Eric, here is your boy :)

[Wagner]

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=6a7_1184027106&p=1

Got to give him props on this one: http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/larry.king.live/

MM stuck to his guns and, according to the 'facts' on his site, he SLAMMED CNN's boy.

[Eric5273]

Good for him!

[ljnlaw]

Insurance companies not being policed = raising med mal rates across the board on all doctors + lessening their rates of returns for operative procedures = a real big mess that always gets blamed on the lawyers...give me a break, we do have a healthcare crisis and you can blame the insurance and pharmaceutical co's who are laughing all the way to the bank every year with huge surplus profits while the working man gets screwed.

[Eric5273]

CNN vs. SiCKO

7/11/07

Filmmaker Michael Moore appeared on CNN's Situation Room on July 9 to talk about his new film Sicko—but ended up having an animated discussion with host Wolf Blitzer about a CNN "fact check" of the film that made several embarrassing errors.

The piece--dubbed a "Reality Check" by senior medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta--claimed that Moore "fudged the facts" when critiquing the U.S. health care system (click here to watch the clip). Gupta starts by acknowledging that the U.S. healthcare system placed 37th in the World Health Organization's rankings. The fact that Moore contrasts this with the Cuban system led Gupta to "catch" him: "But hold on. That WHO list puts Cuba's healthcare system even lower than the United States, coming in at number 39."

The fact that the U.S.'s healthcare system does about as well as a Third World island that's been under economic sanctions for the past five decades isn't much of a catch to begin with. But Cuba's WHO ranking actually appears in Moore's film. (As Moore's website pointed out, when CNN aired the relevant clip from his film, a CNN logo covered up Cuba on the list.)

Gupta's next fact check:

"Moore asserts that the American healthcare system spends $7,000 per person on health, whereas Cuba spends $25 per person. Not true, but not too far off. The United States spends $6,096 a year per person versus $229 a year in Cuba."

Actually, Moore was much closer than Gupta: according to the Department of Health & Human Services, U.S. per capita healthcare spending was projected to reach $7,092 in 2006, and $7,498 for this year.

On a July 10 debate with Moore on CNN's Larry King Live, Gupta tried to claim that these projected numbers were somehow invalid, as if the continuously rising costs of healthcare should not be taken into account when discussing healthcare expenditures. Ironically, during the same discussion, Gupta cited Medicare's looming insolvency as a reason not to support expanding the program--a financial crunch that of course is also based on projections of steadily rising healthcare costs.

What's more—Gupta's "reality check" got the film's claims wrong: Moore said Cuba spent $251 per person, not $25.

Gupta went on to claim that Sicko portrays "medical utopia elsewhere," when in fact studies show the U.S. system is better in some respects:

"The film is filled with content Canadians and Brits sitting in waiting rooms, confident care will come. In Canada, you can be waiting for a long time. A survey of six industrialized nations found that only Canada was worse than the United States when it came to waiting for a doctor's appointment for a medical problem."

This is a grossly misleading characterization of the Commonwealth Fund's survey; instead of stressing that the study found that the United States did better than one country with universal care in terms of waiting time, Gupta could more relevantly have focused on the fact that four out of five of the universal healthcare countries studied (including Britain) outperformed the U.S. on the very measure that he singled out to show that you don't find "medical utopia elsewhere."

It's worth noting that the study that Gupta cited placed the U.S. as the worst overall of all the healthcare system studied, placing it last or next to last in all but one of eight criteria, while spending almost twice as much per capita as the next most expensive system. Gupta's example was a clear case of cherry-picking--selecting only the data that fits your argument--something he accused Moore of doing.

When Moore confronted CNN's Blitzer about the inaccuracies in their "reality check" segment, he responded: "Well, if we get that confirmed, obviously, we'll correct the record." And CNN did correct one thing—Gupta acknowledged his error about Cuba's per capita spending ($25 versus $251). On CNN's Newsroom (7/10/07), Gupta seemed taken aback by the whole thing, saying, "Yesterday there was a lot said by Michael, quite frankly, lots of numbers thrown around, and it can get admittedly somewhat confusing."

He did not apologize for criticizing Moore for using current healthcare figures rather than outdated ones, or for implying that Moore concealed Cuba's healthcare ranking, or for misleading viewers about the findings of the survey on waiting times. "We're comfortable with what we presented," Gupta said, aside from misrepresenting what Moore reported about Cuban healthcare costs by a factor of 10, which Gupta attributed to "an error of transcribing the number down incorrectly."

