Controversial Michael Moore Flick 'Sicko' Will Compare U.S. Health Care with Cuba's

Nurses Activism

Published

Health care advances in Cuba

According to the Associated Press as cited in the Post article, "Cuba has made recent advancements in biotechnology and exports its treatments to 40 countries around the world, raking in an estimated $100 million a year. ... In 2004, the U.S. government granted an exception to its economic embargo against Cuba and allowed a California drug company to test three cancer vaccines developed in Havana."

http://alternet.org/envirohealth/50911/?page=1

People may not be aware but Senator Ted Kennedy tried to get a bill passed 35 years ago regarding universal health insurance. If we do nothing about this situation in American healthcare nothing will change and it is the working class who will suffer the most! RN's unite!!

"RN's" do not all agree on the problems and solutions - we are not a monolith.

I do know about Ted Kennedy. I disagree with him.

I do not support a universal system of healthcare.

steph

at the end of the film moore takes a group of "gringos," all of whom have been terribly mistreated by the u.s. health care system, to be treated in communist cuba. the hospital moore and his companions are taken to in cuba appears cleaner and more orderly than many u.s. hospitals, with semi-private rooms, crisp, clean sheets, state-of-the-art equipment and upright, english-speaking doctors. the not so subtle message: even communist health care is better than what we've got.

now i've been to hospitals in cuba, and they don't look at all like the one in moore's film. i can only guess that the facilities we are shown in "sicko" are reserved for the communist hierarchy and foreign vips. the contrast between what we see in the film and cuban reality is dramatic.

in the two cuban hospitals i visited, the lack of the most basic materials in cuba was readily apparent. hospital personnel were literally begging me for anything i had that could be used to help the sick. one hospital i visited asked me for dental floss because they'd run out of suture material.

but in "sicko," a $150 inhaler is easily found in a local pharmacy and several are given to one of moore's sick u.s. companions for about 5 cents each. i have never seen or heard of readily available medicines like this for anyone in cuba, and it seemed strangely coincidental that this particular brand just happened to be within easy reach of the first cuban pharmacist that moore and his crew walked in on. this scene was either set up by one of moore's cuban "minders," or moore was a party to a fabricated scene. the only other possibility is that there has been a monumental effort in cuba to clean up its hospitals that has gone largely unreported.

it probably won't take much to refute the "potemkin village" view that the cubans created for moore's film. it was so over-the-top that any cuban or nicaraguan familiar with the bitter reality of cuban health care will be able to easily refute these images. as it happened, i happened to be sitting next to one such individual during the screening: my wife, who came here from socialist nicaragua in 1988. during one round of applause from the audience (comprised mostly of rich celebrities), she leaned over to me and whispered: "why doesn't someone ask: 'if it is so bad here, why are people still dying to get in?'"

my wife went on to make a point that went to the heart of the nation's move to the left that, no matter how awkwardly, michael moore is trying to exploit. many americans have forgotten how well off they are. they complain at the slightest pain, because they're told that virtually all their problems can and should be taken care of by a nanny state. most immigrants, on the other hand, know that the nanny state is a lie. they know that the more powerful a state becomes, the more liberties and choices they all lose. and that's why they flock to the u.s.

and that's why immigrants may be the last bulwark against the growth of big government. not the kind of immigrants who come here illegally looking for a handout. but legal, driven, brave immigrants, who are willing to work hard and eventually eschew the kind of patronizing hand holding that seems to be coming back in vogue among politicians and pundits.

as my wife says: "legal immigrants have backbone and don't feel sorry for themselves because they have to work hard. that's because we know the difference between working hard and having no job at all. we are not suckers when it comes to the false promises of politicians and hucksters like michael moore, and we appreciate freedom."

michael may be reaching for the heart of america. but i prefer to believe that my immigrant wife has a better idea of where it is.

e-mail your comments to [email protected]

david asman is the host of "forbes on fox" which airs on the fox news channel, saturdays at 11 a.m. et.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,286006,00.html

This scene was either set up by one of Moore's Cuban "minders," or Moore was a party to a fabricated scene.

Which is EXACTLY what many of us object to in MM's mindset . . . . his movies have been shown to contain fabricated scenes and outright lies.

