Michael Moore may be right.
The American health care system may suck, especially if you don't have health insurance, and maybe even if you do. In "SiCKO," which I saw this weekend, Moore presents just enough anecdotes — if not anything resembling context — that when combined with the horror stories told by your friends and families may make you conclude that America, we have a problem.
Heartless HMOs. Greedy pharmaceutical companies. Compliant politicians.
They are all, according to Moore, co-conspirators in a grand plot to bolster their profits and screw Americans out of the health care they need, and deserve, to better themselves and the nation.
I just don't believe Michael Moore.
That's because to help make his case that the American system is broken, he holds up in the best possible light the health care system in Cuba.
Well, at least part of the health care system in Cuba.
The part available to the Communist Party elite and government officials, with its well trained doctors, modern diagnostic equipment and inexpensive pharmceuticals.
And to wealthy foreigners and in Moore's case, filmmakers who allow themselves to serve as vessels for one of the great lies of the Cuban revolution: That the lack of real freedom on the island is outweighed by the availability of health care for everyone.
That Cuba is a dictatorial hellhole was not the subject of Moore's movie, but that he did not at least acknowledge the lack of freedom for most Cubans — and their lack of access to the type of health care Moore portrays in "SiCKO" — is another example of the needed context missing from so much of the film. Without that context, as least as it applies to Cuba, the only reasonable conclusion is that Moore has no shame in allowing himself to serve the propagandist aims of the Castro dictatorship.
No, all Moore presents are Americans, including three ill 9/11 rescue workers, getting the care that apparently had been denied them in the United States, and assurances from Cuban officials that the Americans were getting the same care as "regular Cubans."
When considering Moore's portrayal of the Cuban system, remember this.
Cuba's was one of four foreign countries' to which Moore compared the American system.
On each of the three other stops — in Canada, Great Britain and France — Moore interviewed both natives and Americans who had taken advantage of the health care available there. In their own words, they glowingly described how in England, all medical care is free, and in France, a new mother can get six months off work — with full pay.
In Cuba, the closest Moore got to a "real" Cuban was a group of men playing dominoes on a Havana street, one of whom informed the filmmaker that there were hospitals and pharmacies on almost every block. No questions from Moore about whether the man thought the health care was any good.
From there, it was onto a Havana hospital, where white-coated doctors were prepared to examine and treat the 9/11 workers, and another woman Moore had introduced earlier in the film. And, of course, all for free.
But as with everything coming from the dictatorship, and from Michael Moore, I don't believe it.
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