Salud Cuba!

In Andrew Sullivan's post about Michael Moore's Health Care views, called "Sicko," he rips into the documentary film maker. "What Moore supports is the abolition of all private health insurance," he says. Commenting on Moore's desire to eliminate private health care, he remarks, "How do you 'eliminate' the right of insurance companies to offer policies to people who want private health care? A good question. Moore's model is Castro's Cuba [My italics]."

An odd accusation. While there are nearly countless ways to legitimately attack Castro's regime, health care is famously, and simply, not one of them. As the new Moore documentary is largely about, and has been extensively documented elsewhere, Cuban health care is in many ways a model for even Western nations. Despite extreme poverty, an embargo, and political repression, all health indications suggest that Cubans are every bit as if not more healthy than those human beings found 90 miles away in America. Despite the fact that the U.S. spends 32 times more on health care per person annually, Cubans appear to live as long as we do, and their infants don't die as much.

So, then, instead of merely acknowledging that the U.S. can and should do better, Sullivan attacks the Cuban system for the one thing they seem to do well. Stick to foreign policy, old chum.