Persistence of Vision

As Michael Moore's Sicko spreads the message that single-payer health care is what America needs, MPI is launching a series of short films that debunk the disinformation anchoring Moore's campaign. FreeMarketCure.com features a series of hard-hitting shorts that show Canada's health care system in all its disfunctional glory. Created by independent filmmaker Stuart Browning, the shorts also explode some of the destructive myths about the U. S. system that proponents of nationalized health care like to present as fact.

In a press release issued today, MPI announced the launch and explained its importance:

Shirley Healey, a resident of British Columbia, was scheduled for "urgent" surgery on her blocked mesenteric artery--in four months' time. Ontario man Lindsay McCreith was offered a "critical" MRI on his cancerous brain tumor--again in four months' time. Both gravely ill patients crossed the border into the United States, where they received life-saving treatment within days.

The stories of Healey, McCreith, and several others are available at FreeMarketCure.com, a new film website dedicated to educating the public about single-payer health care. Sponsored by the Moving Picture Institute (MPI), FreeMarketCure.com is America's one-stop answer to the dangerous fantasy that the government can and should manage your health care.

Created by MPI fellow Stuart Browning, FreeMarketCure.com features short films that reveal the truth about health care in Canada and in the United States. The site will also host commentary and a weblog by policy experts David Gratzer (a physician and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute), David Hogberg (a senior analyst at the National Center for Public Policy Research), and David Catron (an expert on health care finance).

"As our national debate about health care heats up, it's crucial to distinguish between facts and spin," Browning says. "Canada is facing a health care crisis--but you won't hear about that from those who argue that America should resolve its health care woes by modeling itself after the Canadian and Cuban systems."

Browning's films reflect the reality of health care in Canada, where government control has resulted in unconscionably long waiting lists for critical care, where private health insurance is illegal, and where more and more frustrated patients are taking matters into their own hands, crossing the border into the U.S. to get the timely, quality care they need.