First Misrepresentation Exposed
Michael Moore's new film, Sicko, which is not self-referential despite the title, has its first misrepresentation exposed today in the New York Times by Anthony DePalma. He takes a look at the grandiose claims being made by Moore about the Cuban medical system and points to how Moore is distorting the truth.
“Sicko,” the talk of the Cannes Film Festival last week, savages the American health care system — and along the way extols Cuba’s system as the neatest thing since the white linen guayabera.
Mr. Moore transports a handful of sick Americans to Cuba for treatment in the course of the film, which is scheduled to open in the United States next month, and he is apparently dumbfounded that they could get there what they couldn’t get here.
“There’s a reason Cubans live on average longer than we do,” he told Time magazine. “I’m not trumpeting Castro or his regime. I just want to say to fellow Americans, ‘C’mon, we’re the United States. If they can do this, we can do it.’ ”
But hold on. Do they do it? Live longer than, or even as long as, we do? How could a poor developing country — where annual health care spending averages just $230 a person compared with $6,096 in the United States — come anywhere near matching the richest country in the world?……
…….Of course, many people regard any figures about Cuba as at least partly fiction. But even if the longevity statistics are correct, they are open to interpretation. Carmelo Mesa-Lago, a professor emeritus of economics at the University of Pittsburgh, said statistics also show that Cuba has a high rate of abortion, which can lower infant mortality rates and improve life expectancy figures. The constant flow of refugees also may affect longevity figures, since those births are recorded but the deaths are not.
Despite such skepticism, many medical experts say they do believe that average Cubans can live as long as Americans, and the reason may lie in a combination of what Cuba does well and the United States does poorly, if at all……
…..But that changed after the collapse of the Soviets, according to Cuban defectors like Dr. Leonel Cordova. By the time Dr. Cordova started practicing in 1992, equipment and drugs were already becoming scarce. He said he was assigned to a four-block neighborhood in Havana Province where he was supposed to care for about 600 people.
“But even if I diagnosed something simple like bronchitis,” he said, “I couldn’t write a prescription for antibiotics, because there were none.”
He defected in 2000 while on a medical mission in Zimbabwe and made his way to the United States. He is now an urgent-care physician at Baptist Hospital in Miami.
Having practiced medicine in both Cuba and the United States, Dr. Cordova has an unusual perspective for comparison.
“Actually there are three systems,” Dr. Cordova said, because Cuba has two: one is for party officials and foreigners like those Mr. Moore brought to Havana. “It is as good as this one here, with all the resources, the best doctors, the best medicines, and nobody pays a cent,” he said.
So Moore being "dumbfounded" at the care given in his stunt is more like Moore being gulled by a gamed system. He didn't have to provide what everyday Cubans do if they go into the hospital: food, soap and sheets along with pretty much everything else. Because there are none of those niceties for the average Cuban. Only for party officials and gullible American film directors more interested in propaganda than the truth.
By bazzat, Sunday, 27 May , 2007 @ 7:52 pm
Still, the fact that one country can spend $230 per person on healthcare to get even broadly similar longevity results to another country spending $6,096 per person is interesting, no? I haven’t seen Sicko but I assume Moore’s basic point is that it is scandalous that a country as rich as the US can have such a bad healthcare system. Sounds like a reasonable observation to me and I don’t really understand why people get so riled up about Moore but seem to just accept the crap healthcare. Strange priorities.
By Gaius, Sunday, 27 May , 2007 @ 8:07 pm
Still, the fact that you have to bring your own food, soap, bedding and whatnot to have that “free” health care isn’t at least partly the reason for the disparity interesting to you?
Americans are ten times more likely to get the latest cancer drugs than Europeans with “universal health care”. Doesn’t that interest you?
Propaganda that you happen to believe is “interesting” doesn’t make it anything but propaganda.
And Moore’s distortions are why I get riled up about him. Maybe if he tried telling the straight truth without his “enhancements” it would be more interesting. But he is pushing an agenda with a reckless disregard of the facts, much less the truth.
By bazzat, Monday, 28 May , 2007 @ 12:00 am
“Americans are ten times more likely to get the latest cancer drugs than Europeans with “universal health careâ€. Doesn’t that interest you?”
It’s certainly an interesting statement, though in the absence of any evidence it doesn’t sound very likely to be true.
Isn’t making such broad-brush, inflamatory and poorly substantiated claims pretty much the same thing Moore does anyway?
By Gaius, Monday, 28 May , 2007 @ 5:19 am
http://bluecrabboulevard.com/2007/05/09/still-think-its-a-good-idea/
Swedish study - not poorly documented.
By syn, Monday, 28 May , 2007 @ 6:18 am
When I was living in Athens, Greece I had cut my hand severely and needed stiches. The service may have been free but the condition of the hospital was appalling despite the fact that it was the best one in Athens, it was so bad I decided to wait for my return to the States in order to have them removed.
Of course there are good and bad hospitals in the States but at least here I have a choice greater than choosing between a bad hospital and a very bad hospital.
That, and I don’t believe Cuban doctors have to pay enormously high malpractice insurance premimuns. I don’t think Castro allows lawyers like John Edwards the right to sue the doctors out of their trade.
By bazzat, Wednesday, 30 May , 2007 @ 7:23 pm
“http://bluecrabboulevard.com/2007/05/09/still-think-its-a-good-idea/
Swedish study - not poorly documented.”
Get real. Most of the study you quote compares the UK with Europe, not Europe with the US, and thus is irrelevant to your point. And the fact you apparantly base your claim on (that Americans are ten times more likely to get access to the latest cancer drugs) refers exclusively to a single drug (Avastin) that the manufacturer sells for an insanely high price ( ~$100,000 per year of treatment), and which is still too new for anyone to be able to say definitively that it is better than the alternatives.
Now maybe the fact that Europeans do not currently have the same level of access to Avastin as Americans is indicative of a broader trend, but it’s not hard to think of many other potential explanations for this particular, isolated example.
You really need to do better than that if you want to credibly attack Moore for, “pushing an agenda with a reckless disregard of the facts, much less the truth”
And while we’re on the topic of Avastin, at least when it does become available in countries with ’socialised” medicine everyone will get access. You won’t have 87-year old pensioners declining to take it because they can’t afford a co-payment of $1000 per month.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/15/business/15drug.html?ex=1297659600&en=62aabaec5acffa8c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
By Gaius, Wednesday, 30 May , 2007 @ 7:52 pm
Funny, the AARP says the cost is about $50k - right in line with the annual cost of other cancer treatments. The $100k figure appears to come from a bit of confusion - if approved for other forms of cancer the cost would be about double. Because the dosages are about double.
http://www.aarp.org/bulletin/prescription/double_taxation.html
“The FDA has approved Avastin only for colorectal cancer, at a cost of about $50,000 a year at its present unit price. If the drug is approved by the FDA to treat breast and lung cancers, the annual cost (or unit price) could be twice as much, because the doses are higher. Sensitive as of late after a rain of criticism in the press and from patient advocate groups regarding Avastin’s cost, Genentech’s director of government affairs, Walter Moore, insists the company is struggling with the question of unit price for lung and breast cancer treatments if approved.”
It’s not as if the NYT hasn’t played fast and loose with numbers before, you know.