In America, our focus on profit has basically created an adversarial relationship between all of the major components of the system – hospitals, clinics, insurance companies, doctors and patients. They look at one another with suspicion and distrust because money and not quality care is the chief, if unstated, motivation. Hired guns are brought in by insurance companies to sniff out ways to get out of paying claims, or, once the claim has been paid, how to get it back. There is good reason for us to distrust these companies. Their concern is definitely not the patient, but their corporate profit margin. This breeds a situation which is dangerous to our national well-being. And, I'm not even talking about the huge and growing number of totally uninsured. The people Moore interviewed from Great Britain, France and Canada were thrilled with the availability of affordable universal health care. This is the challenge that we must take on. The longer we wait, more of our citizens will fall through the cracks and conclude that their government does not care about them. They will be right.
While this isn't what I'd call a fun movie, it is definitely worth seeing and discussing. Sicko effectively contrasts what others elsewhere take for granted with our situation here at home. How exactly Congress and the White House can disentangle themselves from the sticky tentacles of the pharmaceutical and insurance companies is the $64,000 question. I guarantee that it will not happen without a lot of noise from their constituencies. That means you. Unless you have a very large and secure trust fund, none of us are exempt from this nationwide crisis of epic proportions. The sooner all of us realize that the problem is much deeper even than the many millions of uninsured, we will stand up and demand change. This system does is not working – for anyone. We are all at risk. If you don't believe me, I dare you to get sick and see what happens. Sicko has laid the groundwork in this debate. Now, it's up to us. Thank you, Michael Moore!
Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which exists for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. We aim to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Electronic (computerized) voting systems are simply antithetical to democratic principles.
CER set up a lending library to achieve the widespread distribution of the DVD Invisible Ballots: A temptation for electronic vote fraud. Within eighteen months, the project had distributed over 3200 copies across the country and beyond. CER now concentrates on group showings, OpEd pieces, articles, reviews, interviews, discussion sessions, networking, conferences, anything that promotes awareness of this critical problem. Joan has been Election Integrity Editor for OpEdNews since December, 2005.
I don't remember being in a movie theater before when the entire audience bust into applause at the last line of the movie, but it happened with SICKO.
We all know people that hate Michael Moore. My sister is one of them. But my sister also thinks Ann Coulter is a "reasonable" person. My sister is an idiot. But I can't even imagine Ann Coulter going to this movie and not at least give a "thumb-up".
And how simple. I mean really, what more does Michael do than walk around with a camera? No sets, actors, maybe a prop or two and Za-zam! here we are! Of course it's harder than that and Michael has talent for making it look easier than is most likely really is, but mostly that's us in those lenses. Candid camera on steroids in the hands of a man of Michael's talent.
Seeing ourselves up on that screen brings it home. Those aren't actors, those are us and hence I can understand why some people hate Mr. Moore. If you worked for the corporate health care industry in this country, you might not want to go see this movie, the quilt you'll feel on the way home might force you to do the right thing or drive your car off a cliff. (Make sure your policy is paid - not that it would help, as you already know.)
This is a "break though" film. I think it's going to be real hard for Michael to do any more films like this himself. What politician, (other than the few un-corrupted or the stupid), corporate employee, certainly not any managers or CEO's would allow Mr. Moore to show them as they really are? I think Michael's going to have to use shills, other talented candid-camera investigative journalism types to continue in this way. If indeed that is what he wishes to do.
I have always enjoyed Mike's work, and unlike my idiot sister (after all what award has Ann Coulter ever won?) feel good for him and hope he continues to shed light on us. Warts and all.
Ah, ahem, hey Mike, I hear you have some questions about 9/11 ...?
by
Mr M (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 18 diaries, 1761 comments)
on Sunday, July 1, 2007 at 11:26:46 PM
I have never seen so many people in a public place so desperate to take some kind of action. This film can change our world, but folks need to know what to do at the moment they're exiting the theater.
I've found three websites of groups working toward change. There's a flyer from SickoCure.org which can be printed and given to folks at the theater or left there for people to pick up. There are surely more groups working to fix this disastrous system of ours.
I am a yank X pat in Scotland and over and over I am grateful for the national health service, you are so right. BUT in future please refer to us as Great Britain, or U.K. Don't forget there's Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. I know, but we are not England. Keep up the wisdom.
