Those two statement (the one I highlighted and the one you highlighted) seem to contradict each other, unless the government is controlling medicine and labor costs. Is that what’s happening?
Do they? Can’t it just mean that the Canadian system gets medicine cheaper because the government is able to negotiate lower drug prices with the suppliers? (The way many people in the US are advocating letting Medicare do?)
And that labor costs in the Canadian system are lower at least in part because they don’t have all that red tape of multiple-payer mutually incompatible billing systems that we have? (I vaguely recollect there’s that statistic that jshore sometimes trots out in threads like these, about Canadian hospitals having one administrator spending part of her time on the same amount of billing work that US hospitals require several full-time administrators to handle, just because our insurance billing systems are so much more horrendously complicated…)
So why can’t, say, Blue Cross do the same thing? I’ll bet there are more Americans covered by Blue Cross than there are Canadian citizens.
So why did the article talk about nurses salaries and not mention this? It just seems confusing. You could be right, but it’s not clear from that article that you are.
BTW, you’ve prompted me to start this GQ thread.
But badly, and thats the sweetener. If we put X amount of money into early and preventive care we reap rewards. If people can go to the doctor when they feel ill and not wait until they are *really *sick, they can be cured more quickly and returned to a productive life. Not only that, but they feel better and live longer!
CNN has now admitted it was wrong – or so says Moore.
He also says he’s going back on CNN tomorrow.
God, what an attention whore.
It’s rather a feature of his calling in life, isn’t it?
What CNN did was to nail Moore on his inconsistent and misleading use of data, as well as “creating controversy where there is none”. CNN shows Moore mixing and cherry-picking his numbers from different sources.
Moore, of course, cherry-picks and misinterprets the CNN letter.
Wow. Talk about spin.
CNN did an excellent job of showing how Moore cherry picked the numbers to make things look worse than they are. CNN made 2 errors that they corrected, but purposely tried to untangle the cherry picking so a better comparison could be made. The thing is, most of the numbers that CNN used still make a strong case for Moore’s thesis. Why he felt he had to exaggerate is somewhat puzzling, because it just makes me question his objectivity. He’s agenda driven, and like many people who are agenda driven he starts with a conclusion and then finds “facts” to support that conclusion.
Thanks, CNN, for saving the two hours I mightt have spent seeing this movie at some point. I’ll trust my own research on the subject.
BTW, BG, have you petitioned the mods yet to change your thread title to: CNN tears Moore a new one? It’s pretty clear that you should.
Wait, you and CNN acknowledge that they made two errors, but you trust their reporting more and think that they tore Moore a new one?
Yeah, John, what the hell are you on about? Moore was right and CNN wasn’t. End of story.
– highlights mine.
We all know you hate the guy, but when he’s right (as he often is) he is right.
I think this is the key thing. The “Michael Moore lies” thing has snowballed so much that it appears to bias any consideration of what has actually said.
He is broadly and aggressively lambasted and villified in the media and elsewhere (almost always falsely, in my opinion). However, if he in turn aggressively rebuts false allegations, he becomes a media or attention whore.
…rubbish. Complete and utter claptrap. The CNN article was a terrible rebuttal, light on facts and high on nitpicks. The problem with the original CNN piece was that it distorted the message of Moore’s movie, and questioned the integrity of that message. Now you might claim that this is exactly what Moore does with his movies, however:
1 No one could pretend that Michael Moore is an unpassionate, objective film maker
2 One could argue that objective, unpassionate news stories should be expected from a media source like CNN
On Point 1: read the sentence that Gupta read on air: and ask yourself, is this a fair representation of the point Moore is making in the film? Moore claims it isn’t, CNN says that “Moore appears to be creating an issue where none exists.” Boy, that is an excellent refutation! If one watches the movie, does one come away with the impression that “Moore brings a group of patients, including 9/11 workers, to Cuba and marvels at their free treatment and quality of care?”
Remember, at this point in Gupta’s CNN peice, they showed a still from the film that clearly showed that Cuba was ranked lower than the United States in health care (if only they had chosen to make the CNN logo a bit smaller so people could have seen it). Moore had every right to be aggreived that they had misrepresented his point here.
On point 2: CNN used different statistics from different sources to prove exactly the same point and come to the same conclusion as Moore, and they managed to screw up the figures on the live broadcast as well. This is not an “excellent job.”
On point 3: CNN’s arguement is that thier statistics are more accurate because they come from a 2007 study. Considering that Sicko was filmed mostly in 2006, and that Moores statistics come from the 2006 study, how is this an excellent refutation?
On point 4: Moore rebuts a specific uncited statement:
" but the United States also ranks highest in patient satisfaction."
…and CNN rebuts this by claiming that Moore is refering to this sentence:
"Gupta: “It’s true. Thirty-seven is the ranking according to the World Health Organization’s latest data on 191 countries. It’s based on general health level, patient satisfaction, access and how it’s paid for. France tops the list. Italy and Spain make it into the top 10. The United Kingdom is 18.”
…the transcript is here:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0707/09/sitroom.03.html
Sure, on Moore’s page he omitted the word “also”, from the sentence: but for CNN to claim that Moore was refering to the second sentence and not the first is weasel tactics not worthy of a weasel.
On point 5: I have looked quite closely, but I can’t either find CNN’s evidence in support of their claim that every other country except Germany has longer waiting lists for elective surgery. I’m sure if I did enough googling I could come up with evidence one way or the other. What CNN choose to do in their rebuttal is post a link to a cite with the title “Joint Replacement Surgery and You,” and to a cite that states, if you didn’t know already, that Cateracts can be a very bad thing.
