Humberto Fontova takes a close look at how Michael Moore's latest anti-American propaganda film drastically misrepresents the Cuban "health care" system in this compelling article at Diario de America. I print just a few tantalizing paragraphs below....Ninety-nine percent of Cubans have no more experience with a hospital like the one featured in Sicko than Michael Moore has with a Soloflex. Most Cubans view a hospital like the one featured in Sicko the way teen-age boys used to view Playboy magazine: "If only!" For an accurate picture of what the average Cuban undergoes in healthcare, please visit the harrowing pictures smuggled out of Cuba (at enormous peril) and posted on TheRealCuba.com. If a picture is normally worth a thousand worth then these are worth a million.
In Sicko, Moore parrots the Castroite claim that Cubans live longer than Americans. In fact, the figures are practically identical, which actually casts Cuba's vaunted health care in a negative light. In all nations with high emigration rates longevity rates skew high. This occurs because the birth is recorded but the death gets recorded in the nation migrated to. So it seems like fewer people die. Naturally, the opposite effect appears in nations with a large influx of immigrants. The death is recorded but the birth was recorded in the nation immigrated from. So, generally speaking, a nation with high longevity but known to hemorrhage its people has little to boast about with regards to longevity figures. All they're proving is that theirs is a miserable place to live from which massive numbers of people flee.
And few nations hemorrhage people like Cuba. Almost 20 percent of its population since the glorious revolution. This 20 percent of Cuba's population, let's not forget, represents those who got out with the clothes on their back and against enormous odds. Had Cuba followed the norms of all civilized nations in allowing free emigration with family, property, etc. (as in pre-Castro Cuba, when almost nobody left), Cuba today (statistically speaking) would boast the highest longevity rates in the annals of man's history.
As eagerly expected by Michael Moore's Cuban case officers, Sicko's screening was the signal for their other propaganda assets to chime in. "Cuba has developed the world's first Meningitis B vaccine which is available in Third World countries but not in Europe or in the United States due to U.S. sanctions," reported Anthony Boadle from Reuters' Havana bureau last week. Of this 27 word sentence, by a news agency considered authoritative worldwide, exactly 14 words are true. This vaccine is not available in the U.S. and Europe -- but hardly because of "sanctions.” In fact, in 1999, Bill Clinton's Treasury Department granted the pharmaceutical giant SmithKline Beecham a license to market the Cuban vaccine in a joint venture with Castro’s medical ministry -- pending FDA approval.
And why not? Castro’s minister of public health, Carlos Dotres, had hailed the vaccine as "the only effective one in the world!” Highly impressed, Bill Clinton's FDA chief Dr. Carl Frasch said it could annually prevent "1000-2000 cases" of the dread disease in the U.S. 110 U.S. Congressmen promptly signed a special letter to Secretary of State Madeline Albright beseeching her to allow this breach of the diabolical embargo, if only to protect the lives of America’s children!
That was eight years ago. The reason the vaccine is not available today in the U.S. and Europe is simply that, like so many other Castroite concoctions and proclamations dutifully trumpeted by news agencies who earn Havana bureaus, the vaccine is a farce and its sale a swindle. And, at least in this case, most civilized countries refuse to help propagate the swindle on their citizens.
Some Third World countries discovered the swindle the hard way...
Again, the whole of the Diario de America article is here. But there's also another good article by Senor Fontova dealing with some of the same issues here.
