News: Mixed messages

I'm puzzled at Michael Moore giving $12,000 to help the founder of Moorewatch.com pay for his wife's medical bills, and then presumably using the moment as a 'gotcha' opportunity to criticize U.S. health care (keep in mind I haven't seen the film yet - just getting the story from the news reports).

It's not that Michael Moore isn't being generous here - this is a very generous act, and the Moorewatch.com guy is grateful, as well he should be. But this action is pretty much antithetical to the socialized health care wonderlands of Canada and Cuba (which may or may not be wonderlands at all, depending on whom you ask). Why doesn't Michael Moore, for his act of charity, just give a random needy family $12,000 and then put that in the film? Because that, correct me if I'm wrong, is what Canada-style or Cuba-style health care makes you do - you pay taxes to pay for health care for random people.

You can't have it both ways, methinks. I'd love to be able to help people of my choice (or, as in Michael's case, that I would indirectly profit from helping), but socialized health care does not allow such a choice. In essence, as Marko relates in a similar post, the government is forcing me to pay to cure another random person's sickness (and if I don't pay, I get sent to prison). Whether you agree or disagree with such a policy, you have to admit it doesn't bear much resemblance to charity.

That's not to say the U.S. system is perfect - obviously, it's far from it. But mimicking other countries' policies seems to always have unintended consequences...