Details about Michael Moore’s next film have started to leak out, a month before the film is set to debut at the Cannes Film Festival. As you already know, Sicko is Moore’s attack on the faulty U.S. healthcare system, HMOs, American drug companies and the corruption in the Food and Drug Administration. Michael Moore has said, “If people ask, we tell them ‘Sicko’ is a comedy about 45 million people with no health care in the richest country on Earth.”
According to the New York Post, Moore took ailing Ground Zero responders to on a two-week February trip to Cuba to prove that the U.S. health-care system is inferior to Fidel Castro’s socialized medicine.” The 9/11 workers were told that Cuba, which has free healthcare, had made recent advancements in treating respiratory illness (which they have).
I guess a sizable portion of the film focuses on the lack of medical care being provided to the people who worked at Ground Zero. While United States travel to Cuba is severely restricted, Moore’s crew was granted access through a “general license that allows for journalistic endeavors there.” One source claimed that the group of people that went for the trip left “utterly happy.”
The NY Post is owned by News Corp, and is known to have a huge conservative bias. That said, the Post’s coverage also includes interview tidbits from a bunch of 9/11 responders who refused Moore’s offer, calling it an insult. I don’t know how a paper could possibly begin to spin an all expenses paid paid trip to get medical help as an insult. I would think that our country not being able to properly treat these 9/11 respiratory conditions to be the insult. But what do I know? I wasn’t there.
Moore has previously announced that the film will be released in June 2007.
April 17th, 2007 at 7:12 am
Michael Moore is an obese leftover from the “60’s. Only he was 16 when the 60’s ended so he’s nostalgic for that which he never experienced.
Fidel Castro recently had a life threatening illness. What did he do? Did he take “advantage” of his so called advanced communist health care system? No. Castro went to democratic Spain for his major surgery.
Now, Michael Moore is attempting to profit from his rehab of Fidel’s system’s reputation.
What crap. It’s all propaganda. None of the 9/11 rescue dogs smoked and none of them are suffering from all the alleged 9/11 resperitory problems.
April 17th, 2007 at 10:19 am
Why should we have the government paying for our healthcare, when it can’t even keep up with their own deficits? If the government is going to be as inefficient as it is handling our current domestic issues, how can anyone expect timely and proper treatment if it excercies control of the healthcare systems?
April 17th, 2007 at 11:18 am
Ah, I see the anti-Moore crowd chimed in first. What a surprise. With a name like Bill Pilgrim, it’s easy to guess where your political sympathies lie (on the wrong side of the political divide, in case you’re wondering). Making fun of Michael Moore’s weight? Really, is that the best you can do? Calling him a 60s leftover? That’s weak and you know it. Stop with the ad hominem attacks AND engage Moore (and those of us on the Left who may not even agree with him) on the merits of the argument.
Who exactly took us into that misbegotten war and occupation in Iraq? The Right did. The Left was on the sidelines, powerless. More than 3,200 Americans dead, more than 20,000 injured, more than 50,000 Iraqs dead. And for what? So Bush could get re-elected as a “wartime” president? So the Right could push through massive tax breaks for their friends and corporations, while leaving the majority of Americans worse off? No. November ‘06 changed that and the sooner you get with the new political realities, the better off we’ll all be. Then again, maybe you’re one of the 30% that still supports Bush and his desire to remain in Iraq forever.
AND the 9-11 responders didn’t get sick? You can’t be serious. Oh wait, you probably get your “news” from Faux News Network and right-wing radio. Get a clue, man. You’re being lied to. Smarten up. Look online. The EPA put out a report about dangerous levels of dust, debris, and toxins that lingered in lower Manhattan for weeks and months after 9-11. AND Guiliani said it was fine. It wasn’t. Man up and help those who were brave and compassionate enough to do what was right (and not Right) back then.
Erin: you ask genuinely good questions. Feel free to do some research about national healthcare systems in Canada and Europe (France in particular). You’ll find that the bilge the right wing in the United States has been pumping over the last few decades about “socialized medicine” is incorrect. Why do Americans pay more for healthcare than any other Western industrialized nation? Corporate profits, that’s why. Why are 43 million citizens of the United States without medical care? Where’s the (social) justice in that?
As for the deficits issue, blame 14 years of Republican misrule, especially the last six years, when Bush took then current and projected budget surpluses (read that one again, please) and turned them into massive budget deficits, all thanks to corporate giveaways, massive defense spending (if you invested in defense contractors back in ‘00, you’d be in the green today; of course, that also means you’d have no conscience to speak of) and tax cuts for the wealthy. Republicans used to love to smear Democrats by using the phrase “tax and spend.” Well, they’re far, far worse: they’re “tax cut and spend” Republicans.
Let’s not forget that the budget deficit doesn’t even include the Iraq war and occupation, which is costing us upwards of $8 billion a month (read that again, please) with a current estimate of $400 billion (all borrowed) with a projected total of $500 billion. Where exactly are we getting that money? Borrowing from foreign markets. Someone somewhere is going to pay for these deficits. Now imagine if we hadn’t gone to war, imagine spending a fifth of that amount to provide healthcare for all Americans, rich, middle-class, and poor. It’d help corporations too, since they wouldn’t have to provide healthcare through a for-profit system that practically guarantees waste and overages.
That is all.
April 18th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
I still don’t think I would be comfortable with social healthcare. My problem with social healthcare lies in the national debt it would cause, and the availibility of treatment. Medical cost will rise no matter what is done, thanks to the many people who are suing over malpractice (or so 90% of the lawyers involved would like everyone to believe), and the rising cost of medical insurance to keep up with lawsuits. I would find it almost imossible for the government to keep up with that. Also, what will happen when some treatments go into such high demand that a wait list has to be created? Then the government will have to face the issue of people dying while waiting for treatment. I guess another one would be people abusing the treatments made available to them.
I hate to be pessimistic, but coporate and social healthcare seem like two necessary evils, and I don’t like the prospect of either. If some of my tax money went to independent organizations with proven success rates, I might be more for it.
It’s probably something I should research more, and I’ll try, but for now, this is my stance.
April 23rd, 2007 at 5:15 am
I am an American who studied medicine in both Switzerland and Norway and have to point out that the average is citizen in these two countries has far better medical coverage than in the U.S., despite each country spending less of their GNP on medical care
April 23rd, 2007 at 5:24 am
I am an American M.D. who studied medicine in both Switzerland and Norway and have to point out that the average citizen in these two countries has far better medical coverage than in the U.S., despite each country spending less of their GNP on medical care than we do here. The difference is that we in the U.S., because of the profit motive, are spending some 90% of medical costs on the last 1 year of life, much of this being unnecessary.
In Norway, medical care is nationalized, and all pharmaceuticals are strictly regulated by the government, so that only those drugs which the government has found to be of value are allowed to be dispensed, without any profit motives. In Switzerland, by contrast, drug companies are free to market whatever products they want, and the result is that many more (and probably unnecessary) drugs are available, but also are covered by medical insurance, which is affordable for everyone (and it is required of all full-time employees). In the U.S. we could learn a lot from the various European healthcare systems and find a better system than the one we have.
March 6th, 2008 at 7:01 am
I am french and I would like to join Mr.LABOWE