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Hey Health Care Lobby: This "Michael Moore is Fat" Line Won't Work

Russell Shaw
Posted July 14, 2007 | 07:30 PM (EST)

The overly profitable, greedy and fee-obsessed health lobby and their political allies have adapted a new defense against charges leveled against them in the Michael Moore movie, "Sicko."

Crudely put, the meme goes like this. Who is Michael Moore to criticize our health care system when he's fat?

I actually saw a newspaper cartoon last weekend featuring a grossly oversized (even for him) Moore, with many empty backs of junk food at his feet, questioning his legitimacy on this whole health-care matter.

Free Republic is even "weighing in [ http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1862101/posts ]."

Last Thursday former Arkansas Governor and current hopeful Republican Presidential nominee Mike Huckabee sounded a similar tone [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/13/AR2007071300481.html ]. "Frankly, Michael Moore is an example of why the health care system costs so much in this country. He clearly is one of the reasons that we have a very expensive system," said Huckabee, who added that his health care costs significantly less now that he has lost 110 pounds.

Well, good on ya, Huck, but tell me this. What does your weight - or Michael Moore's for that matter - have to do with the fact that more than 40 million Americans have no health insurance and that insurance companies, big pharma and hospitals are hitting us with outrageous charges, multiple billing, and multiple fees every time we blink within a hospital or doctor's office?

Mike Huckabee, do you really think that the last time some health insurance company bean-counter denied a health-care claim, they checked to see the size of Michael Moore's girth?

Of course not.

A "weightier" question might ask why so many obese Americans aren't getting the medical care they could be if our health-care system wasn't so profit-oriented.

And as to Michael Moore's qualifications to make movies that depict these huge gaps in our health-care system:

It's not like Michael Moore is making fitness or diet tapes - efforts where his weight might raise eyebrows about his legitimacy to talk about these issues.

No, he has chosen to make movies - the latest about our broken health care system. Moore has every damn right to make films about the injustices I described.

Copyright © 2007 HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/russell-shaw/hey-health-care-lobby-th_b_56254.html [with (some excellent) comments]