Moore's movie Sicko, a gross Over-exaggeration

Delays make the universal system not quite as primo as Sicko says. Shortly before Christmas last year, Julie Mason of Ottawa received devastating news. She had ovarian cancer. Her husband's prostate cancer had returned. The costs of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatments could have been as overwhelming as the diagnoses. To date, though, the Masons' out-of-pocket expenses have been about $266, even though their story is not typical.

Now cancer-free, the Masons are among the few Canadians who rave about their national health care system - a system also extolled in Michael Moore's new movie, Sicko, as one of the world's best. Michael Moore’s controversial film slams the U.S. approach to health care, portraying it as a cold-hearted, profit-driven nightmare that dumps the uninsured out on the street and looks for any excuse to deny benefits even to those who can afford coverage.

By contrast, Moore paints the rosiest of pictures in Canada, France, Britain and Cuba, where every citizen, regardless of income or "pre-existing" condition, is entitled to necessary health care at government expense.

Among Sicko's most striking examples: When a Canadian worker accidentally severed all five fingers on one hand, the Canadian health care system picked up the entire tab of reattaching them. When an uninsured American sliced off two fingertips in an electric saw accident, he could afford to get only one reattached - at a cost of $12,000.

But is health care in other places really as terrific as Sicko suggests? A closer look at Canada - a country similar in history and culture to the United States - reveals a system that while truly classless, suffers from doctor shortages, restrictions on foreign nationals, long waiting times and hidden costs in the form of higher taxes and "health premiums."

"It's a wonderful system, but unfortunately it's overloaded at the moment," says Gerry Brissenden, who at 75 divides his time between Ontario and St. Petersburg as president of the Canadian Snowbird Association. Under Canada's Health Act, Brissenden and his 33-million fellow citizens are entitled to all necessary physician and hospital services, including prescription drugs. But they usually must pay for any drugs outside the hospital. Canada's health care system generally does not cover dental or eye care, however. And a shortage of diagnostic equipment - Canada has 4.5 MRIs per million people compared with 8.6 in the United States - is one reason patients often wait months for tests and nonemergency surgery.

As a result of such delays, a growing number of Canadians cross the border for tests or pay for testing at private clinics in their own country. Despite concern that "queue jumping" undermines the system's fairness, Canada's Supreme Court in 2005 struck down a Quebec law that banned people from using private insurance to pay for MRIs, cataract operations and other government-covered procedures.

"Access to a waiting list is not the same thing as access to health care," the court said, noting that Canadians had suffered and even died because of long waits.

Brissenden, for example, had his broken wrist in a cast for eight weeks before he could get an appointment with a doctor to replace two bones with a metal plate. If he could change one thing about Canada's system, it would be imposing a small charge for doctor visits.

Another reason for lengthy waits is a shortage of doctors in rural areas and in certain specialities like obstetrics and gynecology. Concerned that Canada might produce too many doctors, the federal and provincial governments in the early '90s cut back on medical school admissions and made it harder for foreign doctors to be licensed. About the same time, thousands of Canadian-born doctors and nurses left the country, lured by attractive bonuses to HMOs and for- profit hospitals in the United States.

"The big problem with our system - and part of it relates to the planning of a decade ago - is that our waiting times are considered unacceptable for routine and elective procedures," says Colin McMillan, a cardiologist and president of the Canadian Medical Association. "There are just not enough doctor and nurses to serve the population." Though the "brain drain" has largely stopped and medical school admissions are returning to pre-'90s levels, McMillan says patients in his province, Prince Edward Island, can still wait six months to see a consultant. "It should be four to six weeks," he says.

After waiting about a year for a hip replacement, Sharon Sholzberg-Gray dreaded another long wait - this time for two knee replacements. But as the weeks ticked by, she lost so much weight that her knees stopped hurting. "Now I don't need my knees replaced and I've saved the health system two knee replacement operations," says Sholzberg-Gray, president of the Canadian Healthcare Association.