Why?

steph

Specializes in none yet, but I'm VERY excited!.
Not me, I want the explicit right to speak my opinion.

But I do think we need to improve our healthcare.

Perhaps teach personal responsibility.

I did some nutrition teaching in public schoold in 1999. Nurses and dieticians taught high school volunteers to teach 2nd, 4th, and 6th graders healthy eating.

It was a team of two high schoolers and one health professional.

I think the nurse in the neighborhood is a good idea. We need more PHN's but that will require people seeing the advantage in healthy living and modeling personal responsibility. There is not much profit in keeping people healthy. Especially teaching children good health habits that they can teach their children.

I think the information is all there and available already. So are you saying that we need to "teach" people about healthy lifestyles, or are you saying we have to convince them or encourage them, or pressure them, or what?

Surely we are bombarded with information about what is healthy and what is not. My mother goes to great effort and expense to make sure she has rice and soy milk, and various "natural," "healthy" foods. But you'd be hard pressed to find fresh fruits and veggies in her fridge. Just like you'd be hard pressed to find a significant number of people in the US who don't know that fresh fruits and veggies are better for you than processed foods (or that you can get a huge bang for your buck by simply walking 20 minutes a day - no big effort for most people).

I know there's more to a healthy lifestyle than those basics, but when people won't even do that, I have to wonder how much mileage you'd get out of presenting the more complex nutrition lessons.

Sure, you get an initial reaction (just like people who get religion after going to traffic school), but much like traffic school, things usually peter off. Surely I don't have to dig up data to back this up.

don't forget john edward's own role in the astronomical cost of health care in this country. i find it a little amusing that he fails to mention tort reform in his plan.

tort costs are way overstated as a cause of medical inflation see:

there are, of course, plenty of things wrong with the civil justice system. it has high "transaction" costs, meaning money that should go to victims is eaten up by lawyers and others, but worst of all, it is haphazard. in 1991 a harvard university study of medical malpractice in new york state found an unexpectedly high rate of medical accidents. however, few of even the most serious "mishaps" resulted in lawsuits, and there was no correlation between severity and litigation.

carl bogus, a law professor at roger williams university, argues that what plaintiff's lawyers do best is regulate, a role that has become more and more vital as government's watchdog function has shrunk under conservative attack. bogus notes that while asbestos caused 170,000 deaths from lung cancer, the environmental protection agency was never able to ban it. lawsuits forced it from the market.

...

"if someone's been a victim of medical malpractice, to like say, oh, but gee, aren't you lucky because you get to bring a medical malpractice lawsuit! it's like, well thank you very much, i'd much rather that it never happened at all," says gilbert.

...

on the tort reform side, the numbers tell a story of squandered dollars. the $809 "tort tax" was invented by taking $233 billion, which is what insurance industry consultant tillinghast-towers perrin says is the cost of the tort system, and dividing it by the population of the united states. but those billions represent not only legal expenses but the total cost of running the insurance industry, including executive salaries, advertising expenditures and much else unrelated to lawsuits. the real figure is probably less than half that amount.

the numbers game misses the point, because while the plaintiff's lawyer is indeed an american creation, billions would still have to be spent to compensate and care for victims even if the tort system were abolished. the legal systems of france, germany, japan, australia and other wealthy countries forbid most personal-injury actions, ban contingent fees and require the loser to pay the winner's expenses, making suits by individuals against corporations impossible. instead, national healthcare or other compensation schemes cover those hurt in any kind of accident. in japan, a special industry fund covers air-pollution victims; another pays for injuries caused by pharmaceuticals. "in some sense it's because of the thinness of our welfare state and the kind of fragmentation of authority in this country that we just do more with the civil courts," says marc galanter, a law professor at the university of wisconsin.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20041025/zegart/6

"RN's" do not all agree on the problems and solutions - we are not a monolith.

I do know about Ted Kennedy. I disagree with him.

I do not support a universal system of healthcare.

steph

How would you fix the problem?

In other words, a progressive is someone who is idealistic enough to believe that things can be better and pragmatic enough to get it done.

progressive-split.gif

http://www.americanprogress.org/aboutus

Specializes in Accepted...Master's Entry Program, 2008!.
Which is EXACTLY what many of us object to in MM's mindset . . . . his movies have been shown to contain fabricated scenes and outright lies.

