So Why Isn’t Moore Talking About This?

David Grazer in the WSJ:

TORONTO–“I haven’t seen ‘Sicko,’ ” says Avril Allen about the new Michael Moore documentary, which advocates socialized medicine for the United States. The film, which has been widely viewed on the Internet, and which will officially open in the U.S. and Canada on Friday, has been getting rave reviews. But Ms. Allen, a lawyer, has no plans to watch it. She’s just too busy preparing to file suit against Ontario’s provincial government about its health-care system next month.

Her client, Lindsay McCreith, would have had to wait for four months just to get an MRI, and then months more to see a neurologist for his malignant brain tumor. Instead, frustrated and ill, the retired auto-body shop owner traveled to Buffalo, N.Y., for a lifesaving surgery. Now he’s suing for the right to opt out of Canada’s government-run health care, which he considers dangerous.

Ms. Allen figures the lawsuit has a fighting chance: In 2005, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that “access to wait lists is not access to health care,” striking down key Quebec laws that prohibited private medicine and private health insurance.

…

Mr. Moore goes to London, Ontario, where he notes that not a single patient has waited in the hospital emergency room more than 45 minutes. “It’s a fabulous system,” a woman explains. In Britain, he tours a hospital where patients marvel at their free care. A patient’s husband explains: “It’s not America.” Humorously, Mr. Moore finds a cashier dispensing money to patients (for transportation). In France, a doctor explains the success of the health-care system with the old Marxist axiom: “You pay according to your means, and you receive according to your needs.”

It’s compelling material–I know because, born and raised in Canada, I used to believe in government-run health care. Then I was mugged by reality.

What’s the old adage?  A conservative as a liberal is a liberal who has been mugged by reality?

Consider, for instance, Mr. Moore’s claim that ERs don’t overcrowd in Canada. A Canadian government study recently found that only about half of patients are treated in a timely manner, as defined by local medical and hospital associations. “The research merely confirms anecdotal reports of interminable waits,” reported a national newspaper. While people in rural areas seem to fare better, Toronto patients receive care in four hours on average; one in 10 patients waits more than a dozen hours.

And here’s the thing… this is a known issue. I’m sitting down here about 60 miles south of the border, about 60 miles out of Buffalo, and I can tell you for a fact that the healthcare facilities are going great guns…. all of them… facilities designed and built to accommodate the Buffalo of 20 to 50 years ago.  Buffalo, as you may not know, has lost roughly half of its population in the last 60 years.  So, where are the people coming from that are filling these health care facilities to the brim?  Canada.

And here I sit, watching with interest as this situation that Gartzer describes, gets played out:

Canadian doctors, once quiet on the issue of private health care, elected Brian Day as president of their national association. Dr. Day is a leading critic of Canadian medicare; he opened a private surgery hospital and then challenged the government to shut it down. “This is a country,” Dr. Day said by way of explanation, “in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years.”

It is not by accident that Michael Moore’s film, and indeed Michael Moore himself, say nothing of this.  To do so would be to admit that the entire basis of the film is dead wrong.  And when’s the last time you ever seen a liberal admit they were wrong? You would think that they would do it when people’s lives are in the balance, as they are.

But no. That wouldn’t suit Moore’s view of socialism.