What if Michael Moore had not made "Sicko"?

[Rolfe]

Another comment of mine deleted because I'm going off topic.

Please can we discuss the points made in the film Sicko, and take discussions about dentistry and Australian healthcare to appropriate threads?

Rolfe.

 

[Professor Yaffle]

We have looked through this thread to try to seperate the off topic posts, but it has become rather intertwined, so that hasn't been possible. From this point onwards, keep to the topic of the thread which is the discussion of the specifics in the film Sicko. This is NOT a general discussion of healthcare systems, or criticisms of various UHC systems. There are plenty of other threads if you would like to discuss those aspects. I thank you in advance for your co-operation

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Professor Yaffle

 

[Dymanic]

Actually, according to the study, it's only 29%, if you take the time to read it. ""Debtor said medical bills were reason for
bankruptcy" was only 29%. Table 2, page 3.

Cherrypick much?

Table 2, Page 3:

Debtor said medical bills were reason for bankruptcy - 29.0%
Medical bills >$5000 or >10% of annual family income - 34.7%
Mortgaged home to pay medical bills - 5.7%
Medical bill problems (any of above 3) -57.1%
Debtor or spouse lost >2 weeks of income due to illness or became completely disabled - 38.2%
Debtor or spouse lost >2 weeks of income to care for ill family member - 6.8%
Income loss due to illness (either of above 2) - 40.3%
Debtor said medical problem of self or spouse was reason for bankruptcy - 32.1%
Debtor said medical problem of other family member was reason for bankruptcy - 10.8%
Any of above - 62.1%

I don't put much stock in that study for numerous reasons.

Fair enough. Reasonable people can disagree. I would have liked it a lot better, however, if you had chosen to state your reasons for disagreeing with the conclusions of that study rather than trying to misrepresent them:

"CONCLUSIONS: Illness and medical bills contribute to a large and increasing share of US bankruptcies."

I think "contribute" is the operative word there. We could quibble forever over nuances of "proximate" versus "ultimate" causes, but the authors of that study were quite specific in defining their criteria for "medical bankruptcy".

(I've seen Sicko a couple of times, and while I still can't recall specific references to medical bankruptcy in the film, a little poking around suggests that it was explicitly mentioned. In any case, it certainly is central to Moore's overall theme, so I hope this won't also be considered off-topic).

 

[jimbob]

Easycruise, any discussion about the problems in the US?


I seem to recall that actually in the US, amongst the uninsured, the dental care is pretty poor to...

I'll try to find figures.

Here's another reason we need some pretty drastic health insurance regulations.

This supplemental memo (pdf) summarizing the findings of the House committee's investigation of rescission reads about like a transcript of Sicko.

It's deplorable that people can dutifully pay their premiums for years, even decades, and then basically be cancelled when they get seriously (expensively) sick.

Some shocking instances covered in the executive summare of the PDF:

Insurance companies rescind coverage even when discrepancies are unintentional or caused by others. In one case reviewed by the Committee, a WellPoint subsidiary rescinded coverage for a patient in Virginia whose insurance agent entered his weight incorrectly on his application and failed to return it to him for review. The company's Associate General Counsel warned that the agent's actions were "not acceptable" and recommended against rescission, but she was overruled.
• Insurance companies rescind coverage for conditions that are unknown to policyholders. In 2004, Fortis Health, now known as Assurant, rescinded coverage for a policyholder with lymphoma, denying him chemotherapy and a life-saving stem cell transplant. The company located a CT scan taken five years earlier that identified silent gall stones and an asymptomatic abdominal aortic aneurysm, but the policyholder's doctor never informed him of these conditions. After direct intervention from the Illinois Attorney General's Office, the individual's policy was reinstated.

Hard to disagree with the summary:

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Last year, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform initiated an investigation into problems with the individual health insurance market. This year, the Energy and Commerce Committee, and its Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, continued that investigation. This memorandum presents the Committee's findings.

