Update: The Department of the Treasury has opened an investigation of Moore’s trip to Cuba. Moore’s open letter in response.
As opposed to the US, where they get them for free? You do know the hospital charges you for sutures, right? I’m not saying the Cuban system is great, but I don’t get how being able to choose where you buy something and know how much it costs ahead of time is so much more worse than having no choice or prior information.
How is having to buy something on the black market being able to “choose” where you buy it?
Well, okay, but then surely it’s just the same as having to buy it from the hospital? And perhaps a bit worse, since you don’t even generally know ahead of time the cost.
Edited to add: I knew my point would be seized on and redirected immediately, which is understandable. To be clear, I was only reacting to the comment I quoted and the way the very idea of having to /buy/ one’s sutures before going to the hospital was framed as obviously horrible.
Well, the thing is that buying on the black market isn’t the same as buying through professional channels. Since the black market is an illegal system, there is no way of knowing if you are getting a safe product. There also may or may not be availability of the product you are looking for. If you can’t track it down, you are out of luck. If the product turns out to be unusable for whatever reason (would you know what a “real” suture looked like?), you have no recourse.
And, in any case, since medical care in Cuba is free, then basic supplies like sutures should be available at the hospital, and there should be no cost associated with them.
Michael Moore and Fred Thompson are getting into it!
(Sort of . . . in a Donald-and-Rosie sort of way . . .)
Thompson’s mention of Nicolas Guillen Landrian is right on the money, he was a documentary film maker who was thrown in prison, mental hospitals and tortured in Cuba for making a film called “Cafe Arabica” in which he made fun of some of Fidel’s initiatives, especially the one where coffee plantations were created all around Havana. The initiative was a spectacular failure, the climate in Havana is not coffee friendly, but making fun of it meant making fun of Fidel, and Guillen Landrian paid for it.
By the way, Guillen Landrian made it to the US and made a couple of films here but was not very successful and was even homeless for a while.
Some people know all about a movie that has not been released yet. Moore has kept it under wraps and no one has seen it.
We do have 50 mill or so not covered by any health plans. Ask what they think. For som e ,not you comfy prople ,Cuba n medicine might not sound so bad.
It’s not what it sounds like, it’s the reality. I have been exposed to both Cuban and Canadian medical systems and I will take the Canadian system any day.
Living close to Canada, I know a lot of Canadians. They like their system. They also like that it shows compassion and a sense of sharing. We as always have the best system that money can buy. At least we used to. Indications are our system is not keeping up so well. Money is not the only motivation for research. Some scientists love the challenge and actually want to help their fellow man.
And my hunch that Moore’s point was missed, and that there were other reasons why he did pick Cuba was correct:
The Truth About Michael Moore's Movie 'Sicko' | Fox News *
As I suspected, the point was that out of all the government health care available it was a shame that the Cubans were the ones willing to help. I do strongly suspect that it remains not a flattering thing to say about the Cuban health care system. I think Moore played the Cubans like a fiddle… and the conservatives in the US too.
- Fox review chosen to make conservative heads explode.
**The level of care US soldiers recieve in military bases.
Now producer Harvey Weinstein says the U.S. government is trying to impound the negative of Sicko. I don’t know how much of that to believe – there’s nothing on that in the story but Weinstein’s say-so.
The film’s premiere was well received at Cannes.
You can view the film’s trailer here.
Continued from hijack:
I would think that anyone wanting to justify that pretty strong term would have some similarly strong evidence that the person in question really was sucking up to Castro or making arguments and comparisons without caveats.
You seem to be okay using that term merely if you think, (sight unseen!) there wasn’t the sufficient emphasis YOU think there needs to be on the disanalogy. That’s seems to be stretching pretty far to justify a pretty nasty term.
What’s being compared is the outcomes, in the course of a film arguing that these are the outcomes we should strive for. Again, you haven’t done the legwork here. Show me that Moore actually says that America needs to specifically be more like Cuba, as opposed to what all evidence seems to imply the visit to Cuba is presented as: after spending most of the time talking about healthcare in Canada and France, they try to see if American treatment of Gitmo prisoners can get better healthcare than 9/11 heroes. Rebuffed, they end up in Cuba, and find that even in this third world country these people can get the treatment they need without leaving them destitute.