"As a journalist and a doctor the facts are extremely important to me," Gupta claimed. That priority is not at all evident from his report on Sicko, which instead suggested that his chief goal was discrediting Moore's film. In pursuit of that mission he ended up making more serious factual errors than any he actually found in Moore's film. Gupta's failure to retract the other falsehoods, beyond his "transcribing" error, suggests that facts are actually of little importance to him compared to maintaining the pretense that he is an expert and that activist/journalists like Moore are not to be trusted.

The tendency for mainstream journalists to resist criticism is not surprising. Gupta's CNN colleague Kyra Phillips perhaps said it best when she referred to the second part of Moore's interview with Blitzer: "You can tune in to the Situation Room at 4:00 Eastern for a little more unedited Moore interview, if you can stomach it."

The implication couldn't be clearer: If we make false claims about your work, it's downright rude of you to say something about it.

[rayxi]

I watched that last night and got a kick out of how hot under the collar Moore was.

It's very telling that all Gupta could come up with were two "facts" that boiled down to splitting hairs. WooHoo! The US out ranked Cuba in the WHO list! Whether or not that fact was shown in the film is irrelevant to fact that it's nothing to brag about. And so what if the Cuban health care costs per person is $25 or $251 or any number in between? It's still an order of magnitude lower than the US costs, whether the US costs are $7000, $6000 or $6921.12

The whole Gupta report was very weak IMO but I guess he was under a lot of pressure to put out some kind of rebuttal to the film.

[Wagner]

Originally Posted by Eric5273

CNN vs. SiCKO

7/11/07

Filmmaker Michael Moore appeared on CNN's Situation Room on July 9 to talk about his new film Sicko—but ended up having an animated discussion with host Wolf Blitzer about a CNN "fact check" of the film that made several embarrassing errors.

The piece--dubbed a "Reality Check" by senior medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta--claimed that Moore "fudged the facts" when critiquing the U.S. health care system (click here to watch the clip). Gupta starts by acknowledging that the U.S. healthcare system placed 37th in the World Health Organization's rankings. The fact that Moore contrasts this with the Cuban system led Gupta to "catch" him: "But hold on. That WHO list puts Cuba's healthcare system even lower than the United States, coming in at number 39."

The fact that the U.S.'s healthcare system does about as well as a Third World island that's been under economic sanctions for the past five decades isn't much of a catch to begin with. But Cuba's WHO ranking actually appears in Moore's film. (As Moore's website pointed out, when CNN aired the relevant clip from his film, a CNN logo covered up Cuba on the list.)

Gupta's next fact check:

"Moore asserts that the American healthcare system spends $7,000 per person on health, whereas Cuba spends $25 per person. Not true, but not too far off. The United States spends $6,096 a year per person versus $229 a year in Cuba."

Actually, Moore was much closer than Gupta: according to the Department of Health & Human Services, U.S. per capita healthcare spending was projected to reach $7,092 in 2006, and $7,498 for this year.

On a July 10 debate with Moore on CNN's Larry King Live, Gupta tried to claim that these projected numbers were somehow invalid, as if the continuously rising costs of healthcare should not be taken into account when discussing healthcare expenditures. Ironically, during the same discussion, Gupta cited Medicare's looming insolvency as a reason not to support expanding the program--a financial crunch that of course is also based on projections of steadily rising healthcare costs.

What's more—Gupta's "reality check" got the film's claims wrong: Moore said Cuba spent $251 per person, not $25.

Gupta went on to claim that Sicko portrays "medical utopia elsewhere," when in fact studies show the U.S. system is better in some respects:

"The film is filled with content Canadians and Brits sitting in waiting rooms, confident care will come. In Canada, you can be waiting for a long time. A survey of six industrialized nations found that only Canada was worse than the United States when it came to waiting for a doctor's appointment for a medical problem."

This is a grossly misleading characterization of the Commonwealth Fund's survey; instead of stressing that the study found that the United States did better than one country with universal care in terms of waiting time, Gupta could more relevantly have focused on the fact that four out of five of the universal healthcare countries studied (including Britain) outperformed the U.S. on the very measure that he singled out to show that you don't find "medical utopia elsewhere."

It's worth noting that the study that Gupta cited placed the U.S. as the worst overall of all the healthcare system studied, placing it last or next to last in all but one of eight criteria, while spending almost twice as much per capita as the next most expensive system. Gupta's example was a clear case of cherry-picking--selecting only the data that fits your argument--something he accused Moore of doing.

When Moore confronted CNN's Blitzer about the inaccuracies in their "reality check" segment, he responded: "Well, if we get that confirmed, obviously, we'll correct the record." And CNN did correct one thing—Gupta acknowledged his error about Cuba's per capita spending ($25 versus $251). On CNN's Newsroom (7/10/07), Gupta seemed taken aback by the whole thing, saying, "Yesterday there was a lot said by Michael, quite frankly, lots of numbers thrown around, and it can get admittedly somewhat confusing."

