No, I still haven't seen it. But Dr. Deb Richter, Vermont's most vocal physician-supporter of a single payer health care plan has. And according to Peter Freyne's column in Seven Days
She has seen Sicko many times...
Many times? I've seen Casablanca, On the Waterfront, and Citizen Kane many times, as well as several lesser-known films that are some of my favorites, like The Ballad of Cable Hogue and The Wild Bunch (I have a soft spot for Westerns and for Sam Peckinpah). And there are a few others I've seen often. But Sicko?
But this post is not a movie review.
Mr. Freyne goes on
“The facts in Michael Moore’s movie are dead on,” said Vermont’s point-person on health-care reform.
Perhaps Dr. Richter should read some critical analysis of Mr. Moore's work, like this one from journalist John Stossel who writes about the scene in the film where 9/11 rescue workers who go to Cuba to get treated, since Moore claims that all Cubans get first class health care. Stossel writes:
Cuban-born Dr. Jose Carro, who interviews Cuban doctors who have moved to the United States, says Moore's movie lies. Dr. Darsi Ferrer, a human-rights advocate in Cuba, told us that Americans should not believe the claims being made. He describes the Cuban people as "crazy with desperation" because of poor-quality care.....
Moore claims Cubans live longer than Americans. It's true that a U.N. report claims that. But the United Nations didn't gather any data. "The United Nations simply reports whatever the government in Cuba reports, so we have no objective way to know what the real statistics are," Carro says...Cuba claims it has low infant mortality, but doctors tell us that Cuban obstetricians abort a fetus when they think there might be a problem. Dr. Julio Alfonso told us he used to do 70-80 abortions a day. And here's an even more devious way of distorting infant-mortality data: Some doctors tell us that if a baby dies within a few hours of birth, Cuban doctors don't count him or her as ever having lived.
Moore told me [Stossel]: "All the independent health organizations in the world, and even our own CIA, believe that the Cubans have a pretty good health system. And they do, in fact, live longer than we do."
But the CIA does not claim that Cubans live longer than Americans. In fact, the CIA says Americans live longer.
The CIA Factbook states that the U.S. life expectancy is one year more than Cuba's.
To repeat Dr. Richter's comments
The facts in Michael Moore’s movie are dead on
As Mr. Freyne would say, very interesting.
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