appears in nations with a large influx of immigrants. The death is recorded but the birth was recorded in the nation immigrated from. So generally speaking, a nation with high longevity but known to hemorrhage its people has little to boast about with regard to longevity figures. All they’re proving is that theirs is a miserable place to live and from which massive numbers of people flee.
And few nations hemorrhage people like Cuba—almost 20% of its population since the glorious revolution. This 20% represents those who got out with the clothes on their back and against enormous odds.
This, of course, makes complete sense when you examine it. If a Cuban is born in Cuba but dies in the US, the death is never recorded in Cuba but rather in the US. This makes it seem as if fewer people are dying in Cuba, but all it really means is that massive numbers of people are fleeing the oppression of Castro’s regime. No matter how you look at it, this is a lose-lose situation for Moore - the facts are squarely against him.
On the quality and state of Cuban doctors:
A few years back Castro launched his “Doctor Diplomacy,” wherein he started sending Cuban “doctors” to heathen lands (though their spouses and children were held hostage in Cuba) to heal the sick and raise the dead. This was coupled with “free” treatment of poor foreigners from the Caribbean and Latin American nations in Cuban hospitals. The scheme has gotten no end of gushy reviews in the major media…
Brazil also got a birds-eye view of Cuba’s vaunted “Doctor Diplomacy.” The April 2005 story from Agence France-Presse titled “96 Cuban Doctors Expelled from Brazil” reported: “Federal Judge Marcelo Bernal ruled in favor of a demand by the Brazilian state of Tocantins’ Consejo Regional de Medicina (Regional Council on Medicine) that Cuban doctors be prohibited from practicing in their state.” Based on the results they’d achieved with Tocantins’ residents, the judge referred to the Cuban doctors as “Witch Doctors and Shamans. We cannot accept doctors who have not proven that they are doctors.”
According to a report by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, more than 75% of “doctors” with Cuban “medical degrees” flunk the exam given by the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates for licensing in the U.S. This exam is considered a cakewalk even by the graduates of Mexico’s Tec de Monterrey School of Medicine. Most Cuba-certified doctors even flunk the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates’ exam for certification as “physician assistants,” making them unfit even as nurses.
So much for those vaunted Cuban doctors we see in Sicko. These are people who do not have the knowledge or skill to pass the exam to become a nurse practitioner, let alone a doctor. Would you want to entrust your health with doctors with reputations such as these? I know the LAST thing I would think of doing is bringing 9/11 rescue workers to a country whose doctors who are routinely expelled from other countries as being too incompetent to practice medicine.
And, finally, on the Cuban infant mortality rate:
In April 2001, Dr. Juan Felipe GarcÃa, MD, of Jacksonville, Fla., interviewed several recent doctor defectors from Cuba. Based on what he heard he reported the following: “The official Cuban infant-mortality figure is a farce. Cuban pediatricians constantly falsify figures for the regime. If an infant dies during its first year, the doctors often report he was older. Otherwise, such lapses could cost him severe penalties and his job.”
Cuba’s infant mortality rate, though it plunged from 13th lowest in the world pre-Castro to 40th today—is also kept artificially low by an abortion rate of 0.71 abortion per live birth—the hemisphere’s highest by far, which “terminates” any pregnancy that even hints at trouble.
More interesting (and tragic) still, the maternal mortality rate in Cuba is almost four times that of the U.S. rate (33 versus 8.4 per 1,000). Peculiar how so many mothers die during childbirth in Cuba, but how many one- to four-year-olds perish, while from birth to one year old (the period during which they qualify in UN statistics as infants) they’re perfectly healthy.
This is just simply tragic now matter how you look at it. Forced abortions, high maternal death rates, artificially skewed infant mortality rates… this is simply an abhorrent system run by an abhorrent man, Fidel Castro. How Michael Moore could stomach praising this man and this regime after the crimes against humanity Castro continues to commit to this day astonishes me. All I can hope is that more people begin to call out and question Mr. Moore on his words and actions in regards to Cuba. In the face of facts such as these… how can Michael Moore support Cuba or Castro in any way???
