The trick with living in Third World countries is determining which medical conditions they can treat capably and when to evacuate to the USA.
What an interview. First time to actually see Moore in action and he’s horrible. The truth of the world is this: America’s medical system is the best in the world, bar none. There’s an elephant in the room: The stresses on the medical insurance companies would be a lot lower if they were not having to shoulder the costs of illegals use of our facilities, especially emergency medical care – and maternity.
Sat in a few years ago at a French School parents association meeting in Weset AFrica. They were questioning the need of an African man (with a French passport) for a scholarship for his daughter. He went on and on about his finances being so pathetic, but to my surpise, the French said to him, “But your other child has a US passport. You had enough money to pay for sending your wife to America and to pay for delivery!”
He waved his hands, “No! No! It was FREE! Excellent hospital! Free!”
I was hung between wanting to strangle the man, yet enjoying the looks on the faces of the French who’ve made a career out of sniffing distainfully about American medical care as this African man went on and on about how superior the US medical system is. The other unspoken point that they knew was that as a French citizen, he’d had the right to send his wife to France for free maternity, but he chose the more complicated arrangements to the USA. Double slap.
Back to the relevent finances. Our kids weren’t free to have been born in the USA. We paid every bill – our insurance and our co-pay. Maternity costs are astronomical for paying Americans, but that guy took advantage of all that top notch maternity for free, then brought his wife and kid back to Africa. What a deal. We paid for it, not him.
There are plenty of things that could be repaired in the current system, to make the costs easier, like making billing more sensible, but Moore has created propaganda to skew the discussion to the way he wants, which is universal degradation of care.
One thing about statistics – average life expectancies are based on all deaths age 0 – 112. A life expectancy of say 44 may be because infant mortality (newborn to 5) is high. If you make it thru those tough years (often brutal because of things like malaria) you are poised to live just as long as anyone else – 70s or so. Vaccinations have drastically improved 0-5 survivability. Places like Cuba do not produce ther own vaccines or medications – they’d get them from the UN, which gets most of their supply from American and European producers (and some Asian companies ). So Cuban medical care is subtely supported by outside inputs.
Furthermore, regimes like Cuba’s overstate their “doctors” – a doctor in a communist country is often no better trained than what we would call a nurse-practitioner. They also play games with their statistics to make themselves look better.
Having SICKO hovering underneath Moore as he ranted and sneered on, was really a slyly brilliant touch on CNN’s part. Moore’s disgusting demeanor kept enhancing the suitability of that word to be associated with him.

naliaka on July 10, 2007 at 8:24 AM