News Art's Opposing UHC + Prelim'y Cautionary Editorial Note

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News Art's Opposing UHC + Prelim'y Cautionary Editorial Note
Editorial Note –

So that our consideration of the issues does not become too one-sided (and because “yours truly” believes we should always be aware of what the opposition is saying), it is noted that the 7/1/2007 SLTrib on p. D7 mentions (“with held nose”) two web sites that oppose universal health care – www.pacificresearch.org and the Moving Picture Institute’s www.FreeMarketCure.com.

There follow some of the news articles attacking “Sicko” and universal health care that are listed on the first opposition web site.

Most of the articles relate to how universal health care works in Canada, the U.K., etc. WHETHER UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE IN THOSE COUNTRIES IS IDEAL DEPENDS ON HOW MUCH EACH OF THOSE COUNTRIES IS WILLING TO SPEND AND HOW THEY SPEND IT!!! IT IS RESPECTFULLY RECOMMENDED THAT WHEN READING COMMENTS ABOUT UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE IN OTHER COUNTRIES, THE READER ASK HER/HIMSELF WHETHER S/HE HAS EVER HEARD ANY COMPLAINTS ABOUT MEDICARE IN THE U.S. – SINCE MEDICARE PROVIDES A GOOD INDICATION OF HOW THE U.S. MIGHT FUND AND OPERATE A UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE SYSTEM.


www.pacificresearch.org

More lies from Moore
New York Daily News - Health Care Op-Ed
By: Sally C. Pipes
7.6.2007
New York Daily News, July 6 2007
Real Clear Politics, July 6, 2007

In "Sicko," Michael Moore uses a clip of my appearance earlier this year on "The O'Reilly Factor" to introduce a segment on the glories of Canadian health care.

Moore adores the Canadian system. I do not.

I am a new American, but I grew up and worked for many years in Canada. And I know the health care system of my native country much more intimately than does Moore. There's a good reason why my former countrymen with the money to do so either use the services of a booming industry of illegal private clinics, or come to America to take advantage of the health care that Moore denounces.

Government-run health care in Canada inevitably resolves into a dehumanizing system of triage, where the weak and the elderly are hastened to their fates by actuarial calculation. Having fought the Canadian health care bureaucracy on behalf of my ailing mother just two years ago - she was too old, and too sick, to merit the highest quality care in the government's eyes - I can honestly say that Moore's preferred health care system is something I wouldn't wish on him.

In 1999, my uncle was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. If he'd lived in America, the miracle drug Rituxan might have saved him. But Rituxan wasn't approved for use in Canada, and he lost his battle with cancer.

But don't take my word for it: Even the Toronto Star agrees that Moore's endorsement of Canadian health care is overwrought and factually challenged. And the Star is considered a left-wing newspaper, even by Canadian standards.

Just last month, the Star's Peter Howell reported from the Cannes Film Festival that Mr. Moore became irate when Canadian reporters challenged his portrayal of their national health care system. "You Canadians! You used to be so funny!" exclaimed an exasperated

Moore, "You gave us all our best comedians. When did you turn so dark?"

Moore further claimed that the infamously long waiting lists in Canada are merely a reflection of the fact that Canadians have a longer life expectancy than Americans, and that the sterling system is swamped by too many Canadians who live too long.

Canada's media know better. In 2006, the average wait time from seeing a primary care doctor to getting treatment by a specialist was more than four months. Out of a population of 32 million, there are about 3.2 million Canadians trying to get a primary care doctor. Today, according to the OECD, Canada ranks 24th out of 28 major industrialized countries in doctors per thousand people.

Unfortunately, Moore is more concerned with promoting an anti-free-market agenda than getting his facts straight. "The problem," said Moore recently, "isn't just [the insurance companies], or the Hospital Corporation and the Frist family - it's the system! They can't make a profit unless they deny care! Unless they deny claims! Our laws state very clearly that they have a legal fiduciary responsibility to maximize profits for the shareholders ... the only way they can turn the big profit is to not pay out the money, to not provide the care!"
Profit, according to the filmmaker-activist, has no place in health care - period.

Moore ignores the fact that 85% of hospital beds in the U.S. are in nonprofit hospitals, and almost half of us with private plans get our insurance from nonprofit providers. Moreover, Kaiser Permanente, which Moore demonizes, is also a nonprofit.