The association represents hospitals, which are struggling with the fearsome cost of new technology and wonder drugs, particularly for cancer treatment. A recent series in the Ottawa Citizen on how hospitals use tax money found that drug costs rose 82 percent in just three years and the cost of new medical and surgical equipment zoomed 56 percent, far outpacing any other area of hospital spending.

The pressure on hospitals will only increase as aging baby boomers demand more and better health services - a strong argument for preventive care and healthy lifestyles, Sholzberg-Gray says. "No health system in the world is going to be able to be sustained unless people focus on keeping a healthy weight, eating healthy and reducing the amount of diabetes," she said. "But right now the problem, as with any health system, is we could use more money."

Although the United States spends almost twice as much on health care per person, Canada's costs are rising so fast that the government of Ontario, the most populous province, began deducting a "health premium" from wage and pension checks in 2004 to pay for more doctors, nurses and hospital beds. The premium is based on income and can be as much as $900 Canadian (about $852 U.S.).

Canadians also pay far more sales tax than Americans, 14 percent in Ontario compared with 6 or 7 percent in Florida, and only a small amount of that tax money in Canada goes to health care.

Defining cronyism for an ignorant Hillary Clinton

Former President Bill Clinton and Senator Hillary Clinton are absolutely outraged that President Bush granted executive clemency to Scooter Libby, recently convicted of making false statements under oath. They obviously believe that Libby should serve his thirty month sentence.

Does that mean that they now think that perjurers should go to jail? Or have they simply forgotten about Bill Clinton’s own plea agreement in the last hours of his presidency — for making false statements under oath? Some people would call that perjury.

One would have thought that Hillary and Bill Clinton wouldn’t touch the Libby executive clemency issue with a ten-foot pole — for lots of reasons.

After all, Bill Clinton has a well-earned reputation as the king of pardons — granting 140 of them during his last minutes in office — with many going to terrorists, people who had paid Hillary’s brothers to arrange for pardons, contributed money or key support to Hillary’s Senate campaign, given the Clintons expensive personal gifts, and/or made large contributions to Bill Clinton’s Presidential Library. One of the pardons went to Bill’s own brother, Roger, while another went to Susan MacDougal, who kept quiet about Clinton during the Whitewater trial.

Given the disgraceful Clinton record on pardons, most reasonable people would have kept quiet — especially when Libby’s offense was so similar to Bill’s own criminal conviction. But the self-righteous former first couple couldn’t resist. Once the clemency was announced, Hillary immediately attacked President Bush, saying, "This commutation sends the clear signal that in this administration, cronyism and ideology trump competence and justice.”

Hey, Hillary, do you understand what cronyism really means?

Cronyism is favoritism shown to friends and supporters without regard to their qualifications. And that’s what Bill Clinton’s pardons were all about. Except, as usual, the Clintons went way over the top. So, in addition to granting pardons to undeserving friends, Bill Clinton also pardoned undeserving strangers who paid his family, friends, campaign coffers, and presidential library.

Now Bill and Hillary claim that his highly controversial pardons were “different” than the Libby clemency.

He’s absolutely right ...

The big difference was that many of the Clinton pardons were patently bought and paid for — something event he Clintons don’t claim to be the case in the Libby commutation.

Hillary’s brothers were paid more than $500,000 to lobby the president for pardons that were then granted to con artists and drug dealers. For a fee of $400,000, Hugh Rodham successfully pushed for a pardon for drug kingpin Carlos Anabel Vignali, convicted of shipping a half-ton of cocaine from L.A. to Minnesota. His father was a big contributor to the Democratic Party — he gave more than $150,000 to the Los Angeles Democrats. Obviously, the investment was a shrewd one.

That’s cronyism, Hillary. Get it?

Tony Rodham advocated a pardon for Edgar and Vanna Jo Gregory. The Gregorys, who owned a carnival company, defrauded a federal bank. When the pardon was publicized, Hillary stated that Tony was “not paid” by the Gregorys for his work on the pardon. Tony repeated that line on the Larry King Show.

After an investigation, the House Government Operations Committee disagreed and announced that Hillary’s statement was inaccurate. Now, a federal bankruptcy court overseeing the carnival company’s bankruptcy is about to rule on whether over $100,000 paid to Tony Rodham at the time of the pardons was a loan or payment for “consulting.”

