'Sicko' - Sleep Apnea patient is filmed

Babette · Post by **Babette** » Fri Jun 29, 2007 3:11 pm

From the trailer at the top of the cpaptalk.com forum:
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/m ... 24,00.html

I am so glad this movie was made. I'm not going to see it, however. I feel lightheaded just hearing the trailers and interviews on NPR. I'm afraid I'd pass out in the movie theater.

1) I have a hard time dealing with ANYTHING MEDICAL. I passed out during those idiot "hygiene" film strips in school. I can't look at my own x-rays. I'm a big freakin' weenie.

2) I'm so upset about my own cpap therapy run-around, I'm sure my head would explode.

I'll bet I'm not alone on this forum. So, I thought I'd open up the floor for rants and raves about it.

First line of departure! Lock and Load!
B.

socknitster · Post by **socknitster** » Fri Jun 29, 2007 4:28 pm

I really want to see this movie. It sounds fascinating.

Jen

Babette · Post by **Babette** » Fri Jun 29, 2007 4:30 pm

GOOD! I'll send you the 7 bucks and you can give me the highlights.

B.

roster · Post by **roster** » Fri Jun 29, 2007 4:37 pm

"......were asked to go to Cuba to compare the country's health system with what's available in America. ......... Smith said she was amazed by the facilities and care she received in the island nation. ..............."I had these feelings of sadness for us that we somehow convinced ourselves that health care is something we have to pay for.""

Great. Let's copy what the communists do.

Babette · Post by **Babette** » Fri Jun 29, 2007 4:49 pm

I do have a hard time believing the Cubans are doing it better than us. Just because they are so freakin' poor everywhere but their freakin' American-sponsored casino/resorts....

I don't care if the health care is communist, buddhist, paganist, whatever. I just want it to freakin' WORK and be decently civil, and not a constant scam to rip me off.

Cheers,
B.

tillymarigold · Post by **tillymarigold** » Fri Jun 29, 2007 9:11 pm

Cuban medical care is legendary, actually. They don't always have all the high-tech equipment but the doctors are well-trained to listen to the patient's complaints and really work to find a solution. In other words, it probably wasn't as fancy a sleep study as she would have gotten here, but if she lived in Cuba, her doctor probably would have diagnosed her much earlier than they often do here.

Cuba is also the country that does the most humanitarian medical work, funded by Venezuela. They go to places where there have been natural disasters and take care of the refugees. They're used to working under less than ideal circumstances so they're much better at adapting to poor working conditions than American doctors.

Newsgrouper · Post by **Newsgrouper** » Fri Jun 29, 2007 10:43 pm

If medical care is so good in Cuba why do they fly in doctors from Europe everytime Fidel, or other high Cuban officials, needs surgery?

roster · Post by **roster** » Sat Jun 30, 2007 5:40 am

tillymarigold wrote:................
Cuba is also the country that does the most humanitarian medical work, ............

Preposterous. There was a PBS program dealing with voluntary medical work about two years ago. Regarding doctors and other health professionals traveling out of their country to do voluntary work, U.S. doctors do more of this than all other countries combined. Maybe Cuba does more than their share, but they were not mentioned on the program.

Newsgrouper · Post by **Newsgrouper** » Sat Jun 30, 2007 8:05 am

"Listening to the New York Times or Hollywood's contingent of wide-eyed Castro worshippers you'd get the idea that medical care in Castro's Cuba makes America's healthcare system look like a third world system.

Such claims are pure myth.

Dr. Hilda Molina, one of Cuba's top neurosurgeons, a one-time member of the Cuban parliament, and a confidant of Fidel Castro, made the mistake of criticizing her nation's medical care system.

Molina exposed Cuba's two-tier medical system that enabled rich foreigners to come in for treatment at first-class facilities in Cuba, paying in dollars, while ordinary Cubans got some of the most atrocious medical care on the planet.

According to The American Thinker magazine, Molina was seriously punished for her revelations, as well as objecting to Castro's fetal stem-cell research program on the grounds of conscience.

In the end, she lost her job, her parliament position, her livelihood and everything she'd worked for.

"Last December, she tried to leave Cuba to visit her Argentinian son, his wife and their children," the Thinker reported. "There was a showdown at the Argentinian Embassy and much to its disgrace, the Argentines refused to give her a visa, shoving her back to Castro's waiting agents on the outside. Nothing has been heard from her since."

Dr. Molina was not alone in decrying the shabby state of medical care inflicted on ordinary Cubans under Castro. The American Thinker cited a Cuban source that took on the issue head-on.

Wrote the Cuban source, babalublog.com "Every single time the island of Cuba and Fidel Castro's revolution are covered anywhere in the media, one of the points always mentioned is Cuba's free healthcare. You can practically time it. If it's in print, you get the lead issue in the first and second paragraph, a mention of Fidel Castro or one of his cronies in the third paragraph, and then the plug for the lauded free healthcare available to Cubans in the fourth. I don’t think I've ever read an article about Castro or Cuba where the 'healthcare' isn’t mentioned.