The Committee sent document requests to 50 state insurance commissioners and three health insurance companies that provide individual health insurance policies, Assurant Health, WellPoint, Inc., and UnitedHealth Group. The Committee obtained approximately 116,000 pages of documents and interviewed numerous policyholders who had their coverage terminated,
or "rescinded," after they became ill.

The Committee's investigation demonstrates that the market for individual health insurance in the United States is fundamentally flawed. - -

ETA: and a bit more:

Insurance companies have evaluated employee performance based on the amount of money their employees saved the company through rescissions. The Committee obtained an annual performance evaluation of the Director of Group Underwriting at WellPoint. Under "results achieved" for meeting financial "targets" and improving financial "stability," the review stated that this official obtained "Retro savings of $9,835,564" through rescissions. The official was awarded a perfect "5" for "exceptional
performance."

In written testimony for today's hearing, all three insurance companies stated that the passage of comprehensive health care reform legislation, including a system where coverage is available to everyone and all Americans are required to participate, would eliminate the controversial practices of denying coverage based on preexisting conditions and rescinding policyholders for omissions in their medical records.

 

[Rolfe]

Thank YOU! You just defined rationing, which we have been warning about with socialized medicine. Unintended consequences, dontcha know. Thanks!

Indeed. There is rationing in every healthcare system. I think you'd have to be Bill Gates or Warren Buffet to be able to afford everything that might possibly be of marginal benefit under certain circumstances. (I don't know why you're so gleeful about it though. Do you really think the USA is in a good place here?)

I can't believe you didn't read my earlier post about exactly this issue, as it was dealt with in Sicko. I think it is a criticism of Sicko that the case of Tracy Pierce was presented badly, without drawing the conclusions that I think were appropriate.

What happened to Tracy was in effect the sort of "death panel" that Sarah Palin was scaremongering about. A patient was denied a treatment that might have extended life for some unspecified period. Because the common pool of resources wasn't prepared to fund that treatment. This happens just as much in the USA as it does anywhere else, and it's completely inevitable unless funds are essentially limitless. Insurance company funds are not limitless.

The dishonesty of those opposed to universal healthcare is in trying to pretend that rationing doesn't happen already. Of course it does. It's just more ad hoc and under the counter than in the NHS for example. The transparency isn't there, so it's easier to pretend it doesn't exist. But it does.

It is indeed callous to deny your fellow citizens the last few months of their lives because the government are a bunch of cheap bastards and won't pay for drugs for a measly 4-5 months.

No, think about what you're saying. No point in blaming the government. Blame everyone for not being prepared to pay more to fund the NHS. The money has to come from somewhere. We all have to take collective responsibility for how much we choose to put into the pool.

This isn't about constraints of any particular system, it's simply about how high you're prepared to set the ceiling on what you're prepared to fund. You take the view that the NHS sets the bar too low. However, if the USA were to adopt a universal healthcare system, then first it wouldn't be like the NHS, because if you were going to set up the NHS you wouldn't start from where you are, and second, considering the huge amounts of money you currently pour into healthcare, you'd be able to set that bar amazingly high.

But even if your universal system did set the bar lower than you were comfortable with, consider. The whole point is that it would be universal, it would cover everybody. Everybody would get the treatment up to that agreed ceiling. Then if anyone wanted more, then they could pay for it, or insure against it, just as they can at the moment. Nobody should be worse off, but a lot of people would be a lot better off.

I'll say it again. You're observing that a universal healthcare system doesn't pay for absolutely everything for absolutely everybody. This is, ultimately, true. There has to be a limit somewhere. There will always be a limit somewhere unless you're Bill Gates or Warren Buffet. The truth of this, or even the level that limit is set at, can never be an excuse for not providing everyone with everything under that limit.

Rolfe.

 

[GreNME]

The U.S. should definitely use the British free dental care as a blueprint for success. Shane Macgowan of the British group The Pogues is a shining example.