Comments
I don’t think Moore actually supports Castro, because I don’t think he values anything in particular except his own bank account. I believe that Moore is nothing but a con artist, and is no more a leftist than Ozzy Osbourne is a devil worshipper.
The whole premise of the movie was set up to attract young, angry people who enjoy feeding their anger, and it doesn’t matter if the anger-food is lies or not, because their anger is generally misplaced anyway.
Great article, in any case. Thank you, Donna, for posting it.
Why? Cuba has it all....on December 24, 2006, Spanish newspaper El Periódico de Catalunya reported that Spanish surgeon José Luis García Sabrido has been flown to Cuba on a plane charted by the Cuban government. Dr. García Sabrido is an intestinal expert who further specializes in the treatment of cancer. The plane that Dr. García Sabrido’s traveled in also was reported to be carrying a large quantity of advanced medical equipment
Your really reaching here. I don’t see what these articles on Cuba have to do with the movie “Sicko.”
Sure Michael Moore went to Cuba, but he did that to help the 911 rescue workers that couldn’t get the care they needed in the U.S. And that alone was a very very small part of the movie.
The majority of the movie was focused on the lack of quality of health care here in the states. (Which is something that we could all agree on. You should know since you and your husband had Moore to help you out.)
While I can agree that Cuba’s medical care may not be all that it’s cracked up to be, (There’s two sides to every story, seeing is believing, etc.) it wasn’t Michael Moore’s job to show that. He just wanted to get medical attention to those who the U.S.A. had turned it’s back on.
If your so concerned about the people of Cuba then why don’t you do something to actually help them instead of just using this attempt to discredit Michael Moore.
Your really reaching here. I don’t see what these articles on Cuba have to do with the movie “Sicko.”
Sure Michael Moore went to Cuba, but he did that to help the 911 rescue workers that couldn’t get the care they needed in the U.S. And that alone was a very very small part of the movie.
The majority of the movie was focused on the lack of quality of health care here in the states. (Which is something that we could all agree on. You should know since you and your husband had Moore to help you out.)
While I can agree that Cuba’s medical care may not be all that it’s cracked up to be, (There’s two sides to every story, seeing is believing, etc.) it wasn’t Michael Moore’s job to show that. He just wanted to get medical attention to those who the U.S.A. had turned it’s back on.
If your so concerned about the people of Cuba then why don’t you do something to actually help them instead of just using this attempt to discredit Michael Moore.
Wow I think he hit about every cliche’ moore-on point possible in that. Is there really any reason to waste any additional time explaining to Toby where and why he is wrong?
Buzzard: Did you even see the movie “Sicko?”
Be honest.
You guys are just soooo angry at Moore that you will use any excuse that you can find anywhere just to create arguments agaisnst him.
I really wonder how you would find arguments against this movie and against Moore if he had not shown health care in other countries.
The arguments in regards to Cuba are totally irrelevant.
Timothy,
Michael Moore’s argument on healthcare: “The government should be in charge of healthcare”
Now go read this site and see the arguments against it.
Sure Michael Moore went to Cuba, but he did that to help the 911 rescue workers that couldn’t get the care they needed in the U.S.
Prove that the care they got in Cuba could not be obtained in America? Why couldn’t Moore have just paid for their treatment in America? Hell even if it cost more, it probably would have been offset by the charges to transport those people to Cuba, and any possible fines he could be facing for lying about his trip to Cuba.
The majority of the movie was focused on the lack of quality of health care here in the states. (Which is something that we could all agree on.
There are problems with healthcare in the US. However to claim that the movie focused on the lack of quality is dishonest, since it took any horrible instance it could find and play that up as the status quo, and all socialized successes as the status quo for those systems.
You should know since you and your husband had Moore to help you out.)
Dipshit.
He just wanted to get medical attention to those who the U.S.A. had turned it’s back on.
If he only wanted to get them medical attention, then why did he bring along a camera crew? In a year if one of these people become much sicker, is he going to be there helping them out?
