The Center for Medicine in the Public Interest held a reception at the National Press Club on Monday evening to preview a new film that counters, with actual patient stories, the SiCKO fiction. And they launched a new website called BigGovHealth.org to provide easy access to articles, videos, and testimonials about the costs and consequences of centralized government control over health care.

President Peter Pitts invited Canadian Shona Holmes to the reception to tell her story: She was diagnosed with a fast-growing brain tumor that was causing her to go blind; the expected survival time without treatment was less than the expected waiting time to begin treatment in Canada. So she decided to go to the Mayo Clinic for care. It was successful, and she credits Mayo with saving her vision and her life.

Her husband is working a second job to pay the bills -- as well as the taxes to pay for the Canadian universal health care system. But she is alive three years after the surgery. “Please don’t do to your health care system what we have done to ours,” she pleaded. “Otherwise, where would we go?”

The Chairman of CMPI, noted cardiologist Michael A. Weber, told the audience that he spent part of his childhood in England and, as a young boy, was told that he needed to have his tonsils removed. The physician said: “Go home, and you will receive a letter from the government telling you when and where to show up for your surgery,” he recounted. “Every day, I look at my mail for that letter to arrive,” he said. “I’m still waiting.”