Just how leftist is Michael Moore on health care as he promoted his new "Sicko" documentary? Time found out:
TIME: Of the declared presidential candidates, down to the Dennis Kucinich level, say, who do you think has the best health-care plan? Including Kucinich? We could include him.
Michael Moore: Then Kucinich, but he doesn’t go far enough. He supports what he’s calling a single- payer nonprofit plan, but from my read, it would still allow [private] entities to control things, as opposed to the government. What’s wrong with the government? The right wing and the G.O.P. have done a wonderful job brainwashing people that government doesn’t work, and then, as Al Franken says, they get elected and proceed to prove the point. [Laughs.]
And then, this:
TIME: You also speak rhapsodically about the French and Cuban systems and travel to
Cuba/>/>, where you interview Che Guevara’s daughter. France/>, Cuba/>/>, Che. Are you going out of your way to annoy the right? Michael Moore: I give people more credit than the media and the political machine running this country do. The story line is: France, bad; France, cowards. What crime did
France/>/> commit? We wouldn’t have had this country without their support in the Revolution. They gave us that statue that sits out in New York/> Harbor/>/>. They responded immediately after 9/11. And they remain eternally grateful for what we did during World War II. As for
Cuba/>/>, yes, when I’ve got a film crew there, they’re going to show us their best. But there’s a reason the World Health Organization ranks their health-care system [among] the best in the Third World and that people from Latin America/> come there for their health care. There’s also a reason Cubans live on average a month longer than we do. I’m not trumpeting Castro or his regime. I just want to say to fellow Americans, “C’mon, we’re the United States/>/>! If they can do this, we can do it.”
