Echoes in Eternity

As I'm sure most of you are aware, Michael Moore (of Fahrenheit 9/11 fame) has come out with his newest documentary, Sicko. As is his style, Sicko runs by Moore's typical modus operandi, which entails telling only his side of the story and not allowing any worthy dissenting views to be shown. The film consists of Moore's opinion that America needs to go to a universal, government-run health care system; which he attempts to prove by showing the viewer the WONDROUS health care systems in Canada, France, and (irony alert!) Cuba. I have not seen it as of yet, but here is a good review by someone who has, a physician no less.

Sicko is not a documentary; it’s a cartoon, without animation. In the real world, health-care policy involves a sixth of the national economy, hundreds of government programs, thousands of private insurance plans, and hundreds of thousands of health-care workers; it is extraordinarily complex. In Sicko, by contrast, there are no nuances, no exceptions, no grays. Americans are exploited; insurance companies are bad; politicians are impotent.

Perhaps most remarkably, Moore finds perfection in Canada, Britain, France, and, yes, Cuba. He gushes that everyone in Canada enjoys coverage, and yet costs are lower there. Could there possibly be a tradeoff for this? In Sicko, there doesn’t seem to be any. Moore visits an ER in London, Ontario, and asks people how long they’ve waited for care. No one has cooled his heels for longer than 45 minutes!

Sicko’s depiction of Canadian health care is a complete misrepresentation. I grew up in Canada, so stories immediately jump to my mind: the relative who almost died of an acute abdomen, first waiting hours to see a doctor in an ER, then sent to another hospital for an ultrasound, and finally shipped back again by ambulance for the needed surgery; a woman with cancer who broke her hip (because of metastasis) and had to wait a dozen hours in an ER before being sent home.