from the Left

The following excerpts are from a generally supportive piece by Jonathan Cohn, in the July 2, 2007, issue of The New Republic. TNR titled the review "Shticko."

"I spotted plenty of intellectual dishonesties and arguments without context. . . . Moore also couldn't help but stick in unrelated jabs about the Bush administration's efforts to fight terrorism . . . beyond all the grandstanding and political theater, the movie actually made a compelling argument about what's wrong with U.S. health care and how to fix it."

[Fearing a backlash] "Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore's attack on the Bush administration and the Iraq war, may be wildly popular among Bush-haters . . . But a lot of people think it also ended up helping Bush win reelection, by trading in unsubstantiated conspiracy theories and firing up the Republican base."

"While it's easy to beat up on insurance companies . . . or drug companies . . . or employers, the truth is they're all acting rationally. They're businesses, after all, and businesses are designed to make profits -- which, it turns out, isn't always in the best interests of people who are sick.

"If you want a different outcome, you need to come up with a different system, one that starts by guaranteeing every single person health insurance and making sure that insurance includes generous benefits."

". . . opponents of health care have been spewing half-truths and outright falsehoods for decades. . . The challenge is political. Our side needs some passion and, yes, perhaps a little simplicity, too."

from the Right

"Who's Really 'Sicko'" -- without a question mark -- is the title of the Wall Street Journal piece by David Gratzer, a practicing physician licensed in Canada and the U.S., from which the following excerpts are taken.

"Born and raised in Canada, I used to believe in government-run health care. Then I was mugged by reality.

"Consider, for instance, Mr. Moore's claim that ERs don't overcrowd in Canada. A Canadian government study recently found that only about half of patients are treated in a timely manner, as defined by local medical and hospital associations. 'The research merely confirms anecdotal reports of interminable waits' reported a national newspaper. While people in rural areas seem to fare better, Toronto patients received care in four hours on average; one in 10 patients waits more than a dozen hours.

"This problem hit close to home last hear: A relative, living in Winnipeg, nearly died of a strangulated bowel while lying on  a stretcher for five hours, writhing in pain. To get the needed ultrasound, he was sent by ambulance to another hospital."

[Citing the move toward market reforms in European counties as diverse as Britain, Sweden, and Slovakia] "Under the weight of demographic shifts and strained by the limits of command-and-control economics, government-run health systems have turned out to be less than utopian. The stories are the same: dirty hospitals, poor standards and difficulty accessing modern drugs and tests."

"In Canada, dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week. Humans can wait two to three years."

from Family

One of my grandsons, Joe Drew, composer/musician living in Manhattan, reacted personally and politically after seeing his grandmother's picture and my comment re Michael Moore and Cuba.

What a great picture of Grandma on the front page!

Regina (my girlfriend) and I went to see 'Sicko' last weekend, and it was great. Moore is a first-rate humorist, and even when his agenda's preposterous, he's fun to watch.

The Cuba sequence was Moore's typical blend of naivety, acid wit, and pathos. Of course you're not going to roll up to Gitmo in a boat and get medical treatment. Of course the Cubans put on a show for the Americans, and the health care the 9/11 workers were given on camera is almost certainly not what the average Cuban enjoys.

But Moore's point (shenanigans aside) is the same as yours: this is what the Boogie Man looks like up close, and he's not so scary. In this case, there are two Boogie Men: Fidel & Socialized Health Care.

The classic characterization of socialized health care as the Boogie Man ("Do you want some bureaucrat in Washington telling you which hospital you can go to?") is skewered in the film by stories of average Americans, like the fully-insured mother whose daughter ran a fever of 104. The ambulance took her to an out-of-network hospital, and by the time she could get to a hospital that her insurance company would pay for, her daughter had died.

Is it somehow preferable that the bureaucrat is outside the Beltway? Either way, Americans aren't choosing for themselves.