[qimg]http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b56/Polythemus/ShaneMacgowan.jpg[/qimg]

Right, because using a notorious (and admittedly talented) antisocial alcoholic isn't even close to a strawman, right?

Can you even try to make a serious argument?

 

[kellyb]

I think the point was in relation to the matter of the uninsured US guy shown at the very beginning of Sicko who sutured his own leg. A reference was found to someone in England who had tried to pull his own tooth out.

Off topic...

Just for the record...
I'm in the US and I've known people who have pulled their own teeth out with pliers, too. And I know multiple people who use SuperGlue and other stuff to close gaping wounds to avoid the ER.
(to be fair, the tooth thing is way more extreme, IMO. I'd guess it's the wound cleaning that really needs more professional attention, but any determined idiot with $10 and access to a general store can figure out how to seal a gaping would so long as tendons and whatnot aren't needing repair.)

But self-tooth-pulling (yikes!)... it's probably equally prevalent everywhere without a good public service.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Post 146 on this very same thread. Please read the posts for content next time so you don't look foolish, OK?

Sticking to the topic, this data you point to does not answer the question I asked. What are the five and ten year survival rates for uninsured or under-insured US citizens?

Even if the overall five-year survival rate is higher (and sometimes it's not), that statistic lumps together the insured and the uninsured together.

It's also a statistic with little meaning unless the bigger health picture is looked at. For example if poor/uninsured people in the USA tended to die of heart failure or other non-cancer causes before they get diagnosed with cancer, so the US cohort with cancer was relatively affluent, that alone would explain the data without cancer treatment being significantly better. The higher rates of cancer death in the EU nations and Canada could be due to poor people living longer and dying of cancer rather than something else.

Thank YOU! You just defined rationing, which we have been warning about with socialized medicine. Unintended consequences, dontcha know. Thanks!

Who is "we"? Are you speaking for an organised political group?

As Rolfe said, unless the US insurance companies have a magical money-printing machine then rationing inevitably takes place, because they simply can't afford to do everything possible for everyone. (Let alone do everything possible for everyone and then make a whopping profit).

The rationing just takes the form of people being told "Your insurance can't cover that" instead of "the NHS can't cover that".

This scaremongering about rationing is deeply dishonest. Whoever "we" is, they seem to me to be carrying water for the US medical insurance industry.

Already cited many times on my posts. Are you actually reading them with any comprehension?

I have to respond with the same question: Did you actually read my post? A collection of cherry-picked anecdotes about problems with socialised systems does not prove that "socialized medicine is deteriorating around the world", any more than cherry-picked anecdotes about problems with the US system prove that the US system is on the verge of collapse.

Do you have any evidence that actually supports the claim you made, or would you prefer to retract it?

Yes, they are. Go to any loony left-wing website such as the Daily Kos or the Huffington Post.

Last time I checked we were on the JREF forums, not Daily Kos or Huffington Post. When I asked "Who said that, and where?" I was asking if anyone in this thread had actually made such a claim. If nobody in this thread has made the claims you are responding to then you are arguing with a straw man.

 

[Rolfe]

A collection of cherry-picked anecdotes about problems with socialised systems does not prove that "socialized medicine is deteriorating around the world", [....]

Actually, the NHS in particular has improved enormously in recent years, and is continuing to improve.

It was realised some time about 10 or 15 years ago that Britain was underfunding healthcare to an absolutely scandalous degree. Margaret Thatcher hated the NHS, because she was best buddies with Reagan, a total devotee of the "stand on your own feet" doctrine, and hated anything "socialised". Darat posted something about how much %GDP we were spending on healthcare in the mid 1990s and it was a complete shocker. Looking back, it seems a miracle that we weren't in even more trouble than we were. No wonder NHS horror stories aren't hard to find from that period.