Davy
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davy (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 240 comments)
on Monday, July 2, 2007 at 2:53:39 AM
One thing that really surprised me about the health care debate is the number of people who are GLAD that other people are not getting proper health care. They feel that dying unattended in the middle of an ER is an appropriate punishment for not being rich enough to buy your way in. What is making people so mean-spirited?
by
lwarman (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 61 comments)
on Monday, July 2, 2007 at 3:59:43 PM
The lady who once shared an office with me, lost her oldest son in a car accident. Now, her youngest daughter, some-how opened the wrong door, thinking it was the closet. It was not. It was the 16 wooden stairs that took her to the basement. There was no cushion on the stairs. Her daughter is now in a rehab facility and will be a paraplegic the rest of her life. This happened months ago. Her head hit each wooden board as she fell. The accident is a catastrophic, not only in reality, but also financially.
Our oldest daughter at 17 months, climbed into her bed the wrong way and the half inch slip severed her spinal cord and killed her instantly. We are still struggling to get over that, 30 plus years later. Had the accident been just a bit different, we would have been in the same situation as my friend.
At the very least, our nation absolutely has to have a catastrophic illness/accident policy.
We haven't seen SICKO, but it is on our agenda. Over my 34 years of elementary counseling, ... accidents like this are rare but not so, ... . It happened to us; it happened to my "X-WIFE," as her kindergartners used to think she was.
"Mrs. Delaney, do you sleep in the same bed as Mr. Hill." Hee, Hee! It's funny, but her life now has been forever changed. It is better for their daughter not to get a dime in job payment, hide it, and let her insurance policy cover it all.
Now, ... if only Moore would take on the dental system. I've spent enough on my teeth, that I could buy the best Kia made. I should NOT have taken the advice of our money hungry dentists and made it a policy that every tooth that crumbles is pulled, no matter if the dentist refused to. Oral surgeon for each tooth pulled 200 dollars. But dentists are NOT in the business to pull teeth. Right now, I am waiting on my second set of crowns for the same two teeth - cost? 1300 dollars. OOPE for me is 700 bucks. My max dental coverage a year is 1500 dollars - a root canal and several visits with the hygienist.
by
Dale Hill (58 articles, 0 quicklinks, 102 diaries, 347 comments)
on Monday, July 2, 2007 at 4:40:20 PM
I loved that Mike didn't preach. He just showed us how our system screws people, and how these other societies, some wealthy, one not, had all decided that the health of even the least member of their society was the responsibility of all. It was very compelling filmmaking.
by
Dave Lindorff (357 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 164 comments)
on Monday, July 2, 2007 at 9:18:40 PM
I keep thinking: The critics of Michael Moore apparently don't like this idea. What would this country be like if the fire department operated on the same principle as our health care industry, i.e., always needing to think about maximizing profits. When you call the fire department because your house is on fire, the fire department would try to think of ways to avoid responding so they could maximize their profits.
CK
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Joan Brunwasser (164 articles, 3538 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 634 comments)
on Monday, July 2, 2007 at 9:39:57 PM
too much of a thing held by one is not good for the whole
Hi Joan,
yes, everything's skewed.
i suspect that the Constitution doesn't say this but it came to be-- personal greed is the highest purpose of the people of the nation.
the flag of what this nation has become should be green with a $ sign; with 50 of them.
"making profits" got to be the national motto, high purpose, etc making corporations 'persons' making 'shareholders' the highest worthies among us making greed the moral imperative 'taking', 'getting', 'getting more,' 'acquiring' -- the most admired behavior that is what the Republican Party stands for.
Free to; to have the Right to-- 'to get', to have, to keep.
'Property Rights'.
But as does happen,-- skews, distortions,' going too far' occurs.
'Give us an inch, we'll try for a mile; '
"Ah that a man's reach should exceed his grasp Or what's a Heaven for?" (?Browning. Whitman?)
The only thing is---- Too much of a thing held by one, is not good for the whole.
What goes up WILL thank goodness, come down.
One must consider the whole; ones community. It is folly not to. For those who don't I just wish the Fall would happen soon . All the greedy bastards who have been allowed to take too much. They must give back. A lot.
We need to have agreed upon limits on how much of the resources of the Whole any ONE from the community can have, take, control.
Interpreters of AynRand think "no limits" I say they are mistaken. There must be SOME limits that apply on every member of the 'community', whatever form of community that is.
So much is waaay out of hand that we are imploding, failing from within.
We can do better. Some are trying. some are coming together and trying. The Social Forum looks promising. But the entrenched are hideous opponents, twisted, protecting their turf and trying to keep everything as it has been. Sicko!
