The Salt Lake Tribune, July 1, 2007

The "Sicko" battle is on!

    One thing you won't find in "Sicko," Michael Moore's documentary excoriating the health-insurance industry, is any screen time given to industry officials defending themselves.

    Why should Moore give his soapbox to well-paid executives who can afford to buy airtime and P.R. muscle to do their own spinning?

    The spinning has begun, with quick rotations by so-called "independent" think tanks whose corporate ties are suspicious at best.

    One group, the Pacific Research Institute (PRI), sent out a "fact sheet" refuting Moore's depiction of Canada's single-payer health system. "The reality is that in Canada health care is rationed; there are long waiting lists for doctors; Canadians have limited access to the latest equipment and drugs; and the health outcomes from many diseases such as cancer are inferior when compared to the U.S.," the press release says.

    PRI claims its mission is "to champion freedom, opportunity and personal responsibility for all individuals by advancing free-market policy solutions." However, SourceWatch - a Web site run by the Center for Media and Democracy - points out in its entry for PRI that the think tank has received some of its funding from Pfizer, PhRMA (the lobbying arm of the drug industry) and the Lilly Endowment (a foundation bankrolled by stock in Eli Lilly and Company).

    Another organization, the Moving Picture Institute, has started a Web site, FreeMarketCure.com, which purports to be "America's one-stop answer to the dangerous fantasy that the government can and should manage your health care."

    The Moving Picture Institute has supported a few right-leaning documentaries of its own: "Indoctrinate U," which is billed as an exposé of liberal bias in academia, and "Mine Your Own Business," whose posters promise a look at "the dark side of environmentalism" in its chronicle of a mine project in Romania. (SourceWatch notes that "Mine Your Own Business" was funded by Gabriel Resources Ltd., a Canadian mining company that was trying to open the mine.)