"Every single Castro supporter clings to this healthcare thing like it is some kind of holy grail. In a debate, the fact that Cuba has the most political prisoners in the world is ignored. The fact that Cubans on the island lack even the most basic of necessities is ignored. Tourism apartheid is ignored. Everything is ignored save for the free healthcare and 100% literacy.

"Of course, none of these 'free healthcare!' cheerleaders have ever been to a Cuban hospital. They've never been to a Cuban clinic. Hospitals and clinics serving the average Cuban, that is."

The writer then published photographs showing cockroach-infested hospital rooms: "Cockroaches. Twenty-seven of them to be exact. All swept together after having been squashed by patients and patrons of El Hospital Clinico Quirurgico de la Habana."

Other photos showed a hospital interior that would be shut down in the U.S. because of its shockingly unsanitary conditions.

"Well," wrote the source, "this is just a small reality of Castro's lauded healthcare in Cuba. This is a hospital in Havana, one Castro once called 'one of the most modern and best ones in the country.' The hospital is in the nation's capital and the most populated city in the country. Imagine the conditions of hospitals in smaller cities or rural areas."

Moreover "this is not a hospital that caters to foreigners. This is a hospital strictly for the Cuban people. Foreigners are treated quite differently and their facilities are state of the art and, at least, sanitary.

The photos, taken by two journalists, María Elena Morejón and Carlos Wotzkow, can be accessed through babalublog.com. Wrote the source, "I urge each and every one of you to check the ... photographs so that next time, when some Fidel-loving apologist mentions Cuba's free healthcare, you remember what they're really talking about: the myth of Cuba's vaunted healthcare system."

JimW · Post by **JimW** » Sat Jun 30, 2007 8:13 am

I know a man who said that Cuba was God's kingdom come to earth. Funny, he didn't choose to live there...

JeffH · Post by **JeffH** » Sat Jun 30, 2007 8:18 am

The USA is ranked 37th in health care.
Cuba 39th.

Who cares if they are communist if what they are doing is working....and by that I mean that the people get health care, unlike here. As a person without health insurance, this is a big deal to me.

Newsgrouper · Post by **Newsgrouper** » Sat Jun 30, 2007 8:29 am

Jeff,
Although some in America do not have health insurance, EVERYONE has health care. American hospitals cannot refuse medical care to anyone. It's the law of the land. A doctor firend tells me that the only diference for him is he writes generic prescriptions for insured patients (to keep their co-pays low) but writes non-generic prescriptions for uninsured patients (they have no co-pay).

JimW · Post by **JimW** » Sat Jun 30, 2007 8:40 am

For those who care to see it, the full WHO 'World Health Report 2000' is here - http://www.who.int/whr/2000/en/whr00_en.pdf.

roster · Post by **roster** » Sat Jun 30, 2007 8:47 am

Thanks Newsgrouper for taking the time to make that post.

I have called on Cuban-American business owners in the greater Miami area for years and I can imagine they will be infuriated if they ever view "Sicko". They know the truth from their friends and relatives who were not able to "escape" from Cuba.

Babette · Post by **Babette** » Sat Jun 30, 2007 10:29 am

rooster wrote:
tillymarigold wrote:................
Cuba is also the country that does the most humanitarian medical work, ............
Preposterous. There was a PBS program dealing with voluntary medical work about two years ago. Regarding doctors and other health professionals traveling out of their country to do voluntary work, U.S. doctors do more of this than all other countries combined. Maybe Cuba does more than their share, but they were not mentioned on the program.

Take it from me - American medical personnel donating two weeks' vacation to "play" in third world countries is not changing anyone's life. My father is an MD and he's just SICKENED by these so-called "do gooders" who make damn sure they get their faces on TV while they brag about their idiot vacations in Guatemala.

My sister did several years in Guatemala with the Peace Corps. Our father went down to visit her a couple of times. The clueless American "do gooders" down there are damn near as polluting as the trash the so called "first world" has hauled in and left there for the local population to figure out. My father barely restrained himself from slapping these fat-assed jerks he met down there doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

Oh yeah, the water purification system sent there by the Belgians (more lovely do-gooders...)? With no instructions? Sat there for five years cluttering up the place, until my sister and another chick got there with stupid USAID and attempted to put it together. Luckily my sister was an engineer. I never did hear if she got it running, however. You'd think if she did, I would have heard.

Clueless. Freakin' clueless. Don't give your money to these jerks. And if I have to watch another freakin' TV show about some idiot PLASTIC SURGEON flying down there to cure 1 FREAKIN' KID of a freakin' split palate, I'm gonna throw up. BTW, no one dies of a split palate. They don't. They lived for centuries with that.
B.

Mask

Additional Comments: Equipment isn't correct, S9 ASV w/H5i

'Sicko' - Sleep Apnea patient is filmed

'Sicko' - Sleep Apnea patient is filmed

Reprinted from NewsMax.com