BRS
by
Joan Brunwasser (164 articles, 3538 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 634 comments)
on Tuesday, July 3, 2007 at 6:40:32 AM
Who's Really 'Sicko' By DAVID GRATZER June 28, 2007; Page A13 -Wall Street Journal
Toronto
'I haven't seen 'Sicko,'" says Avril Allen about the new Michael Moore documentary, which advocates socialized medicine for the United States. The film, which has been widely viewed on the Internet, and which will officially open in the U.S. and Canada on Friday, has been getting rave reviews. But Ms. Allen, a lawyer, has no plans to watch it. She's just too busy preparing to file suit against Ontario's provincial government about its health-care system next month.
Her client, Lindsay McCreith, would have had to wait for four months just to get an MRI, and then months more to see a neurologist for his malignant brain tumor. Instead, frustrated and ill, the retired auto-body shop owner traveled to Buffalo, N.Y., for a lifesaving surgery. Now he's suing for the right to opt out of Canada's government-run health care, which he considers dangerous. [Sicko]
Ms. Allen figures the lawsuit has a fighting chance: In 2005, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that "access to wait lists is not access to health care," striking down key Quebec laws that prohibited private medicine and private health insurance.
In the U.S., 83 House Democrats voted for a bill in 1993 calling for single-payer health care. That idea collapsed with HillaryCare and since then has existed on the fringes of the debate -- winning praise from academics and pressure groups, but remaining largely out of the political discussion. Mr. Moore's documentary intends to change that, exposing millions to his argument that American health care is sick and socialized medicine is the cure.
It's not simply that Mr. Moore is wrong. His grand tour of public health care systems misses the big story: While he prescribes socialism, market-oriented reforms are percolating in cities from Stockholm to Saskatoon.
Mr. Moore goes to London, Ontario, where he notes that not a single patient has waited in the hospital emergency room more than 45 minutes. "It's a fabulous system," a woman explains. In Britain, he tours a hospital where patients marvel at their free care. A patient's husband explains: "It's not America." Humorously, Mr. Moore finds a cashier dispensing money to patients (for transportation). In France, a doctor explains the success of the health-care system with the old Marxist axiom: "You pay according to your means, and you receive according to your needs."
It's compelling material -- I know because, born and raised in Canada, I used to believe in government-run health care. Then I was mugged by reality.
Consider, for instance, Mr. Moore's claim that ERs don't overcrowd in Canada. A Canadian government study recently found that only about half of patients are treated in a timely manner, as defined by local medical and hospital associations. "The research merely confirms anecdotal reports of interminable waits," reported a national newspaper. While people in rural areas seem to fare better, Toronto patients receive care in four hours on average; one in 10 patients waits more than a dozen hours.
This problem hit close to home last year: A relative, living in Winnipeg, nearly died of a strangulated bowel while lying on a stretcher for five hours, writhing in pain. To get the needed ultrasound, he was sent by ambulance to another hospital.
In Britain, the Department of Health recently acknowledged that one in eight patients wait more than a year for surgery. Around the time Mr. Moore was putting the finishing touches on his documentary, a hospital in Sutton Coldfield announced its new money-saving linen policy: Housekeeping will no longer change the bed sheets between patients, just turn them over. France's system failed so spectacularly in the summer heat of 2003 that 13,000 people died, largely of dehydration. Hospitals stopped answering the phones and ambulance attendants told people to fend for themselves.
With such problems, it's not surprising that people are looking for alternatives. Private clinics -- some operating in a "gray zone" of the law -- are now opening in Canada at a rate of about one per week.
Canadian doctors, once quiet on the issue of private health care, elected Brian Day as president of their national association. Dr. Day is a leading critic of Canadian medicare; he opened a private surgery hospital and then challenged the government to shut it down. "This is a country," Dr. Day said by way of explanation, "in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years."
Market reforms are catching on in Britain, too. For six decades, its socialist Labour Party scoffed at the very idea of private medicine, dismissing it as "Americanization." Today Labour favors privatization, promising to triple the number of private-sector surgical procedures provided within two years. The Labour government aspires to give patients a choice of four providers for surgeries, at least one of them private, and recently considered the contracting out of some primary-care services -- perhaps even to American companies.
Other European countries follow this same path. In Sweden, after the latest privatizations, the government will contract out some 80% of Stockholm's primary care and 40% of total health services, including Stockholm's largest hospital. Beginning before the election of the new conservative chancellor, Germany enhanced insurance competition and turned state enterprises over to the private sector (including the majority of public hospitals). Even in Slovakia, a former Marxist country, privatizations are actively debated.
Under the weight of demographic shifts and strained by the limits of command-and-control economics, government-run health systems have turned out to be less than utopian. The stories are the same: dirty hospitals, poor standards and difficulty accessing modern drugs and tests.