What's really amazing is that even the intended beneficiaries of Moore's propagandizing don't support his claims. The Supreme Court of Canada declared in June 2005 that the government health care monopoly in Quebec is a violation of basic human rights.

Moore put me, fleetingly, into "Sicko" as an example of an American who doesn't understand the Canadian health care system. He couldn't be more wrong. I've personally endured the creeping disaster of Canadian health care. Most unlike him, I'm willing to tell the truth about it.


Pipes is the president and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute and author of "Miracle Cure: How to Solve America's Health Care Crisis and Why Canada Isn't the Answer."
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Memo to Moore: UK no role model: Universal health has flaws
By Helen Evans
Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Michael Moore’s denunciation of America’s healthcare system is about to hit the silver screen. In the film’s trailer, a desk attendant at a British hospital smiles while explaining that in Britain’s National Health Service, “everything is free.” But for free hospital care, Britons pay an awfully high price.

Just ask the nearly one million British patients on waiting lists for treatment. Or the 200,000 Britons currently waiting merely to get on NHS waiting lists.

Mr. Moore must have missed those folks.

Curiously, though, many American policymakers seem to think that a government-managed, NHS-style system is the answer to all of America’s healthcare woes. Before heading down that road, however, America’s leaders ought to actually investigate Britain’s experience with state-sponsored medical care.

Upon launching its state health service in 1948, the British government promised that it would provide its citizens with all the “medical, dental, and nursing care” needed, so that “everyone - rich or poor - could use it.” To make good on its plans, the government nationalized more than 3,000 independent hospitals, clinics, and care homes.

But today, after nearly six decades of attempting to make socialized medicine work, the NHS is in a perilous state.

Consider waiting lists. Across Britain, patients wait years for routine - or even emergency - treatments. And many die while waiting.

Indeed, the NHS cancels around 100,000 operations because of shortages each year. In a growing number of communities, it is increasingly difficult for people to simply get an appointment with an NHS general practitioner for a regular check-up.

Further, when it comes to keeping patients healthy, NHS hospitals are notoriously unfit. After admittance to state hospitals, more than 10 percent of patients contract infections and illnesses that they did not have prior to arrival.

Consequently, many Britons have turned to outside practitioners for treatment, and the private healthcare market has boomed. Today, more than 6.5 million people have private medical insurance, six million have cash plans, eight million pay out-of-pocket for a range of complimentary therapies, and 250,000 self-fund each year for private acute surgery. Millions more opt for private dentistry, ophthalmics, and long-term care.

Meanwhile, despite the state’s continued claims that it can deliver quality health care to all, government ministers are increasingly willing to quietly outsource health care to the private sector. In other words, instead of directly providing health care through the NHS, the British government is shifting to simply paying the bills.

In 2000, Tony Blair’s government authorized the treatment of state-funded patients in private hospitals for the first time. More recently, the government has made it clear that it would like all NHS hospitals to be recast as Independent Foundation Trusts able to attract private investment.

But even with these efforts, the British government has found it hard to cover its expensive obligations. So in addition to waiting lists, substandard care, and increased outsourcing, the government has adopted outright rationing to control costs.

Through a concept called “Health Technology Assessments,” the UK now empowers government-appointed experts to dictate which drugs, procedures, and treatments are available for public consumption. Tasked with controlling costs and watching the bottom line, these bureaucrats are expected to save money - not lives.

Already, this system has barred the purchase of Herceptin, a lifesaving breast-cancer drug. Alzheimer’s patients have had trouble obtaining Aricept, a drug which improves cognition in those afflicted with the degenerative disease.

The criteria for these denials of care are kept from the public. And patients who could be saved needlessly die.

Rationing, as history proves time and again, is always a recipe for horror.

The U.S. health care system certainly has its shortfalls. But the solution to America’s woes can’t be found in the UK - no matter how many movie tickets Mr. Moore sells.


Helen Evans, Ph.D., is director of Nurses for Reform, a pan-European network of nurses dedicated to consumer-oriented reform of European healthcare systems.

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Who's the real sicko?
July 6, 2007
By David Gratzer

'Ihaven't seen Sicko," says Avril Allen about the new Michael Moore documentary, which advocates socialized medicine for the United States. The film, which has been widely viewed on the Internet, and which officially opened in the United States and Canada on Friday, has been getting rave reviews. But Ms. Allen, a lawyer, has no plans to watch it. She's just too busy preparing to file suit against Ontario's provincial government about its health care system next month.

