Monk

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Being without health insurance is no big deal. Just ask President Bush. “I mean, people have access to health care in America,” he said last week. “After all, you just go to an emergency room.”

-- Paul Krugman for The New York Times

I suppose this is today's version of "Let them eat cake!"

Mr. Krugman has an interesting column arguing with some force that the critical reaction to Michael Moore's "SiCKO" is bit of an over-reaction.

( Krugman )

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John Stossel turns an interview with Michael Moore into an admittedly interesting pedagogical discourse on the virtues of libertarianism. He plays off Moore's assumption that greater virtue must be realized through government compulsion, as Stossel argues that there is nothing inconsistent in believing that the desire for greater liberty allows one to be benevolent toward others.

I appreciate Stossel's perspective, and I think Moore is too optimistic about how much good the government can bring about. But one still comes back to the old balance, that we need both. When you recognize the need for minimal government, you are recognizing the need for force in maintaining society. In a genuinely democratic government, we can see how government can achieve more as our central coordinating body to achieve goals for which there is a broad consensus, and for which there may be a need when you have a society of vast inequality.

But where is the line? We have seen that communism is not the answer. Yet, we can see that a pure libertarianism is not likely to maintain a very broad consensus. Just the old conclusion: balancing between market economics and democratic politics, having the pendulum swing this way and then that way as we struggle with evolving social conditions.

( Stossel )

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I should have kept my powder dry on Michael Moore's "Sicko". Michael C. Moynihan gives a more thoroughgoing review of the film for "Reason" magazine that begins with "As with much of his previous work, Moore's latest film is, by turns, touching, naïve and maddeningly mendacious, a clumsy piece of agitprop that will likely have little lasting effect on the health care debate." and takes off from there.

( Review )

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Michael Moore's "Sicko" is reputed to be very good, and is expected to ratchet up expectations for universal healthcare. Helen Evans knows something of the British system and sounds a cautioning note:

Michael Moore's denunciation of America's health-care system is about to hit the silver screen. In the film's trailer, a desk attendant at a British hospital smiles while explaining that in Britain's National Health Service, "everything is free." But for free hospital care, Britons pay an awfully high price.

... Upon launching its state health service in 1948, the British government promised that it would provide its citizens with all the "medical, dental and nursing care" needed, so that "everyone -- rich or poor -- [could] use it." To make good on its plans, the government nationalized more than 3,000 independent hospitals, clinics and care homes.

But today, after nearly six decades of attempting to make socialized medicine work, the NHS is in a perilous state.

Consider waiting lists. Across Britain, patients wait years for routine -- or even emergency -- treatments. And many die while waiting.

... Consequently, many Britons have turned to outside practitioners for treatment, and the private health-care market has boomed. Today, more than 6.5 million people have private medical insurance, 6 million have cash plans, 8 million pay out-of-pocket for a range of complimentary therapies, and 250,000 self-fund each year for private surgery. Millions more opt for private dentistry, ophthalmics and long-term care.

... Rationing, as history proves time and again, is always a recipe for horror.

You cannot get something for nothing. It's not like Monk hasn't tried.


(Source: Helen Evans for The Chicago Tribune)

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Rich Lowry takes on Michael Moore's trumpeting of Cuban healthcare and how it's not all it's cracked up to be:

Cuban health care works only for the select few: if you are a high-ranking member of the party or the military and have access to top-notch clinics; or a health-care tourist who can pay in foreign currency at a special facility catering to foreigners; or a documentarian who can be relied upon to produce a lickspittle film whitewashing the system.

Ordinary Cubans experience the wasteland of the real system. Even aspirin and Pepto-Bismol can be rare, and there's a black market for them. According to a report in the Canadian National Post: "Hospitals are falling apart, surgeons lack basic supplies and must reuse latex gloves. Patients must buy their sutures on the black market and provide bed sheets and food for extended hospital stays."

