“One thing is clear, Cubans enjoy free and universal healthcare. They’ve become known around the world not only for having one of the world’s best healthcare systems but for being one of the most generous countries in providing doctors and medical equipment for Third World countries … it seems there’s a doctor on every block” (narration during the Michael Moore-directed Harvey Weinstein-produced “documentary” Sicko).
If Saturday Night Live or Monty Python spoofed the Left with the same gusto that they spoof the Right—in fact, if they spoofed the Left at all --what fun they could have with Michael Moore and Harvey Weinstein’s "Sicko"!
Better still, they could take a few days off. No script writing or acting required for this spoof. Simply run the Cuba section of the “movie” as is and kick back. Anyone with half a brain couldn’t help but split his sides roaring with mirth.
All the Cuban patients in the “documentary” smile with satisfaction and delight! All the faces of Cuban doctors affect a friendly but earnest look to shame Marcus Welby.... WHOOPS! I forgot to mention that one patient in this section of the movie actually does cry in combination grief-shock.
But this is an American woman who Michael Moore transports to Cuba and films as she learns how “ridiculously cheap” her medicine would be in Castro’s paradise as compared to her native hell-hole the U.S.!
I SWEAR I am not making any of this up. Yes, amigos. You read right, Harvey Weinstein proudly executive-produced a “documentary” where subjects of a Stalinist dictatorship that has seen TWENTY-TIMES as many of them die horribly trying to escape it as did residents of East Germany trying to escape theirs, seen a higher percentage of them jailed and tortured as Russians during Stalin’s Great Terror —a “documentary” shows all these tragic victims of Castroism smiling for the cameras!
Then the citizens of the country to where these hapless Cubans attempt to escape moans and weeps with (real) tears upon learning of the miraculous benefits Cubans enjoy and she’s denied by “greedy American corporations!”
You will be astounded to hear that the late Stalinist dictator Fidel Castro hailed Michael Moore as “an outstanding American, ” and his movies were repeatedly shown for free throughout the Castro-Family-Fiefdom.
Michael Moore claims that Cuba's Stalinist regime played it as straight with him during the filming of "Sicko" (executive–produced by Harvey Weinstein) as he plays it with its viewers. “I asked them to give us the same care they give their own Cuban citizens," Moore assured his viewers. "No more, no less. And that’s what they did.”
You cringe at having to contest this in full public view. Does anyone with a fully-functioning brain actually believe it? Will I insult America's intelligence by pointing out something so appallingly obvious as the absurdity of Moore's claim? You would like to think the forthcoming refutation by Dr. Julio Alfonso, a Cuban Doctor defector, is too obvious to require publication and circulation. But sadly, history shows that Castro's propaganda (as disseminated by his agents, both on the payroll and off) has an odd effect on cerebrums that otherwise function normally, even exceptionally. This effect is similar to the one sugar in the gas tank that has on an automobile engine.
So let's go ahead and allow Dr. Julio Cesar Alfonso, who worked within Cuba's health-care system for years, to remind America of something that should be blatantly obvious: "The treatment Moore and the rescue workers receive in the film was done specifically for them, because the regime knew it would make great propaganda."
Ninety-nine percent of Cubans have no more experience with a hospital like the one featured in "Sicko" than Michael Moore or Harvey Weinstein has with a Soloflex. Most Cubans view a hospital like the one featured in "Sicko" the way teenage boys used to view Playboy magazine: "WOW! -- If only!"
Among the many items Michael Moore and Harvey Weinstein “overlooked” in their communist propaganda video is that in 1958 (the year prior to Castroism), Cuba ranked 13th from the top, worldwide with regards to infant mortality. This meant that robustly capitalist Cuba had the 13th lowest infant-mortality rate in the world. This put her not only at the top in Latin America but atop most of Western Europe, ahead of France, Belgium, West Germany, Israel, Japan, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Today all of these countries leave Communist Cuba in the dust, with much lower infant mortality rates.
And even plummeting from 13th (Capitalist) to 44th (Communist), Cuba's "impressive" infant mortality rate is kept artificially low by Communist chicanery with statistics and by a truly appalling abortion rate of 0.71 abortions per live birth. This is the hemisphere's highest, by far. Any Cuban pregnancy that even hints at trouble gets "terminated."
A few years ago Dr. Juan Felipe García, MD, of Jacksonville, Fla., interviewed several recent doctor defectors from Cuba. Based on what he heard, he reported the following:
"The official Cuban infant-mortality figure is a farce. Cuban pediatricians constantly falsify figures for the regime. If an infant dies during its first year, the doctors often report he was older. Otherwise, such lapses could cost him severe penalties and his job."
Dramatization of the Castroite Cuba’s healthcare horrors that thoroughly debunk the Weinstein/ Moore propaganda film would require a production company to rival Weinstein’s. Marzo Fernandez, for instance, is a Cuban economist who until defecting in 1996, served as Secretary General of Castro’s Ministry of Nutrition. “The average height of Cubans has decreased by 8 centimeters in the past 25 years," he reported on Miami television. “For the first time in Cuban history, thousands of Macrocephalic children (abnormally large heads in proportion to their bodies) due to protein (primarily milk) deficiencies have been found in the eastern provinces.”
The above in a country that prior to Castroism enjoyed a lower infant-mortality rate and more doctors and dentists per per-capita, and a higher per-capita income than half of European countries at the time.
This might lead a few people to question Cuba's official healthcare figures. But such people would not get a Havana bureau for their news agency, much less a visa to film a documentary.
A few years ago, Cuban doctor Dr. Dessy Mendoza was on the phone with a Miami radio station reporting an outbreak of Dengue fever in eastern Cuba near Guantanamo when Castro’s police stormed his house and arrested him. He was charged and sentenced for “spreading enemy propaganda.” The Cubans who collaborated with Michael Moore and Harvey Weinstein are obviously immune to this charge.