Her client, Lindsay McCreith, would have had to wait for four months just to get an MRI, and then months more to see a neurologist for his malignant brain tumor. Instead, frustrated and ill, the retired auto-body shop owner traveled to Buffalo, N.Y., for a lifesaving surgery. Now he's suing for the right to opt out of Canada's government-run health care, which he considers dangerous.

Ms. Allen figures the lawsuit has a fighting chance: In 2005, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that "access to wait lists is not access to health care," striking down key Quebec laws that prohibited private medicine and private health insurance.

In the United States, 83 House Democrats voted for a bill in 1993 calling for single-payer health care. That idea collapsed with HillaryCare and since then has existed on the fringes of the debate—winning praise from academics and pressure groups, but remaining largely out of the political discussion. Mr. Moore's documentary intends to change that, exposing millions to his argument that American health care is sick and socialized medicine is the cure.

It's not simply that Mr. Moore is wrong. His grand tour of public health care systems misses the big story: While he prescribes socialism, market-oriented reforms are percolating in cities from Stockholm to Saskatoon.

Mr. Moore goes to London, Ont., where he notes that not a single patient has waited in the hospital emergency room more than 45 minutes. "It's a fabulous system," a woman explains. In Britain, he tours a hospital where patients marvel at their free care. A patient's husband explains: "It's not America." Humorously, Mr. Moore finds a cashier dispensing money to patients (for transportation). In France, a doctor explains the success of the health care system with the old Marxist axiom: "You pay according to your means, and you receive according to your needs."

It's compelling material—I know because, born and raised in Canada, I used to believe in government-run health care. Then I was mugged by reality.

Consider, for instance, Mr. Moore's claim that ERs don't overcrowd in Canada. A Canadian government study recently found that only about half of patients are treated in a timely manner, as defined by local medical and hospital associations. "The research merely confirms anecdotal reports of interminable waits," reported one newspaper.

While people in rural areas seem to fare better, Toronto patients receive care in four hours on average; one in 10 patients waits more than a dozen hours.

This problem hit close to home last year: A relative, living in Winnipeg, nearly died of a strangulated bowel while lying on a stretcher for five hours, writhing in pain. To get the needed ultrasound, he was sent by ambulance to another hospital.

In Britain, the Department of Health recently acknowledged that one in eight patients wait more than a year for surgery. Around the time Mr. Moore was putting the finishing touches on his documentary, a hospital in Sutton Coldfield announced its new money-saving linen policy: Housekeeping will no longer change the bed sheets between patients, just turn them over. France's system failed so spectacularly in the summer heat of 2003 that 13,000 people died, largely of dehydration. Hospitals stopped answering the phones and ambulance attendants told people to fend for themselves.

With such problems, it's not surprising that people are looking for alternatives. Private clinics—some operating in a "grey zone" of the law—are now opening in Canada at a rate of about one per week.

Canadian doctors, once quiet on the issue of private health care, elected Brian Day as president of their national association. Dr. Day is a leading critic of Canadian medicare; he opened a private surgery hospital and then challenged the government to shut it down. "This is a country," Dr. Day said by way of explanation, "in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years."

Market reforms are catching on in Britain, too. For six decades, its socialist Labour Party scoffed at the very idea of private medicine, dismissing it as "Americanization." Today Labour favours privatization, promising to triple the number of private-sector surgical procedures provided within two years. The Labour government aspires to give patients a choice of four providers for surgeries, at least one of them private, and recently considered contracting out some primary-care services -- perhaps even to American companies.

Other European countries follow this same path. In Sweden, after the latest privatizations, the government will contract out some 80% of Stockholm's primary care and 40% of total health services, including Stockholm's largest hospital. Beginning before the election of the new conservative chancellor, Germany enhanced insurance competition and turned state enterprises over to the private sector (including the majority of public hospitals). Even in Slovakia, a former Marxist country, privatizations are actively debated.

Under the weight of demographic shifts and strained by the limits of command-and-control economics, government-run health systems have turned out to be less than utopian. The stories are the same: dirty hospitals, poor standards and difficulty accessing modern drugs and tests.