He did not apologize for criticizing Moore for using current healthcare figures rather than outdated ones, or for implying that Moore concealed Cuba's healthcare ranking, or for misleading viewers about the findings of the survey on waiting times. "We're comfortable with what we presented," Gupta said, aside from misrepresenting what Moore reported about Cuban healthcare costs by a factor of 10, which Gupta attributed to "an error of transcribing the number down incorrectly."

"As a journalist and a doctor the facts are extremely important to me," Gupta claimed. That priority is not at all evident from his report on Sicko, which instead suggested that his chief goal was discrediting Moore's film. In pursuit of that mission he ended up making more serious factual errors than any he actually found in Moore's film. Gupta's failure to retract the other falsehoods, beyond his "transcribing" error, suggests that facts are actually of little importance to him compared to maintaining the pretense that he is an expert and that activist/journalists like Moore are not to be trusted.

The tendency for mainstream journalists to resist criticism is not surprising. Gupta's CNN colleague Kyra Phillips perhaps said it best when she referred to the second part of Moore's interview with Blitzer: "You can tune in to the Situation Room at 4:00 Eastern for a little more unedited Moore interview, if you can stomach it."

The implication couldn't be clearer: If we make false claims about your work, it's downright rude of you to say something about it.

Well Moore did cherry-pick his facts on the cost per person. Taking one cost from a BBC report and another cost from a US report. I found it more telling that CNN edited Gupta's clip and didn't mention it before hand, but did mention that they edited Moore's clip. It wasn't until after the presentation that CNN admitted altering the information. The scary part is, had Moore not said anything, would CNN have double checked anything?

Here in lies the problem with our society, I'd wager 95+% of people who view this 'reporting' take it as fact and never bother to check out a thing to make their own conclusion. Personally I don't want our government, in it's current state, running healthcare for the citizens. It would be a corrupt and bias event far exceeding the current corruption IMO.

[Eric5273]

Originally Posted by WagnerX5

Personally I don't want our government, in it's current state, running healthcare for the citizens. It would be a corrupt and bias event far exceeding the current corruption IMO.

Corruption only seems to enter the picture in US politics when there is some profit to be made from something.

For example, last time I checked, I don't know of any corruption in the Post Office. Or the Social Security Administration. But in areas like the military or the FDA, there is tons of corruption because of all the large contracts being given out.

So I agree that if we were to adopt Hillary Clinton's & Barack Obama's plan (they are both very similar) in which we expand the Medicaid program to cover uninsured Americans, then the system will be corrupt as in its current state it is being administered by the private HMOs and the private drug companies. But if you were to eliminate them from the picture, you would indeed eliminate the corruption. The profit making is what causes the corruption. So far the only candidate proposing this is Dennis Kucinich, although there is a bill that has been written already and is being sponsored in the House by John Conyers.

[Wagner]

You don't pay much attention to modern medicine then. Next time you go to the doctor and need anything, see what the first item is they attempt to prescribe you and then track what pharmaceutical company makes it, then check the lobbying by that company on that specific practice. Then tell me again how you don't see the possibility for corruption. IMO you put WAY too much authority in the hands of the Presidential role.

Every one has a price.

[Eric5273]

Originally Posted by WagnerX5

You don't pay much attention to modern medicine then. Next time you go to the doctor and need anything, see what the first item is they attempt to prescribe you and then track what pharmaceutical company makes it, then check the lobbying by that company on that specific practice. Then tell me again how you don't see the possibility for corruption. IMO you put WAY too much authority in the hands of the Presidential role.

Every one has a price.

Yes, again you are posting an example of private drug companies making profit. And again I will say, get rid of the profit in the health care industry.

There is only one place where I think perhaps profit motive in the health care industry would be healthy, and that is with regard to research and development. A friend of mine works for a pharmaseutical company who does not actually distribute drugs. They do the R&D and then sell the results to larger firms who then do the final work to get it approved.

So let the drug companies do the R&D, and then when they develop a drug that is needed, they can be compensated for the drug. But nobody should profit based on how many drugs are prescribed, or else you will end up with the situation that we currently have where doctors unnecessarily prescribe medicine because they receive kickbacks from the drug companies, as you have pointed out. That is part of the reason why we spend more than any other country on health care. Our people are far too medicated, and doctors hand out drugs like candy.

[Wagner]

How exactly do you have health care with out drug companies??????

And again I will say, stop pretending there is a Utopian society some where.