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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (39420)	7/10/2007 9:55:34 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 541556

A quick summary of the links so you can decide which (if any) are likely to be worth your time. blogs.nypost.com Is a New York Post Review of Sicko. In certain points it might border on being a bit of a hatchet job, but it contains serious points. It contains numerous arguments against the ideas that Sicko is trying to push and against the way he pushes them. It also references inaccuracies in previous Moore movies. It critcizes Moore for primarily using anecdotes, which might not generally reflect reality, then it uses a few anecdotes itself (being honest enough to point out that fact, and justifying it with the idea that purely anecdotal evidence, can be countered by contrary anecdotes. It talks about problems in France, the UK, Canada etc. As for Cuba the author of the peice writes - "You can’t film anywhere in Castro’s Alcatraz without government say-so, meaning the whole scene was as phony as what happens when Frank Bruni walks into a four-star restaurant, and if there is a Michael Moore of Cuba, he is in jail right now. Reporters without Borders calls Cuba the world’s second biggest prison for journalists after China. But Moore solemnly reports Cuba’s official health statistics, which are of course a fiction dreamed up by El Presidente, because Moore's motto is to trust no authority figure from cringing corporate spokesman on up to Washington windbags. Except dictators. Dictators, he’ll take your word for it. I expected Moore to protect himself with a thin coat of disclaimer, just a line to say, "Look, I know Cuba is actually a prison nation where nobody’s gotten a new car since Fredo betrayed Michael, but I’m just using this as an extreme example for ironic purposes." Instead, his irony runs the other way: He plays scare music over an image of Castro to get a laugh. I say that again: he thinks the idea that Castro is evil is so obviously ridiculous that he says it sarcastically and expects you to giggle along. Moore calls Cuban health care among the best in the world. Nonsense. Cuba is short on everything from clean drinking water and aspirin on up." He adds "The health care industry could not ask for a more ideal opponent than Moore; the idea that US health should go to a single-payer model is held by plenty of reasonable people, but Moore is not one of them." --- The three Agoraphillia links are less bashing in tone, and more specific in their objections. They counter the argument that the US is so much lower in the World Health Care's rankings then France and several other countries that Moore praises. The main point is that the methodology of the studies is seriously questionable. There are some secondary points as well, but I can't do them justice in a brief summary. --- engram-backtalk.blogspot.com challenges Moore's claims about lack of access to health care in the US. --- freemarketcure.com is a whole site with a number of arguments and videos. There is too much to provide a real good summary. The sites "About" section says - "Free Market Cure is dedicated to correctly diagnosing the problems with the U.S. health care system and promoting solutions which preserve and extend individual liberty." On its front page it has links to three videos making arguments opposed to Moore ideas and to articles with title like "Socialized Medicine is Sicko" "Why Isn't Government Health Care the Answer?" "The Myths of Single-Payer Health Care" "What Is Consumer-Directed Health Care?"