The crux of the “SICKO” documentary is the disconnect between our expectations and the reality of health care. We are expecting compassionate care from another human being, and instead we get a faceless corporation. The person behind the desk or window is an agent of a health care corporation, which is not a human being, whose primary goal is to increase corporate profit.

This is America, and corporate profit is good, the profit motive forming the basis America’s greatness. The basic problem is that a corporation is not a human being. Therein lies the fallacy of replacing a corporation with a government agency, neither of which is a human being, when what we really want is a human being to deliver compassionate health care, and assist in serious health care decisions.

Ultimately we must at some point ration health care to avoid national bancruptcy. We can’t provide everything for everybody. Moore’s film, SICKO replaces the corporate health company with the government agency as the agent of this care rationing.

My major point here, is that the larger issue which is ignored by the SICKO film, is the control of medical information, which then determines expenditure and rationing patterns. The control of medical information controls the money. This is explained fully at:

Review of “SICKO”, by Jeffrey Dach MD

Jeffrey Dach MD

You have to balance the “some come to America for treatment” with the commonly documented “some go to Canada so they can get treatment at all”. Even a self-employed lawyer from AZ had written about his family’s slide into poverty attempting to pay for his cancer treatments. This is fair?? Now try being poor.

If you think we have nothing to learn from other country’s successes, then you have your head in the sand (and are fully covered).

Moore demanded the 9/11 responders be treated like regular Cubans, and it appears they were. Moore says the trip was not about making Cuba out to be “better” than the US, but ask why we can’t make the same committment to health care as Cuba has – available for everyone?

While there are indeed several profit-making facilities aimed primarily at health tourists in Cuba, the profits are funneled back into the national health system, unlike in other countries where private firms take the money. Cuba makes about $40 million a year off Presidents (like Haiti’s Preval) and sports stard (like Maradona), which helps offset the added costs related to the embargo.

Calling the Cuban national system a “wasteland” is beyond reproach. Every respected organization, from the WHO, UNICEF, Lancet, World Bank, Kaiser Foundation, the UK House of Commons Health Select Committee, etc. have give the Cuban system gold stars – one of the “world’s best public services” concludes the BBC. This is regardless of the fact that, indeed, some supplies are sometimes in short supply or missing – often as a direct result of the embargo. “Pepto-Bismol” and “Tylenol” are American products that are not allowed to be imported without a very complicated and bureaucratic licensing process that the Cubans normally choose to bypass because of the added costs and delays. The embargo “dramatically harmed the health and nutrition of large numbers of Cubans” says the American Association of World Health. Nonetheless, Cuba has learned to produce undisputable health results with a minimum of resources and today produces, on its own, much of its medicines and equipment.

These statistical manipulations are apparently based on data taken during the country’s “special period” when Cuba lost 85% of its trade (fertilizers, fuel, feed), which decimated food production and food imports dropped by ½. Today Cuba can report being fully recovered from what was like the “great depression” x2. Malnutrition rates (2%) have fallen to become the lowest in Latin America (WHO, 2006). Average caloric consumption is up above 2,600 a day, well in line with other Latin countries. As for as “development of electrical power,” Cuba ranks 3rd only to Chile and Uruguay in terms of access to electricity (97% – Earth Trends). In 1959, just 7% had access to electrical power. So this seems to be total crap.

The abortion rate is again, way off. I imagine the statistics were based on the high point of 209,000 abortions in 1996. In 2004, after a coordinated effort to combat the issue, Cuba recorded a drop to two-thirds – to 67,277 (a rate lower than the US). The infant mortality distortion is obvious, but it is worth pointing out that pre-1959 record keeping was not a priority of the Government. Many infant deaths went totally unreported. To say Cuba has lost ground to the likes of post WW II France and Belgium is disingenous. Again, Cuba ranks above the US in this crucial figure.

As for suicide, islands are well known to have higher suicide rates than not. Cuba’s last known figure, recorded during the “special period” found Cuba with better rates thank Japan, most of the newly capitalist countries, Finland, Belguim, (and Alaska, Montana and Nevada).

You have no dispute from me that our current health care system is in disarray.

However, Mr. Moore’s solution (I haven’t seen the film, but I think it’s safe to say) – that of a government-run single-payer system – simply exchanges our problems for a whole new set of problems. Which may be even worse.

Thanks,
Kevin

The problem is, people like my family and I live in the constant knowledge that we’re getting screwed by America’s health care system. It took me 6 months of calls to get my son’s birth costs to be paid under my employers plan. Now (as I’m self employed), my second largest annual expense is healthcare for my family – and for that, I get almost no service whatsoever, just a prayer that if something goes really wrong, the provider won’t deny me on some technicality.

The health care system and washington are letting hard working americans down. Youre welcome to blast Moore all you want, but he’s on the right side of this issue by me.