Sicko Deception

The truth-challenged windbag Michael Moore – a blight on the honor of my home state – has been called to the carpet again by those stubborn, annoying facts. Canadian expatriate Sally Pipes writes in “More lies from Moore” to expose the left-wing filmmaker’s problem in using a clip of her in his new movie “Sicko” to supposedly demonstrate American ignorance of the Canadian healthcare system. Unfortunately for Moore, Pipes actually knows the problems of the system firsthand:

I am a new American, but I grew up and worked for many years in Canada. And I know the health care system of my native country much more intimately than does Moore. There’s a good reason why my former countrymen with the money to do so either use the services of a booming industry of illegal private clinics, or come to America to take advantage of the health care that Moore denounces.

Government-run health care in Canada inevitably resolves into a dehumanizing system of triage, where the weak and the elderly are hastened to their fates by actuarial calculation. Having fought the Canadian health care bureaucracy on behalf of my ailing mother just two years ago – she was too old, and too sick, to merit the highest quality care in the government’s eyes – I can honestly say that Moore’s preferred health care system is something I wouldn’t wish on him.

I’m sure you’re shocked to learn that such a drastic oversight could have slipped through Moore’s rigorous and conscientious fact-checking team (kind of like the 59 deceits uncovered in his 2004 screed “Fahrenheit 9/11”). Hmmm … or not. It’s so apparent to anyone but the agenda-driven Left that his new movie is half-serious propaganda designed to push America one step closer to the debacle that is socialized medicine.

And no, I’m not a defender of the status quo in health care. One problem with Moore and his apologists is their simple-minded assertion of the false dichotomy that either you like the current system or you want Moore government with less accessible health care. Think again. Expand your horizons. Look at consumer-driven reforms that have the potential to save Americans from both the bureaucratic crush of Big HMO and Big Government.

Moore deception? That’s “Sicko.” But I felt compelled to point out the obvious today.