Haven’t seen the movie don’t plan to see the movie. However I can get a very good idea of what the movie involves, since I did watch the bullshit segment involving this site that is full of manipulations. I can also hear about Moore’s claim of wanting the 9/11 workers to be treated just like Cubans are, and then go see the lie to that segment by reading here about the real cuba, and seeing even more of the bullshit of moore.
The arguments in regards to Cuba are totally irrelevant.
Then why’d Moore bring them up?
HE raised the issue. HE used Cuba as a yardstick, not us. If you REALLY have a problem with it, go yell at him, moore-on.
You’ll believe anything Mikey says, won’t you? You;re just that stupid and gullible, aren’t you? If Moore really wanted to get those people medical attention, he could have paid for treatment right here in the US and probably paid less than it cost him to travel to Cuba, insure the cameras and production and so forth.
You really don’t give a shit about any facts at all though. All you want to do is worship your hero, no matter how idiotic it makes you.
Your really reaching here. I don’t see what these articles on Cuba have to do with the movie “Sicko.”
Sure Michael Moore went to Cuba, but he did that to help the 911 rescue workers that couldn’t get the care they needed in the U.S. And that alone was a very very small part of the movie.
The majority of the movie was focused on the lack of quality of health care here in the states. (Which is something that we could all agree on. You should know since you and your husband had Moore to help you out.)
While I can agree that Cuba’s medical care may not be all that it’s cracked up to be, (There’s two sides to every story, seeing is believing, etc.) it wasn’t Michael Moore’s job to show that. He just wanted to get medical attention to those who the U.S.A. had turned it’s back on.
If your so concerned about the people of Cuba then why don’t you do something to actually help them instead of just using this attempt to discredit Michael Moore.
How am I “reaching”? Moore went to Cuba and documented his trip for Sicko. Moore claims in Sicko not just that the people he brought to Cuba received top-notch, excellent health care but that the Cuban people in general receive THE EXACT SAME TYPE OF CARE. He further claims that Castro isn’t the evil tyrant that he has been portrayed to be by the US, despite the fact that his communist regime has imprisoned, tortured, forced into labor camps and executed countless numbers of Cuban citizens for over 45 years. Michael Moore has lied on a grand scale by saying that Castro is a humane leader who cares for his citizens by using Cuba’s allegedly wonderful health care system as a benchmark. His claims about Cuba and Castro are both offensive and completely without merit, and, as this site is designed to expose the deceptions present in Moore’s work, this topic is not only extremely valid but extremely vital. If Moore will use Fidel Castro - a mass murderer and tyrant - in order to discredit the US system, what else will he do? What other lies has he told? Before you continue your defensive of Michael Moore, ask yourself why Moore would lie and mislead his viewers in order to defend a tyrant and a communist dictator. I’d say that topic is MORE than worthy of discussion, and I plan to continue to expose Moore’s dishonesty about Cuba when I wrap up my series of articles on the subject and beyond.
Your defense is weak at best, and you have no logic behind your arguments. If you wish to debate the merits of this case you will need to do far better than this in the future.
he did that to help the 911 rescue workers that couldn’t get the care they needed in the U.S.
Our hospitals turned them away for lack of a Gold Visa card. American doctors’ Hippocratic oaths only go so far.
He just wanted to get medical attention to those who the U.S.A. had turned it’s back on.
All except one Canadian from Flint named Michael Moore.
If your so concerned about the people of Cuba then why don’t you do something to actually help them.
They don’t need help. They can make prime steak from simple cardboard.
Posted by JimK on 08/02/2007 at 02:47 PM (Link to this comment | )
You’ll believe anything Mikey says, won’t you? You;re just that stupid and gullible, aren’t you? If Moore really wanted to get those people medical attention, he could have paid for treatment right here in the US and probably paid less than it cost him to travel to Cuba, insure the cameras and production and so forth.
I hadn’t thought about that… if he used a profressional crew, that trip to Cuba did cost a big chunk of change.
See for yourself why Castro can’t trust his own “brilliant” healthcare.
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Fidel Castro was dead for 6 weeks and they brought him back to life. Nuff said.