Credit where credit is due, the Labour government chose to invest more in the NHS and bring our spending levels up on a par with other European countries. Waiting lists have become much less of a problem, standards of care have improved, and hospitals have invested in new buildings and equipment, and better services.

Oh, we haven't got as good value for money as we might have. With more money, the managerial class has grown, and there have been ridiculous amounts wasted on IT systems that weren't fit for purpose. However, I'm comforted by the fact that most other universal healthcare countries aren't managing to do a lot better on that one either, and the whole lot of us are light years ahead of the USA when it comes to eliminating bureaucacy and excessive spending in healthcare.

We still have many hospitals built many years ago when public wards were seen as the norm, and they're certainly a good way to allow a small number of nurses to care for a large number of patients. However, times change, and new hospitals are being built with single rooms or small multiples (some people feel very lonely in a single hospital room).

If the present crisis in the US healthcare system has done anyone any good at all, I hope it has alerted both public and politicians in Britain to the dangers of trying to go the private route on something as essential as healthcare.

Rolfe.

 

[sleepy_lioness]

the only positive thing i ever heard about Cuba is theyr Helthcare system. and this from a wide range of sources, from socialists to World Bank Banksters.

Me too. I work in healthcare in England, and I've regularly heard of top NHS people going over to Cuba to see, in particular, their primary care and public health systems, which seem particularly well respected. I recall being given a presentation from one such NHS bod, which had pictures of dreadful facilities - tin shacks - but with excellent information on the walls and clean, well-presented and apparently well-trained staff. Care is universal and, in Havana, every apartment block has a GP and nurse. Mandatory check-ups and vaccinations help with the prevention side, and intensive nursing care makes up to a certain extent for the shortage of expensive equipment and drugs.

 

[Rolfe]

That was my information also. By way of at least one TV documentary showing how much it was possible to do on an absolute shoestring. As I said, a week ago a similar programme showed that their efforts in agriculture/horticulture were doing quite well too.

However, the very mention of Cuba in this context seems to inflame American passions to an extraordinary degree, so I'd prefer to point to the other side of that sequence and ask if it's really acceptable to provide state-of-the-art healthcare for terrorists in prison, while denying it to people who helped in the rescue and cleanup effort? (Well, you know where I'm from, I'm in favour of providing good healthcare to terrorists in prison. I'm just not so much in favour of the people outside prison having to struggle to get the same.)

Rolfe.

 

[Toke]

I saw Sicko a few years back and even with a pinch of salt it was shocking.
So, the effect of the movie is to make Europeans realize how far out the American health care system is.

The weirdest part were where a man look at his fingers lying in the sawdust of the circular saw, and his first thought is "I cannot afford getting them sown on again".

The inhalator going for $120 in the US and 50 cent in Cuba were more understandable, but still outrageous.

 

[DC]

a bit offtopic but i want to point out i am totaly against Cuba's way
yes i like alternatives to Capitalism and like Socialist ideas very much. But they must base on Democracy. One of the points making me angry about Cuba. the Cuban people pay for the Southamerican TV station TeleSur, and still the Cuban people are not allowed to watch it. only parts of it is shown on another Cuban channel.

But nontheless i think there are indeed some things they did we should carefully look at, like Medical care and Agriculture.

 

[Rolfe]

I think Cuba is a bit of a red herring (thank you, Illl be here all week....) on this one. The only point it makes is to show that even when a country is very impoverished, it is still possible to provide a certain degree of universal healthcare (back to where you set the ceiling level on your service). The difficult is that they are doing it by the most rational method, and Americans don't like to see it in this context.

I think the problem the US posters have with it is that it goes against their ideology. We just see an impoverished country managing to do a lot more than we'd have expected with very limited resources. Because the philosophical approach is essentially the same as ours - everyone has a right to access healthcare. We're just surprised they're doing as well as they are, considering we're told what a hellhole the place is.