On point 6: CNN doesn’t rebut the movie, it rebuts Moore’s website. This is debating tactics by ten year olds! Sicko isn’t out in New Zealand yet, but I intend to see it once it is released. I will let you know first hand if the impression I get from it is that Moore implies there is no cost to health care in countries like France and the United Kingdom. From Moore’s rebuttal and from my casual impressions from the marketing so far, I don’t believe think that impression will come to fruition.
On point 7: Moore asks what country the 15-20% of the population that purchases services outside of the governmemt system was. The “excellent” rebuttal from CNN not only fails to answer this question, but presents a whole lot of new statistics (from Moore’s citation) and makes a completely new point, without ever answering the question Moore asks.
On point 8: The real question here is how you define “fudging the facts.” There are many arguably valid reasons why Moore chose to cite from the publications that he did. The “fact checking” conducted by CNN only served to back up the research done by Moore. There is no evidence of deliberate distortion by Moore, the statistics bear out and they tell a compelling story.
On point 9: Well, finally CNN has a point. In fact, it is their only point in their entire rubuttal. I still believe that Moore has a valid arguement for why he chose to use the figures he used, however CNN’s arguement is relatively convincing.
What I would like to ask is, however, how valid the point really is. Moore had valid, but arguably flawed reasons for using the figures that he did. The original CNN “Fact Check” created the impression that Sicko had not shown that the French pay for thier health care at all, that the statistics used by Moore were fudged, and the US system, while flawed and in need of improvement, wasn’t that bad. They did this by selectively using statistics, and by making subtle insinuations. And to see how bad CNN fudges the facts, one only has to look at Point 11 and its rebuttall:
Point 11: Keckley’s comments. This is what Keckley said on the original broadcast:
" PAUL KECKLEY, DELOITTE HEALTH CARE ANALYST: That’s the reality of those systems. There are quotas. There are planned wait times. The concept that care is free in France and Canada and Cuba, and it’s not. Those citizens pay for health services out of taxes. And as a proportion of their household income, it’s a significant number."
…from what I understand, the wait times were mentioned in Moore’s film. The concept that people pay for health care out of their taxes is in Moore’s film. And while yes, Keckley’s last line is “strictly true”, it is also a huge “fudge” of the facts: much bigger than any of Moore’s uses of statistics. If Keckly, as described in the rebuttal, were “factual, neutral and descriptive”, then he would have also mentioned how much more Americans spend on healthcare on average than other nations. But as you know, he didn’t: and why didn’t he?
And finally, point 10. This was another “weasel” effort by CNN. Moore’s point is that Medicare going bankrupt in 2019 isn’t really the issue: the United States had the financial means and the brains to be able to come up with a solution by 2019 if they choose to. The CNN rebuttal?
“Moore agrees with Dr. Gupta’s reporting that Medicare solvency is only assured until 2019.”
:rolleyes:
And for some reason, you fail to see Moore’s point here. The numbers ABSOULTELY support Moore’s thesis. It was most telling when Larry King had Moore and Gupta facing off and Gupta said, trying to prove the point that France paid a lot in taxes toward healthcare , that “the French were drowning in taxation.” Moore replied, shaking his head in disbelief, “that very line is in my movie.”
Michael Moore, as the whole world knows, is not objective. As for exaggerating the point: if you are talking about the statistics, can you please indicate which ones you feel he exaggerated?
Sure. Firstly, can you let me know what Michael Moore’s conclusion at the end of Sicko was? Then secondly, can you supply some facts that don’t support his conclusion?
If you want to base your decision on whether or not to see a movie based on a poorly constructed puff piece with two out right factual errors feel free. Sicko may or may not be a great documentary, but basing a decison on whether or not to see it based on this very poor refutation is unfortunate.
…CNN can only claim a victory if you considered the original report to be good journalism. I did not. Their attempt at rebuttal is amatuerish in the extreme.
Did you really examine the CNN rebuttal John? Did you follow the arguements, read the citations, and agree with them on their merits? Or did you look at the one debateable example of the “statistics from different sources” and decide that CNN had a slam dunk?
Because this is the reason why Moore was angry, and it is also the reason why Jon Stuart went on Crossfire all those years ago and told the talk hosts that they were “hurting America.”
The “fact check” by Dr Gupta was everything that you accuse Sicko of being. It was agenda driven: “lets show that Moore fudged the facts.” Experts came on to try and prove that proposition. It felt a need to exagerate the percieved flaws in the movie to prove their proposition. When convienient, the CNN story simply ommitted the facts. And yet, it appears, if I understand your point correctly, that you believe that CNN not only won the debate, but has the moral high ground here?
I remember when the US captured four Iranians alleged embassey officials in Iraq earlier this year I was watching ABC News, and while they were reporting the story and repeating verbaitim what the US Generals were telling them, they were showing file footage of US Soldiers looking over a massive stockpile of Rocket Propelled Grenades and various other weapons. The thing is, however, they didn’t label the footage “file footage”, and any casual observer would have assumed that this stockpile of weapons was found in the “embassy” along with the alleged “agents.” I know I did: I spent two hours searching the internet for any news story that talked about an arms cache found with the Iranian embassey staff before coming to the conclusion that the cache did not exist.
We should be ruthlessly holding our media to account, and not just slavishly accepting everything they say. We should always be questioning the messenger, whether or not it is Michael Moore or CNN or the BBC or Fox News. And when the media crosses the line we shouldn’t have to wait for or rely on Michael Moore or Jon Stuart to call them on it.
Huh? CNN was wrong. Moore was right. How did they rip him a new one?
Anyone catch Moore on The Colbert Report last night? 
Three weeks after release, Sicko is now one of the five highest-grossing documentaries of all time.
So you think lying SHOULDN’T damage a person’s credibility?
People keep saying that Michael Moore lies, but they never go into the details.
And when they do, it never seems to hold up under closer examination. Viz. the recent exchange with Gupta.