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Theodore Dalrymple reviews ‘Sicko’ for National Review.
According to Sicko, Michael Moore’s current film about health care in America, the British and French live in a world of “we,†while Americans live in a world of “me.†This is reflected in their respective health-care systems: The British and French sunbathe in the cloudless uplands of universal state-funded health care, where everything is free, at least to the consumer if not to the taxpayer, while Americans struggle horribly in a muddy swamp to pay exorbitant costs for themselves, and even then have often simply to die for lack of funds.
One does not, of course, expect films made for specific propaganda purposes, such as The Battleship Potemkin or Triumph of the Will, to present human dilemmas in a subtle or complex fashion; furthermore, no one can pretend that a comparison of health-care systems is an easy, obvious, or exciting subject for filmmakers. A book on the subject would put most normal people to sleep quicker than a sleeping pill, however concerned about their health they might be. I therefore understand Mr. Moore’s need to simplify by means of a dialectic between heartrending and uplifting human stories.
Nevertheless, and even allowing for his need to avoid ambiguities that would bore the pants off an average audience, his portrayal of Britain’s National Health Service, in which I have worked for 20 years as a doctor at intervals over more than a third of a century, irritated me profoundly. In effect, only someone intent on telling a lie could have presented the situation as he presented it — for even the most fervent ideological supporters of the National Health Service would admit that, as it currently exists, it is not exactly problem-free (to put it mildly). To avoid public criticism of the NHS in Britain is like avoiding evidence of dictatorship in North Korea: It is possible only for the willfully blinkered. …
… With his film, Michael Moore is trying to foist an untruth upon the American public similar to the historical untruth that has been foisted (with great success) upon the British public. He is trying to persuade the American public that the American system needs to be replaced by one such as the British, or perhaps even the Cuban.
It is clear that the American system leaves a lot to be desired — as do most systems. It is expensive and not particularly effective when viewed from the point of view of public health. It has strengths, never of course mentioned by Moore: for example, that it is by far the most innovative and performs by far the most important medical research in the world.
Nor is it even a complete public-health disaster: Life expectancy at birth in the United States increased from 75.4 years in 1990 to 77.5 in 2003 (not, incidentally, that people go down the street humming happily about it, suggesting that, within limits, public health is not a major determinant of happiness). And it certainly does not follow from the fact that the American system has weaknesses that the U.S. ought to follow Britain or Cuba, as Moore suggests. As for France: Despite Moore’s dithyrambs, its population consumes by far the highest doses of tranquilizers and antidepressants in the world. There must be some reason for it.
Sicko is a slickly made and compelling piece of propaganda masquerading as a serious documentary. You could write an entire book about its errors and omissions. America going to Canada for medical treatment indeed! Just as Italians go to Norway for the sunshine.
Also from England, a blogger who thinks the law is an ass.
Claudia Rosett says there are a lot of enterprising folks at the UN.
Let no one fault the UN for lack of enterprise and ingenuity. A series of federal investigations over the past few years have been delving into the activities of a growing list of UN officials engaged in all sorts of lively and creative endeavors, from setting up secret offshore front companies, to laundering money meant to buy UN peacekeeping supplies, to allegedly keeping counterfeit U.S. $100 bills in a UN Development Program (UNDP) office safe in North Korea.
Today brings the arrest of a UN employee, Vyacheslav Manokhin, alleged by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan to have taken part in a scheme using the UN letterhead to help “numerous non-United States citizens†enter the U.S. on fraudulent grounds. …
The Captain says the NY Times is ready to back down on their pay-to-read firewall.
Two years ago, the New York Times provided on-line readers with a strong disincentive to read their columnists. TimesSelect, which I called the Firewall of Sanity, charged $50 per year for people who just couldn’t get enough of Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert, and Frank Rich. Now the New York Post reports that Pinch Sulzberger has finally realized that he has marginalized his own columnists in an on-line universe (via Memorandum): …
The Captain also posts on the New Republic/Scott Thomas story which he has ignored. As has Pickings. Turns out ‘Scott Thomas’ Beauchamp is a fraud and the venerable magazine has been had again.
… Don’t get me wrong. If Beauchamp fabricated these stories, then he deserves his obloquy. The editors at TNR have to face some tough questions about their standards for publication in the aftermath of this collapse. They have damaged their credibility and the bloggers have rightly called them out for a retraction.
Still, there is something of an overkill about this story that bothers me. It’s not as if we can argue that cruelty doesn’t occur in war. Of course it does; when it happens, our military investigates and punishes it. Baldilocks talked about this at length earlier in the story, and she’s right. That’s what separates us from our enemies. We prosecute cruelty, while they encourage it. …
Roger Simon posts on the New Republic also.
Mark Steyn with a Corner post.
Hugh Hewitt interviews Max Boot.
HH: Pleased to welcome back now Max Boot. He is a senior fellow at the Council On Foreign Relations, author most recently of War Made New: Technology, Warfare and the Course of History, about to come out in paperback, by the way. He also blogs at Contentions, the blog of Commentary Magazine. Max Boot, welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show.
MB: Thanks for having me back.
HH: Max, your colleague over at Contentions, your new colleague, Pete Wehner wrote today that the O’Hanlon and Pollack op-ed in the New York Times of last week was “climate changing.†You’ve also posted on that. Is that an accurate characterization?
MB: It certainly is for the time being. I think it’s had a tremendous impact, really, as much as any op-ed that I can remember in history. It really has exploded like a bombshell in the Washington debate, and has put opponents of the war on the defensive. But of course, we have to be realistic and understand here that like any potent weapon, this one is not going to win the war all by itself, and it has a limited half-life. And ultimately, events are going to move on. And if events keep moving in a positive direction in Iraq, I think it will reinforce the sense of the Pollack-O’Hanlon op-ed that things are improving and that this war is in fact winnable. But of course, if we suffer more setbacks, if there are a lot more suicide bombings, if there are a lot more deaths, then the impact of the op-ed will dissipate. So I think we really have to wait and see whether it does mark an inflection point or not. I think it’s too early to say, although it’s certainly a positive development. …
National Review shorts.
Editor of a South Carolina paper looks into John Edwards’ soul.
MONTHS ago, I observed on my blog that I think John Edwards is a phony — a make-believe Man of The People.
Ilya Somin in Volokh reminds the Nazis were of the left. Not the right.
The idea that Nazism was an extreme form of “capitalism” and Hitler primarily a tool serving the interests of “big business” is a longstanding myth that even now retains a measure of popularity in some quarters. This, despite the fact that the full name of the Nazi Party was the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, and that Nazi political strategy was explicitly based on combining the appeal of socialism with that of nationalism (thus the choice of name). Once in power, the Nazis even went so far as to institute a Four Year Plan for running the German economy, modeled in large part on the Soviet Union’s Five Year Plans.