It reminds me of the time one of my choir mates had a fall while we were on tour in Yugoslavia in 1988. She was taken to hospital and given a CAT scan, treated for her superficial wounds and thoroughly checked over to make sure she was fit to fly home. Free. We were quite startled, because we hadn't thought about it. This was a communist country we were in, right? Bits of it were quite clearly half-finished and abandoned, other bits were falling apart. We just expected the medical system would be terrible and (I don't know why) that we'd be charged a fortune. Then someone said, well, they're communists, they've at least got a great universal free healthcare system. Right.... OK....

So when we see that Cuba is managing healthcare quite well considering, by way of a centralised planned system similar to the NHS, we don't recoil in horror screaming "oh noes communism!!!" However, when Americans see the same thing, and even worse when it's being presented to them as more caring and compassionate than their own system, they do exactly that.

The thing is, it doesn't matter what you call it, the "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" bit is actually very very valid and very very efficient when considered in the context of healthcare. It comes relatively naturally to communist countries that haven't completely run up their own backsides. Most capitalist countries don't really have a problem with the philosophy as it applies to healthcare, because they appreciate the human rights aspect and they appreciate the practical advantages.

The US reaction to the Cuba story in Sicko seems to suggest however that in their case, the whiff of the dreaded c-word is enough to damn the entire idea to hell and back, and indeed the fact that a communist country has such a system is just one more reason to oppose universal healthcare in principle.

The rest of us moved on from the Cold War some time ago though.

Rolfe.

 

[easycruise]

Reasonable people can disagree. I would have liked it a lot better, however, if you had chosen to state your reasons for disagreeing with the conclusions of that study rather than trying to misrepresent them

I misrepresented nothing and I was very explicit in my reasons, none of which you have yet to refute, BTW. I analyzed the data and found that the authors have reached an erroneous conclusion. They can't seem to delineate between causing and contributing. Direct cause was only 29%, no two ways about it. And, of course, that's assuming there was no irresponsibility on their part, something which socialists can't or won't seem to account for.

Do you really think the USA is in a good place here?)

Absolutely, it is easy to conclude that the USA has the best system. Outcomes are much better, most new drugs and medical technology are invented here, etc. Contrarily, mMany newspapers in many places like England and Australia are rife with articles for many years now describing how bad the medical system is there. I have cited but just a few examples in my previous posts.

This isn't about constraints of any particular system, it's simply about how high you're prepared to set the ceiling on what you're prepared to fund.

I agree.But, European style health care comes with European style taxes, which are quite high. But in return for that extra money, you get worse outcomes, longer wait times, poorly trained medical staff. No thanks, the US system is clearly better. Plus, we take a hard stance against personal irresponsibilty, unlike the Nanny State so prevalent in Europe.

The whole point is that it would be universal, it would cover everybody. Nobody should be worse off, but a lot of people would be a lot better off.

No, clearly, everyone is worse off. Much evidence shows that. Yea, you might have your regular GP visits taken care of, for a lousy $50 or $100, but once you get into MRI's and CT scans and drugs and procedures, you are clearly worse off.

I know multiple people who use SuperGlue and other stuff to close gaping wounds to avoid the ER.

Ahem, the ingredient in Super Glue is now regularly used in ER's and in your box of band-aids sold in the pharmacy for minor wound care. You havn't been keeping up with technology.

The rationing just takes the form of people being told "Your insurance can't cover that" instead of "the NHS can't cover that". This scaremongering about rationing is deeply dishonest. Whoever "we" is, they seem to me to be carrying water for the US medical insurance industry.

No, from what I've read, the vast majority of denials in the US are from experimentals, whereas the NHS denials seem to also include more normal type of drugs and procedures, already approved.

]A collection of cherry-picked anecdotes about problems with socialised systems does not prove that "socialized medicine is deteriorating around the world", any more than cherry-picked anecdotes about problems with the US system prove that the US system is on the verge of collapse.

