John Stossel debunks Michael Moore’s ‘Sicko’
September 12th, 2007 by Brendan SteinhauserJohn Stossel has a good piece today about the Cuban health care system. In Michael Moore’s “Sicko” he gives the impression that the Cubans have a better health care system. He fails to mention, as Stossel points out, that the Cuban system is tiered, one for the elites, one for the foreign tourists and one for the poor. The vast majority of Cubans are stuck in the lower tier system, and suffer from a lack of basic care. Moore’s propaganda film, however, would have you believe that all Cubans receive wonderful care.
Here are some key excerpts from the article.
Cuban-born Dr. Jose Carro, who interviews Cuban doctors who have moved to the United States, says Moore’s movie lies. Dr. Darsi Ferrer, a human-rights advocate in Cuba, told us that Americans should not believe the claims being made. He describes the Cuban people as “crazy with desperation” because of poor-quality care.
George Utset, who writes The Real Cuba Web site, says Moore and his group were ushered to the upper floors of the hospital, to rooms reserved for the privileged. “They don’t go to the hospital for regular Cubans. They go to hospital for the elite. And it’s a very different condition,” Utset says.
For ordinary Cubans, health care is different. A YouTube.com video, posted by a woman from Venezuela, purports to show the two forms of health care, one for the privileged who pay in dollars and a far inferior one for regular Cubans.
Moore claims Cubans live longer than Americans. It’s true that a U.N. report claims that. But the United Nations didn’t gather any data. “The United Nations simply reports whatever the government in Cuba reports, so we have no objective way to know what the real statistics are,” Carro says.
Exactly. Communist countries are famous for hiding the truth. Twenty years ago, when I reported from the Soviet Union, officials insisted there were no poor people in Russia, but they refused to let me look for myself.