Admittedly, the recent market reforms are gradual and controversial. But facts are facts, the reforms are real and they represent a major trend in health care. What does Mr. Moore's documentary say about that? Nothing.

Dr. David Gratzer, a practising physician licensed in Canada and the United States and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, is the author of The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care.
©2007 National Post

David Gratzer, a physician, is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His research interests include consumer-driven health care, Medicare and Medicaid, drug reimportation, and FDA reform. The late Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate in Economics, wrote that Dr. Gratzer is "a natural-born economist." David Gratzer's most recent book, with Foreword by Milton Friedman, is The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care (Encounter Books, October 2006).

Previously, Dr. Gratzer authored the book Code Blue: Reviving Canada's Health Care System (ECW Press, 1999), which was awarded the $25,000 Donner Prize for best Canadian public policy book in 2000 and which is now in its fifth printing. Dr. Gratzer is also the editor of Better Medicine (ECW Press, 2002), a collection of essays from leading health care thinkers in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

He is often quoted on health matters across North America. His writing has graced the pages of more than a dozen newspapers and magazines, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The Weekly Standard. For his essays, Dr. Gratzer won the 2000 Felix A. Morley Journalism Competition, sponsored by George Mason University’s Institute for the Humane Studies. Past winners include James Taranto (The Wall Street Journal) and Jonathan Karl (ABC).

Dr. Gratzer has recently been cited in the New England Journal of Medicine, Health Affairs, as well as by major media outlets across the United States and Canada. He has been interviewed by dozens of the nation's top media hosts and he has delivered keynote addresses at several major industry conferences, including the World Health Congress and the Consumer Driven Health Care Conference. He debated Congressman Gil Gutknecht on drug reimportation at the American Enterprise Institute, testified before Congress on the Health Care Choice Act, and keynoted the Long Island Health Care Summit after Senator Hillary Clinton cancelled because of a scheduling conflict.

Dr. Gratzer is a peer reviewer for numerous publications and organizations: the Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law, the Canadian Medical Association Journal, the American Journal of Medicine, the Max Bell Foundation, the Pacific Research Institute, and the National Center for Policy Analysis.
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‘Sicko' is best sci-fi film of the summer
Toledo Free Press - Health Care Op-Ed
By: Diana M. Ernst
7.6.2007
Toledo Free Press, July 6, 2007

The wait is over. Michael Moore's “Sicko” has hit theaters. For 123 minutes, the film kowtows to the socialist health care of Europe, Cuba and Canada, while demonizing the American system. Moore calls it a documentary, but it's so far removed from reality, it really ought to be categorized as science fiction.

For example, the film repeatedly attacks America's “for-profit” health care, yet ignores the fact that 85 percent of U.S. hospitals are nonprofit, and almost half of privately insured Americans have polices from nonprofit health insurers.
At a recent press conference, Moore railed against the Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor hospital in Los Angeles, where a patient died of a perforated bowel after lying on the emergency room floor for 45 minutes.

Since 2004, the hospital has received more than a dozen state and federal safety citations. Hospital errors included leaving sick patients unattended, which resulted in death for three of them, giving patients the wrong medications, and using Taser stun guns to restrain psychiatric patients.

This hospital is not private, however. It is owned by the County of Los Angeles. So much for reliable government care. Even the private insurers Moore criticizes are not free of government interference that raises the cost of their health policies. Most states force insurers to sell health policies laden with mandates that many individuals would not voluntarily purchase.

In some states, mandated benefits have raised the cost of individual health insurance by 45 percent. In New Jersey, for example, it's actually cheaper for a family of four to lease a Ferrari than buy health coverage. At $6,048 per year, the average individual health care premium is the highest in the country.

Government solutions that create more government amount to nothing, but expensive salt in the wound. We should encourage insurers, and all players in American health to be more competitive, not scrap them for big-government bureaucracy. Moore's foolish preference for abolishing private insurance in favor of government-run, single-payer health care will not create universal care, only a government monopoly.

Moore's remedies fail as heath care reform and don't even amount to effective propaganda. His film should have featured a Canadian on a waiting list for treatment. He should have gone undercover to experience the real system that serves most Cubans. He should have followed a Medicaid patient's struggle to get health care from the U.S. government.

Diana Ernst is a public policy fellow in Health Care Studies at the Pacific Research Institute.