There are so many negative news articles emanating from Australia and England that they can hardly be considered cherry picked. I couldn't find ANY articles saying how good it was. I'm still waiting for you to show me any articles detailing how good the conditions are in Australia.

=Kevin Lowe]Do you have any evidence that actually supports the claim you made, or would you prefer to retract it?

Again, I have made MANY citations, you just choose to ignore them. Not much of a skeptic, are you?

Actually, the NHS in particular has improved enormously in recent years, and is continuing to improve.

Please provide evidence for this claim.

It was realised some time about 10 or 15 years ago that Britain was underfunding healthcare to an absolutely scandalous degree. No wonder NHS horror stories aren't hard to find from that period.Waiting lists have become much less of a problem, standards of care have improved, and hospitals have invested in new buildings and equipment, and better services.

Huh? the sources I cited were much more recent than that. Please provide evidence for "waiting lists are much less of a problem". You seem to have a problem citing anything or substantiating any purported facts.

However, I'm comforted by the fact that most other universal healthcare countries aren't managing to do a lot better on that one either, and the whole lot of us are light years ahead of the USA when it comes to eliminating bureaucacy and excessive spending in healthcare.

But we have much shorter waiting times, better outcomes, etc. How can you say you are "light years ahead of the USA"? Again, no evidence provided to back up your claim. I'm beginning to think you are a propaganda machine.

If the present crisis in the US healthcare system has done anyone any good at all, I hope it has alerted both public and politicians in Britain to the dangers of trying to go the private route on something as essential as healthcare.

But I thought that Britian had a private component? You can pay for "extra" services and cut down on the wait? We here in the US also have a public route, it's called Medicaid. For low income people. California even has their own, called MediCal.

Me too. I work in healthcare in England, and I've regularly heard of top NHS people going over to Cuba to see, in particular, their primary care and public health systems, which seem particularly well respected. I recall being given a presentation from one such NHS bod, which had pictures of dreadful facilities - tin shacks - but with excellent information on the walls and clean, well-presented and apparently well-trained staff. and intensive nursing care makes up to a certain extent for the shortage of expensive equipment and drugs.

"well respected" but had "dreadful tin shacks" and a "shortage of equipment and drugs". Wow. And this from "top NHS officials"? Well trained staff doesn't really cut it when there isn't any equipment or drugs.

I think Cuba is a bit of a red herring on this one. The only point it makes is to show that even when a country is very impoverished, it is still possible to provide a certain degree of universal healthcare (back to where you set the ceiling level on your service). The difficult is that they are doing it by the most rational method, and Americans don't like to see it in this context. I think the problem the US posters have with it is that it goes against their ideology. We're just surprised they're doing as well as they are, considering we're told what a hellhole the place is. So when we see that Cuba is managing healthcare quite well considering, by way of a centralised planned system similar to the NHS

They are doing well? The news reports and pictures being smuggled out paints a very different picture.

You, sir, are no skeptic.

 

[kellyb]

I know multiple people who use SuperGlue and other stuff to close gaping wounds to avoid the ER.

Ahem, the ingredient in Super Glue is now regularly used in ER's and in your box of band-aids sold in the pharmacy for minor wound care. You havn't been keeping up with technology.

Yes, I know that. I'm a little unsure how that's relevant to this thread unless you're asserting that this is evidence of Americans' ingenuity in self-solving our healthcare crisis without any need for Big Government to step in.

 

[jimbob]

Ahem, the ingredient in Super Glue is now regularly used in ER's and in your box of band-aids sold in the pharmacy for minor wound care. You havn't been keeping up with technology.

I can buy a scapel made of surgical steel, having to use that on myself doesn't make it OK because it is also used in hospitals.

Having to superglue oneself back together because one can't afford to get it seen to professionally is not the best solution.

No, from what I've read, the vast majority of denials in the US are from experimentals, whereas the NHS denials seem to also include more normal type of drugs and procedures, already approved.