The Gregorys contributed over $100,000 to Hillary’s campaign and other Democratic causes. These folks were well known to the Clintons — they visited them at Camp David and were hired to stage two carnivals on the White House grounds — paid for by the taxpayers.

That’s cronyism, Hillary.

When the Rodham brothers’ exploits were made public, Bill and Hillary announced that they were “shocked and saddened” by the disclosure. At the time of the pardons, the Rodham brothers were actually living in the White House with the Clintons and had made contact with the highest level of presidential assistants. But the Clintons claimed that they were totally unaware of what Hugh and Tony were doing.

But, it wasn’t just Hillary’s family who benefited from the Clinton cronyism. Bill’s brother Roger was pardoned for his drug conviction, and he was allegedly paid $30,000 to promote six felons — although those pardons were never granted.

That’s cronyism, Hillary.

The most outrageous Clinton pardons went to sixteen members of the terrorist gang, the FALN, a Puerto Rican nationalist group responsible for over 130 bombings in the U.S. — attacking the N.Y. office of the FBI, military recruiting headquarters, and even former president Jimmy Carter’s Chicago campaign office. Six people died and dozens more were injured as a result of FALN’s actions. These terrorists never even asked for a pardon, but because Hillary wanted to ingratiate herself with the Hispanic population in New York during her first Senate race, they were suddenly granted a commutation of their sentences.

Although the commutations were opposed by the FBI and the Clinton Justice Department, Bill Clinton granted them to all 16 terrorists. Once again, Hillary claimed to have “no involvement in or prior knowledge of the decision.” Her statement is ridiculous. Two days before the announcement of the pardons, New York City Councilman Jose Rivera personally presented Hillary with a packet of materials including a letter asking her to “speak to the president and ask him to consider granting executive clemency to the prisoners.” What a coincidence — the sentences were immediately commuted!

Hillary, that’s another example of cronyism.

Joe Connor, the son of one of the innocent men killed by the FALN terrorists at the Fraunces Tavern in Manhattan, put it this way:

“The Clinton family traded the release of terrorists for votes, votes that were promised to be delivered by New York politicians to Hillary for senate and Gore for president. That was clear.”

That’s cronyism, Hillary.

And Hillary actually has the audacity to accuse President Bush of cronyism! This woman has no shame.

Then, of course, there was also Marc Rich, the fugitive oil broker who renounced his American citizenship. Rich was illegally buying oil from Iran during the American trade embargo and hid the $200 million in trading (and over $100 million in profits) with Iraq using dummy transactions in off-shore corporations.

Ironically, Scooter Libby was one of Rich’s lawyers, while Rudy Giuliani was the U.S. Attorney who brought the indictment. Amazingly, the U.S. Attorney’s Office was never contacted by the White House for input into the pardon decision. Here’s what the prosecuting attorney had to say about the pardon:

“I cannot imagine two people that were less suited for a presidential pardon than Marc Rich and Pincus Green[the co-defendant]. It is inconceivable that President Clinton chose to pardon the two biggest tax cheats in the history of the United States who had renounced their citizenship, been fugitives for seventeen years, and who had traded with the Iranians during the hostage crisis. While I do not know what motivated President Clinton to pardon Rich and Green, I can state that it is implausible that those pardons were based on his evaluation of the merits of the case...” [http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/pardonsex8.htm]

Interestingly, Rich’s wife bought furniture for the Clinton’s Chappaqua home and contributed at least $450,000 to the Clinton Library.

That’s cronyism, Hillary.

Finally, there were the four New Square pardons. There, the Hasidic defendants were convicted of pocketing $40 million of federal scholarship money. Hillary visited the community, and on Election Day the community supported Hillary 1400 to 12. Weeks later, on December 22, 2000, President Clinton met with the New Square leaders to discuss a pardon. Hillary attended the meeting, but claims that she did not speak.

Apparently, she didn’t have to — the pardons were granted.

That’s cronyism, Hillary!