The lovely folks over at CNN decided to see if the claims in Michael Moore’s SiCKO were accurate. I’ll admit I was wondering this as well, as Bowling for Columbine was more than a little hedgy and there were rumblings of problems in Fahrenheit 9/11, though those were easily explained away. Much to my pleasant surprise, the movie is accurate from top to bottom. The only issue is, obviously, occasional omission.

Again, that’s true. The United States spends more than 15 percent of its GDP on health care — no other nation even comes close to that number. France spends about 11 percent, and Canadians spend 10 percent.

Like Moore, we also found that more money does not equal better care. Both the French and Canadian systems rank in the Top 10 of the world’s best health-care systems, according to the World Health Organizationexternal link. The United States comes in at No. 37. The rankings are based on general health of the population, access, patient satisfaction and how the care’s paid for.

Naturally, the problem was leaving things out. The film has extremely rose-colored glasses when it comes to look at Canada, Germany, France, and England. Obviously nothing’s perfect and Moore’s point is not that things are flawless elsewhere. Just that it’s a better system. While the pundits and squawkboxes in America like to act like if we go to socialized medical care then communism and the collapse of civilization are right around the corner.

It isn’t the case, though. After all, those nations are ahead of us on the world health scale. Obviously the complaint is that “well that’s only because so many people are without care” and that’s the point. With our quality of care, our advancements in medicine, if we just fixed the state of our “insurance” debacle we’d be up on top of the scale. Moore’s giving us a way to make that happen.