From my post #224 on this page.

See other posters for stories of insurance failing to provide coverage.

Insurance companies rescind coverage even when discrepancies are unintentional or caused by others. In one case reviewed by the Committee, a WellPoint subsidiary rescinded coverage for a patient in Virginia whose insurance agent entered his weight incorrectly on his application and failed to return it to him for review. The company's Associate General Counsel warned that the agent's actions were "not acceptable" and recommended against rescission, but she was overruled.

• Insurance companies rescind coverage for conditions that are unknown to policyholders. In 2004, Fortis Health, now known as Assurant, rescinded coverage for a policyholder with lymphoma, denying him chemotherapy and a life-saving stem cell transplant. The company located a CT scan taken five years earlier that identified silent gall stones and an asymptomatic abdominal aortic aneurysm, but the policyholder's doctor never informed him of these conditions. After direct intervention from the Illinois Attorney General's Office, the individual's policy was reinstated.

 

[easycruise]

Actually, the NHS in particular has improved enormously in recent years, and is continuing to improve. It was realised some time about 10 or 15 years ago that Britain was underfunding healthcare to an absolutely scandalous degree. No wonder NHS horror stories aren't hard to find from that period.

Credit where credit is due, the Labour government chose to invest more in the NHS and bring our spending levels up on a par with other European countries. Waiting lists have become much less of a problem, standards of care have improved, and hospitals have invested in new buildings and equipment, and better services.

Here's an article from last year that confirms and also refutes some of what you say. The stunning statement was that "Under the Tories it was not uncommon to wait 18 months or more for an operation."

Wow. Just wow. It is now down to 49 days. Because of increased spending. Just think, if you spend more per capita, like the US does, you can get the wait time down to just a few days, like we have! Heck, here in the US, you can get operated on the very next day if you have a very serious diagnosis. Think of how many extra lives you'll save! Outcomes will be better! Malignant cancerous growths will be excised sooner. Maybe some day the British system will be as good as the US as measured by the metrics that really matter. maybe..sigh.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/a...es-RISEN-Labour--despite-90bn-investment.html

 

[jimbob]

"well respected" but had "dreadful tin shacks" and a "shortage of equipment and drugs". Wow. And this from "top NHS officials"? Well trained staff doesn't really cut it when there isn't any equipment or drugs.

The point is: that old (say 1950's-1960's) technology (post antibiotics), applied universally and well, provides a surprisingly good level of care, and overall saves more than high-tech healthcare that isn't applied to a sizeable proportion of the population.

It is another point that Beerina is missing

And no, I am glad that I don't live in Cuba.

 

[EeneyMinnieMoe]

Even intelligent people are able to engage in fallacy: argumentum ad Mooreum noted.

Sorry for the derail but-

Well, how can you not engage in ad hominem when the hominem in question is such a clown and such a goofball? So cheap and so juvenile? So obnoxious, so bombastic and so grating? Even people who agree with him sometimes can't stand him, let alone those who don't.

Even a far left writer like Frank Rich of The NYTimes, who praised him and his films in many ways, has criticized him on his sometimes alienating obnoxiousness. Even a liberal film critic like Roger Ebert, who gave good reviews to nearly all his movies, has had issues with it. Pauline Kael, another very liberal film critic, didn't like a lot of the things he did in his first movie and found them offensive. Even a liberal like Ralph Nader has had fall outs with him. A sophomore year high school English teacher would fail a student who wrote an argumentative essay using the tactics and arguments this writer and filmmaker does.

I remember one time a junior year English teacher I adored took off points from an essay I wrote because he found one of my arguments and an attempted slight dig of mine "cheap". I don't even remember what the topic was or what it is that I wrote but I remember the whole paragraph circled in red ink and the word "cheap" written next to it. Someone should do that to Moore, entertaining though he may be.

He's begging for it.