Why?

steph

My point exactly.

How would you fix the problem?

http://www.americanprogress.org/aboutus

You've used that chart about progressives on numerous threads - time to let it go.

As to your other question, I'm not sure of the answer. I'm not convinced things are as broken as people think.

I think we in the US are wealthy in many material ways compared to other countries. Sometimes I think we are spoiled and can't see the forest for the trees.

I vote - I guess that would be my first answer. And I vote for conservative ideas.

steph

Specializes in Cardiac Surg, IR, Peds ICU, Emergency.

I won't see the film, and here's why.

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/preston200410200837.asp

As the saying goes, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

And those of you who are enchanted with this film need to think about that.;)

Specializes in Cardiac.

Good link Darren. It shows that MM is a total and complete liar, who is only interested fabricating facts for the sake of....gees, I don't know why he would do such a thing. My guess is the pocketbook.

But--you and I both know that nobody who believes in MM will even click on the link...

I think the information is all there and available already. So are you saying that we need to "teach" people about healthy lifestyles, or are you saying we have to convince them or encourage them, or pressure them, or what?

Surely we are bombarded with information about what is healthy and what is not. My mother goes to great effort and expense to make sure she has rice and soy milk, and various "natural," "healthy" foods. But you'd be hard pressed to find fresh fruits and veggies in her fridge. Just like you'd be hard pressed to find a significant number of people in the US who don't know that fresh fruits and veggies are better for you than processed foods (or that you can get a huge bang for your buck by simply walking 20 minutes a day - no big effort for most people).

I know there's more to a healthy lifestyle than those basics, but when people won't even do that, I have to wonder how much mileage you'd get out of presenting the more complex nutrition lessons.

Sure, you get an initial reaction (just like people who get religion after going to traffic school), but much like traffic school, things usually peter off. Surely I don't have to dig up data to back this up.

I don't give up on people. I think encourageing and teaching people how to be healthy can help them. My daughter went to a Nurse Practitioner who spent 45 minutes with her. She was obese and hypertensive.

She saw flip charts and learned a lot.

Since that day she has lost more than 70 pounds, exercises, eats a healthy vegetarian diet, and has a normal plood pressure without medication.

A friend had to ask her HMO for information when diagnosed with diabetes.

She got a consult with a dietition, classes, and referral to a support group.

She started taking a walk around the block before going to work, slowly changesd her diet, and learned a lot.

Now seven years later she has lost more than 100 pounds, is off all medication, looks great, and can enjoy physical activities with her son.

There are reasons people don't know even simple things.

Each generation needs to know the simple facts.

Too many see the advertisements and comflicting research findings on coffee or wine and think it is too hard.

Sometimes all it takes is the right health professional to encourage, reinforce, lecture, tell the truth, and yes- teach.

Specializes in Cardiac Care, ICU.

You know I've heard alot about how the U.S.'s healthcare syst. is broken (and I am not going to say it is perfect by any means) but I would like to give my experience w/ a very good syst.

My brother was dx'd w/ esophageal CA last Aug. He was a great guy who had worked hard all his life but did not have med. insurance (self-employed, didn't think he needed it at 43). Despite his lack of insurance and inability to pay, he was admitted to our hosp. w/o diff. even before the dx when he was just c/o pain and n/v. He was never turned away and sent home w/ inadequate tx. He was given several tests (he refused the EGD initially) before EGD finally revealed the CA. Was given several more (CT, PET) to determine the extent, and rapid surgery to attempt to tx. Unfortunately, the PET missed the fact that he had extesive METS. Even though everyone knew what the outcome would be they aggressively tx'd him to attempt to give him what ever quality of life they could. My Bro. died about a month later but not because he wasn't treated adequately, but because he waited to long (his choice he had a pimary care doc. he saw for other things. He just didn't think he needed to go back for "heartburn" .)

I agree there are things about our system that are not the best but quite often it works great. It seems to me that scrapping it for another system (socialized or otherwise) is thowing out the baby w/ the bathwater.

For the poster who talked about the four drug co. lobbiests for every pol., seems to me our political syst. is more broken than our medical!:twocents:

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