Setsuled's Journal

Nothing much to say for yesterday again. Yesterday and yesterday and yesterday . . .

CNN's released responses to the point-by-point responses on Michael Moore's website to Sanjay Gupta's infamous report on Sicko. It's pretty sad, as the best CNN can seem to do is point out that there are very minor differences in numbers between the legitimate sources Moore references and other sources. I loved this bit from the CNN site;

Gupta believes picking and comparing numbers from different places and times to suit an argument is not the best approach to a complicated issue like this one.

Just conveniently ignoring the fact that, in choosing the most recent statistics available, Moore was forced to use what actually exists.

As Moore puts it; "That U.N. report does list American health care spending as only $5,700, but it's a few years old. Since then, the U.S. government has updated its projections for health care spending, to $7,498 in 2007. So we used that number. It's the most recent, and comes right from the Department of Health and Human Services. If the Cuban government gave a figure on 2007 projected health spending, we'd have used it."

I finally saw Sicko a few days ago and it's a good movie. It follows several personal stories of people who've experienced the ridiculousness of the American healthcare industry firsthand, and the stories are put together very well. All the statistics are really there, even if you're looking through CNN glasses, that this industry is fucked, and Sicko does what a documentary ought to; it illustrates statistics evocatively. That Moore spends time focusing on the advantages of foreign systems simply seems constructive to me; he's showing us the ways in which we might fix our system.