Gateway Pundit writes,
Yahoo defines “Sicko” as a documentary in the Politics/Religion genre. Truly, the socialism pushed in the movie is nothing short of a religion to many.
First, one of the things I hope to bring out in the ongoing Wisdom of Doubt series is to establish that religion is something other than “fanatical belief in things that demonstrably are not true.” But let’s put that aside for now. The real fantasy is, of course, that the United States has The Best Health Care in the World. It does not. It does not by any empirical measure. The only way one could possibly still believe that the United States has The Best Health Care in the World is if one is utterly ignorant of the health care systems here and abroad.
I’ve said this before, but I’ll repeat it. There’s an old joke that a “conservative” is a liberal who got mugged. The new joke is that a “liberal” is a conservative who lost his health insurance.
A brainwashed twit named Sheila commented to the last post, saying that
First of all, 4 out of 5 Americans are satisfied with the health care system, so it is really a non-issue (this will likely be the reason the movie flops).
Take a look at the latest polls on health care at pollingreport.com. It’s very encouraging. A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll of May 4-6, 2007, asked the question “Do you think the government should provide a national health insurance program for all Americans, even if this would require higher taxes?” 64 percent said yes; 35 percent said no. Interestingly, a smaller percentage of people in the same poll said yes to “Do you think all employers, including small businesses which employ few workers, should be required to provide health insurance to every employee, or don’t you think so?” Here the spread was 56 percent yes to 43 percent no. I think people are starting to catch on that the cost of employee health insurance is terribly burdensome to business, large and small. Well, except to the health insurance industry, of course.
Anyway, Gateway Pundit’s post is fairly typical of the “Best Health Care in the World” genre. It consists mostly of photographs of filth and cockroaches alleged to have been taken in Cuban hospitals and not at Walter Reed. And they may very well have been taken in Cuban hospitals; I wouldn’t know. But then there’s France, whose health care system is generally considered to be the crème de la crème of health care systems on the planet. And Canada. and Britain. And about 30 other nations with nationalized health care and better life expectancy and lower infant mortality rates than ours.
But after reading Gateway Pundit’s post I decided that I’d like to amend something I wrote in the last post, which is:
But most of the bad reviews I’ve read amount to sputtering defenses of the status quo and personal attacks on Michael Moore. What the critics never ever do is honestly address the problem of people who can’t get insurance, or our crumbling emergency rooms, or our dismal health data. They just make excuses.
To “sputtering defenses of the status quo and personal attacks on Michael Moore” I’d like to add “photographs of roaches in Cuban hospitals” and, of course, the old stand by: waiting lines in Canada. Still, not a peep about the problem of people who can’t get insurance, or our crumbling emergency rooms, or our dismal health data.
See also: “Bush to Uninsured Kids: Drop Dead” and The Mahablog health care archives.