When Michael Moore’s pro-dictator film “Sicko” was shown to Cuban doctors in 2007, some became so “disturbed at the blatant misrepresentation of healthcare in Cuba that they left the room,” according to a U.S. diplomatic cable revealed by Wikileaks.
So the Cuban Communist Party banned the film from most Cubans, the Wikileaks memo reports. The memo was sent a few months before the egomaniacal Fidel Castro overruled his lackeys and had the film shown to let his slave population know how much the world -- or at least Michael Moore -- loves him.
Moore’s movie pretended to show that Castro’s universal health care for Cubans was doing wonders for that nation, when in fact it is a medical system with lots of doctors, but with low-quality care, little medical equipment and almost no medicine.
Castro’s doctor. Remember when Castro got sick in late 2006? He called in a doctor from Spain, and the doctor flew in equipment not available in Cuba.
Castro loves to hear foreigners ignorantly praise his health-care system because the accolades deflect attention from his political illegitimacy and his tyrannical abuses. But Cuban doctors and Communist bureaucrats didn't want the Cubans to see and hear Moore’s lies.
The Jan. 31, 2008, U.S. cable from Havana said the Cuban government initially banned “Sicko,” which was released in June 2007, because it “knows the film is a myth and does not want to risk a popular backlash by showing to Cubans facilities that are clearly not available to the vast majority of them.”
Real Cuban hospitals. The secret cable came from the U.S. Interests Section (USINT), which is a de facto U.S. embassy housed inside the Swiss embassy in Havana. The memo described what a foreign service health practitioner (FSHP) found in Cuban hospitals.
From London, The Guardian reports on the Wikileaks document:
The cable describes a visit made by the FSHP to the Hermanos Ameijeiras hospital in October 2007. Built in 1982, the newly renovated hospital was used in Michael Moore's film as evidence of the high-quality of healthcare available to all Cubans.
But according to the FSHP, the only way a Cuban can get access to the hospital is through a bribe or contacts inside the hospital administration. “Cubans are reportedly very resentful that the best hospital in Havana is ‘off-limits’ to them,” the memo reveals.
According to the FSHP, a more “accurate” view of the healthcare experience of Cubans can be seen at the Calixto Garcia Hospital. “FSHP believes that if Michael Moore really wanted the ‘same care as local Cubans’, this is where he should have gone,” the cable states.
A 2007 visit by the FSHP to this “dilapidated” hospital, built in the 1800s, was “reminiscent of a scene from some of the poorest countries in the world,” the cable adds.
Magnet therapy. When I was in Cuba with a group of Americans in 1999, our official Communist-approved Cuban tour guides took us to one of their showcase health clinics, where in one room after another, patients were being treated with toaster-size magnets set upon whatever parts of their bodies they said were ailing that day. I kid you not.
For long-oppressed Cubans, Moore’s failure in “Sicko” to mention Castro’s Spanish doctor or the health-care magnets was the dead giveaway the movie was the sickest fiction.
Frank Warner
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