How could it be any different when Cuba embarked on a campaign of economic self-sabotage with the revolution of 1959? It went from third in per capita food consumption in Latin America to near the bottom, according to a State Department report. Per capita consumption of basic foodstuffs like cereals and meat actually has declined from the 1950s. There are fewer cars (true of no other country in the hemisphere), and development of electrical power has trailed every other Latin American country except Haiti.

... The only reason to fantasize about Cuban health care is to stick a finger in the eye of the Yanquis. For the likes of Michael Moore, the true glory of Cuba is less its health care than the fact that it is an enemy of the United States. That's why romanticizing Cuban medicine isn't just folly, but itself qualifies as a kind of sickness.

I can agree that extolling the virtues of totalitarian Cuba is philosophically and morally dubious. Yet, we do have serious problems with healthcare, and laissez faire is not the model to follow for this kind of good and services, as the market has to be supplemented with more than minimal regulation to ensure an outcome that we can live with.


(Source: Rich Lowery at RealClearPolitics.com)

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"Sicko" does not display Moore at his most cinematically inventive or imaginative. It presents a TV-documentary-style parade of episodes, characters and settings, bouncing from various American cities to Canada, Britain, France and Cuba (and yes, don't worry, we'll get to that). Moore plays a far smaller personal role in this film, appearing only occasionally in his comic-relief role as the clueless buffoon who can't seem to grasp that healthcare in all those other countries is free, or virtually so. When he's eating dinner with a group of Americans living in Paris who begin to list all the things they can have as free or nearly free entitlements -- not just healthcare but an emergency doctor who makes house calls; not just childcare but a part-time in-home nanny -- Moore puts his hands over his ears and begins singing "La la la la la." (If you have kids or any kind of chronic family health problems, your reactions might include weeping in despair, slitting your wrists or booking a one-way ticket.)

-- Andrew O'Hehir for Salon.com

Speaking of Michael Moore, here is a more positive account of his latest film efforts, and I have to admit, I'm pretty impressed just reading about it. His message sounds like good one, but one has to hope that he has not become such a questionable messenger to all but the hard left that the message is not heard. However, healthcare has been simmering as a serious national issue for some time, and this film could help to bring matters to a boil by the 2008 elections.

( article )

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Apparently I missed some entertaining political drama involving filmmaker Michael Moore and Republican dark horse candidate and actor Fred Thompson. Mr. Moore has a new documentary coming out that puts the burning spotlight on America's rather ill healthcare system, which is titled "SICKO". Moore went to Cuba to do some comparative analysis, under which Americans are supposed to fare shamefully poorly.

Mr. Thompson criticized Moore's trip to Cuba. In return, Moore took a shot at the fact that Thompson has boxes of contraband Cuban cigars in his office, and for good measure, Moore challenged him to debate healthcare. Thompson declined, but issued a brief video on the Internet to answer him:

"You know, I've been looking at my schedule, Michael, and I don't think I have time for you," said Thompson, sitting in a leather chair, chomping on a big cigar. "But I may be the least of your problems. You know, the next time you're down in Cuba visiting your buddy Castro, you might ask him about another documentary filmmaker. His name is Nicolas Guillen. He did something Castro didn't like and they put him in a mental institution for several years, giving him devastating electroshock treatment. A mental institution, Michael. Might be something you ought to think about.

Apparently this got big play on TV. I pay fair attention to the cable news outlets, but I missed it. Maybe I need to watch less porn.


(Source: Stephen F. Hayes for The Weekly Standard)

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I know you are dismayed at the results of last week's election. You've got to be freaking out about what this bunch of tree-hugging, latte-sipping, men-kissing-men advocates will do now that the country is in our hands. I don't blame you. We'd never admit it, but we secretly admire you because you know how to chop down a tree, take your coffee black and enjoy watching women kissing women. Good on you!

-- Michael Moore for The Los Angeles Times

This was a pleasant surprise this morning. Michael Moore gets in his kick in the ribs of the G.O.P. over the 2006 elections. What a surprise that he could not help rubbing it in! It's just one of the reasons why I love this country.

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