Wolf Blitzer Is A Big Fat Liar

I am not endorsing Michael Moore for anything, and I have not yet seen his movie “Sicko”, and I may never see it. But I have done a fair amount of research into the insanity of the American Health Care Industry, and I can tell you without siding with MM that our for profit health care industry is a wasteful fraud, a leech on American capitalism that gorges itself while cheating our nation and our people. And it is from that stance that I wade into the debate over Wolf Blintzer and Dr. Sanjay Gupta verses MM. I side on this one with Moore, because I have seen far too many examples of the failures of the American way to Hell-th. So I provide excerpts here from MM’s web page on his response to the CNN smear they labeled as news.
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CNN: "(Moore says) the United States slipped to number 37 in the world's health care systems. It's true. ... But…(The World Health Organization) list puts Cuba's health care system even lower than the United States, coming in at #39."
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"SiCKO' clearly shows the WHO list, with the United States at number #37, and Cuba at #39. Right up on the screen in big five-foot letters. It's even in the trailer! ….The fact that the healthcare system in an impoverished nation crippled by our decades-old blockade (including medical supplies and drugs) ranks so closely to ours is more an indictment of the American system than the Cuban system….Although Cuba ranks lower overall than the United States, it still has a lower infant mortality rate and longer life span. And unlike the United States, Cuba offers healthcare to absolutely everyone. In an independent Gallup poll conducted in Cuba, "a near unanimous 96 percent of respondents say that health care in Cuba is accessible to everyone."
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CNN: "Moore asserts that the American health care system spends $7,000 per person on health. Cuba spends $25 dollars per person. Not true. But not too far off. The United States spends $6,096 per person, versus $229 per person in Cuba."
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According to our own government – the Department of Health and Human Services' National Health Expenditures Projections – the United States will spend $7,092 per capita on health in 2006 and $7,498 in 2007.As Gupta points out, the World Health Organization does calculate Cuba's per capita health expenditure at $229 per person. We chose to use the UN numbers, a minor difference - and $229 is a lot closer to $251 than $25.
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CNN: In fact, Americans live just a little bit longer than Cubans on average.
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…Just the opposite. The 2006 United Nations Human Development Report's human development index states the life expectancy in the United States is 77.5 years. It is 77.6 years in Cuba.
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CNN: The United States ranks highest in patient satisfaction.
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Patients may be satisfied in America, but not everyone gets to be a patient. 47 million are uninsured and are rarely patients - until it's too late. In the rest of the Western world, everyone and anyone can be a patient because everyone is covered. (And don't face exclusions for pre-existing conditions, co-pays, deductibles, and costly monthly premiums). It's not that other countries are unhappy with their health care – for example, "70 to 80 percent of Canadians find their waiting times acceptable."
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CNN: Americans have shorter wait times than everyone but Germans when seeking non-emergency elective procedures, like hip replacement, cataract surgery, or knee repair.
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This isn't the whole truth. CNN pulled out a statistic about elective procedures. Of the six countries surveyed in that study (United States, Canada, New Zealand, UK, Germany, Australia) only Canada had longer waiting times...81% of patients in New Zealand got a same or next-day appointment for a non-routine visit, 71% in Britain, 69% in Germany, 66% in Australia, 47% in the U.S., and 36% in Canada. (The Doc's in, but It'll be AWhile. Catherine Arnst, Business Week. June 22, 2007) (And) One way America is able to achieve decent waiting times is that it leaves 47 million people out of the health care system entirely, unlike any other Western country. When you remove 47 million people from the line, your wait should be shorter. So why is the U.S. second to last in wait times?...And there are even more Americans who keep themselves out of the system because of cost - in the United States, 24 percent of the population did not get medical care due to cost. That number is 5 percent in Canada, and 3 percent in the UK.
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CNN: "But even higher taxes don't guarantee the coverage everyone wants … 15 to 20 percent of the population will purchase services outside the system of care run by the government."

In the United Kingdom, only 11.5 percent of the population has supplementary insurance, but it doesn't take the place of NHS insurance. Nobody in France buys insurance that replaces government insurance either, although a substantial amount buys some form of complimentary insurance.
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Me again:
If the American people ever knew the truth about just how lousy and how expensive our health care system was compared to the rest of the world there would be a revolution in this country. And on this rather fundamental issue, Michael Moore is absolutely, one hundred percent correct!