Michael Moore’s Sicko promotes Cuba’s so-called free healthcare as the model of what the U.S. should provide for Americans. His disingenuous media stunt of taking Ground Zero volunteers to Cuba will no doubt result in increased box office sales and wealth for Moore, but will do nothing for the uninsured of America he pretends to care about. The truth is that the Cuban healthcare system is horribly broken, a fact well known by Cuban exiles and international humanitarian groups who regularly send medical supplies to the needy in Cuba.
Judi McLeod debunks Moore’s propaganda in today’s Canada Free Press.
Excerpts:
Ignored by SiCKO are true-life stories like the one about Karen Vazquez. Eight-year-old Cuban girl, Karen Vazquez once faced certain death, but lives happily somewhere in Fidel Castro’s Cuba today because Maryland residents saved her life.
To save Karen, it took an American hospital and four doctors. That’s not to mention a dedicated social worker, a minister, three charities and many new Hispanic friends in America.
In short, the American medical system saved Karen Vazquez after the Cuban medical system tried and didn’t.
Then there’s 6-year-old Cuban girl Jahaira Valdez Delgato, who had surgery to fix a heart condition similar to the one that killed her younger brother after an organization raised money for her to come to the United States.
One of the countries Moore used, as a counterpoint in SiCKO is Canada, where people requiring surgery die on long waiting lists.
The Cuban government says that SiCKO will allow the world to see “the greatness of its health system”.
There’s no money for medicine in Havana, something hugs can’t hide Cuba’s health care system sometimes suffers financial ills so pressing that hospital patients must supply their own food and sheets.
Although SiCKO doesn’t open nationally in the U.S. until June 29, thousands of bootleg copies were available on the Internet.
Meanwhile Cuba’s “humane” health care system will be promoted in a film destined to rake in millions at the box office.
Tell a lie often enough and it becomes the celluloid truth.
Read the complete article here, and there’s more on real Cuban healthcare here.