I don’t see how that makes Moore a “stooge” for Castro. Did they get the medical care they needed or not? Seems like they did, and it seems like Moore is perfectly aware and says so, that Cuba’s system is not perfect and Cuba itself is not something the US should emulate in all things.
Aside from name calling, where’s your argument here? Why is it naive to point out that even some third world place has some outcomes he thinks we should be able to provide?
Again, how is that relevant? I could see how it would be relevant if the point was to praise Castro. But since that’s only the claim in your straw man, it’s not relevant.
Again, what I would want to see from Thompson and, apparently, now you, is some actual evidence that Moore really does stooge for Castro’s regime.
No, that is not what I said. If you want to debate what I did say, I’ll be happy to do that.
It doesn’t matter whether you compare the methods or the outcomes, since the latter derives from the former. The fact that Cuba has a pretty good healthcare system at a fraction of the cost says ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about how to run a healthcare system in a liberal democracy with a free market system.
Eh. If you want to say the only purpose it could serve is to give Castro some good press, that’s fine with me. Because it certainly is entirely besides the point when looking at how to reform the US healthcare system. You cannot look at one isolated policy in a country like Cuba where everything is run by the government.
The whole premise that Moore had in going to Cuba is flawed (that a comparison means anything), and his execution was even worse-- taking a few high profile patients and getting the treated in Cuba. But it got people talking again about how great the healthcare system in Cuba is and that he’s at least done some things really good for Cuba. As you often like to say about Bush or Cheney-- he isn’t going to mind that people think that.
The problem with this movie, or any information in the media about Cuba and its healthcare system is that it will never tell you the full story…or probably even a fraction of the story. The fact, as you point out, that these are high profile patients, and that it gives the Cuban government a chance to look good to the outside world, is all the incentive the government needs to be sure that these specific patients receive top-notch care. It does not necessarily illustrate what kind of medical care the average person in Cuba receives.
I think it’s important to keep in mind that despite Moore’s movie, I doubt very highly that we have any accurate information about what the outcomes are, and whether or not the ones we have in the US are comparable. I think the one thing that is probably true is that the vast majority of the people there pay the same for medical care as everyone else, and they get the same medical care as everyone else, which is clearly unlike the Amercian system. On the other hand, whether or not we would want to potentially give up the quality of the medical care currently available in the US in order to have a system like Cuba’s is certainly a debatable issue.
Oh, I should add one more thing that this stunt accomplishes. It gets Moore and his movie lots of publicity because of its “controversial” Cuban angle. The fact that it tells us squat about how to fix our healthcare system is, unfortunately, lost in the “outrage”.
You called him a stooge and a dupe for taking people to Cuba to be treated, having them get treated, and saying, essentially, why can a third world country do what we can’t? Yes or no?
You want to use that sort of language, but then you don’t want to bother backing any of it up.
Inventing positions for Moore to hold so that you can attack them without providing evidence of his views or his intentions doesn’t fly. Calling the “comparison” invalid is nonsense unless you can provide some evidence that Moore makes any sort of claim about comparing the systems on anything other than that somehow Cuba is able to treat people affordably that America is not, and America should be. You are the one inventing all sorts of much more complex arguments, ascribing them to Moore and then complaining that they are invalid.
Again, provide some actual evidence that it’s Moore intention to prop up or celebrate Castro or his regime, especially given that he’s explicitly said that this is not his intention.
Or is this just a “Moore = bad so Moore says something = bad” argument?
This is barely even coherent. Yes, one CAN look at outcomes and say: “now look, this is something we should aim for” without endorsing all of Castro’s methods or thinking it can directly translate into the US. The level at which Moore presents it is “look, even these dweebs can do it, we should be able to do it.”
You’ve failed entirely to argue why that point is invalid. You’ve instead invented entirely new arguments, failed in your duty to show that Moore is making them, and then knocked them down.
Insufficient. Not honorable.
And the right has obligingly played right into that. 