As I have discussed here, the media and some Lefty front groups wish to create the impression that nurses in general share Michael Moore’s view of American health care. Not only does this misrepresent the position of most American nurses, it conflicts with the views of many who actually work in the socialized systems that SiCKO praises. 

Helen Evans, director of Nurses for Reform, is much more representative of nurses in general. Moreover, she has spent more than twenty years providing patient care in Great Britain’s National Health Service. Thus, she knows what she’s talking about when she writes, in the Chicago Tribune:

For free hospital care, Britons pay an awfully high price. Just ask the nearly 1 million British patients on waiting lists for treatment. Or the 200,000 Britons currently waiting merely to get on NHS waiting lists. Mr. Moore must have missed those folks.

Evans goes on to point out that such patients aren’t all that Moore has studiously overlooked:

When it comes to keeping patients healthy, NHS hospitals are notoriously unfit. After admittance to state hospitals, more than 10 percent of patients contract infections and illnesses that they did not have prior to arrival. And according to the Malnutrition Advisory Group, up to 60 percent of NHS patients are undernourished during inpatient stays.

How do patients deal with this? Those who can afford it go to the private health care market:

Today, more than 6.5 million people have private medical insurance, 6 million have cash plans, 8 million pay out-of-pocket for a range of complimentary therapies, and 250,000 self-fund each year for private surgery. Millions more opt for private dentistry, ophthalmics and long-term care.

So, while Michael Moore, the media, and various Lefty front groups attempt to trick the American public into accepting socialized medicine, the nurses and the patients of the NHS say such systems stink.

Who should we believe?