Print
Return to online version

November 4, 2007

A Note for Our Dialogue

Justin Katz

Well, if we're all going to sit around the table and resolve the healthcare crisis in Rhode Island, as Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts wishes, I'd like to make sure that this sort of testimony doesn't slip out of sight onto the floor:

Unfortunately Sicko is a dishonest film. That is not only my opinion. It is the opinion of Professor Lord Robert Winston, the consultant and advocate of the NHS. When asked on BBC Radio 4 whether he recognised the NHS as portrayed in this film, Winston replied: "No, I didn't. Most of it was filmed at my hospital [the Hammersmith in west London], which is a very good hospital but doesn't represent what the NHS is like."

I didn't recognise it either, from years of visiting NHS hospitals. Moore painted a rose-tinted vision of spotless wards, impeccable treatment, happy patients who laugh away any suggestion of waiting in casualty, and a glamorous young GP who combines his devotion to his patients with a salary of £100,000, a house worth £1m and two cars. All this, and for free.

This, along with an even rosier portrait of the French welfare system, is what Moore says the state can and should provide. You would never guess from Sicko that the NHS is in deep trouble, mired in scandal and incompetence, despite the injection of billions of pounds of taxpayers' money.

Comments

Michael Moore is nothing but a fat Leni Riefenstahl. He uses humor and sarcasm, while she used spectacle, but in the end they’re both nothing but propagandists for collectivism.

Posted by: Ragin' Rhode Islander at November 4, 2007 10:17 PM

The sections of the film about Cuban health care were also quite misleading. Moore didn't realize that there are actually two health care systems in Cuba: one for party leaders and gullible foreigners like Moore and the second for the 11 million Cuban citizens.


http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA557_Cuban_Health_Care.html

Posted by: Monique at November 4, 2007 11:47 PM

moore is not gullable. he knows exactly how to produce and develop misleading information. i saw a documentary on him. he lives in a multi million dollar home as well as a condo. all surrounded by guards. he will never give an interview. if he was on the right, he would be outed as a total fraud. but hes on the left, so he gets awards for his patently false films

Posted by: johnpaycheck at November 5, 2007 7:20 AM