Admittedly, the recent market reforms are gradual and controversial. But facts are facts, the reforms are real, and they represent a major trend in health care. What does Mr. Moore's documentary say about that? Nothing.
Dr. Gratzer, a practicing physician licensed in Canada and the U.S. and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, is the author of "The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care" (Encounter, 2006).
NK
by
Joan Brunwasser (164 articles, 3538 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 634 comments)
on Tuesday, July 3, 2007 at 6:49:28 AM
What BS -- the horror stories in the US of those with no health insurance and those with it are much worse than any of the so-called socialized medicine countries. This is more propaganda for the health care industry -- overpaid docs, rip-off insurance and rip-off pharmaceuticals.
It is good to see the big business propaganda arm -- the Wall Street Journal -- feeling a need to respond. KZ
by
Joan Brunwasser (164 articles, 3538 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 634 comments)
on Tuesday, July 3, 2007 at 3:42:45 PM
Regardless of the "horror" stories you write of, at least all these people had access to healthcare. Michael Moore recognizes nothing is perfect and advocates that we take the best from the examples of universal healthcare and apply it within the United States. As good as the National Health Service is in the U.K., they have looked at the U.S. Medicare programme to improve their administration of healthcare in cutting overhead and paperwork.
No argument against single-payer not for profit universal healthcare has any merit as long as it excludes even one individual from access.
by
Mike Shelby (13 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 20 comments)
on Wednesday, July 4, 2007 at 8:20:39 AM
If anything Moore understates the American Situation
As one who used to have health care, found serial nightmares with it, and worse after having to drop it when costs soared past all other expenses combined, there is not even a pretend nightmare of the systems of Canada, France, or England that can hold a candle tothem.
I have not traveled to Europe, but I have met Europeans who have responded to the situation in America much as Americans did to the everyday horrors of living in Mexico.
But for America, if anything Moore understates the problem. It is not enough that there have been stories of folk whose business is to create fictitious reports so companies can deny care, or undercover agents taking pictures of disabled people at brief moments when they can manage some work.
My own challenges with disability, when lifting a hundred pounds was not a problem but lifting a paintbrush could destroy my shoulder for days, when walking a few blocks was possible, but standing still on concrete was not. I have never gotten a penny for disability, but I could arrange plenty pictures to show that the serious problems I face do not exist.
I have writhed on the floor of the Emergency Room for hours without any care at all beyond enough attention to learn where to send the thousand dollar bill for services.
I have visited the doctor who could only shake his head admitting to no ideas about how my bone disease might be helped, but still charged $250.00 for the head shake and have the insurance company say the visit was the day before the insurance kicked in, because the 90 day wait they claimed started counting from the first of the month after the month that I had been hire on the third day of. And of course that made all other doctor visits about a pre-existing condition..
I have had the company I worked for change plans every year, forcing me to look for new doctors every year, and then deny needed medicine, in each case demanding I try the cheaper non working alternatives to prove that they didn't work, before getting the right medicine. A process with much suffering that took six months, only to do the same thing again six months after that.
I have had the insurance companies actually refuse a cheaper system that delivered more of the same medicine, when the more expensive version had a fancy delivery system that did not work, and had only half the actual medicine, because there was a line in the brochure that incorrectly stated the volume in the more expensive product. A fact obvious as the size of the two containers was wildly different.
I have a friend who died last year in part because the Doctor refused to do tests on her bone cancer, insisting it was Arthritis. She stayed working in spite of huge pain and a pitiful salary almost to the very end because she could not afford to lose the job, and thus the health insurance.
Because of my problems those companies who have health insurance will not hire me as their health insurance costs alone will exceed what they can pay someone else who is younger. So I lose BOTH the insurance AND the job!
You cannot Choose your health insurance, only your employer does.
A massive bureaucracy bent on Not giving care so as to line their own pockets, spends more effort second guessing and micromanaging Doctors, than any single payer Government system that was at the very least not profiting from your damage.
The waits spent trying to see everyone are nothing to the waits spent never seeing anyone either because they won't let you or you can't afford it.
NO government system will have Taxes that come close to the $18,000 per year for just me they were charging for less care than a bad government system, particularly as that was more than half of my income.
I notice how in this article this paid professional liar of a right-wing think tank fails to note that the number of US citizens without health insurance approaches the population of Britain. Many other Americans, of course, have inadequate health care. He also fails to note that the USA was 37th in a WHO (World Health Organization) international survey. Or how the US does abysmally in infant mortality, life expectancy, cancer and heart disease rates compared to other developed countries. The condition of health care for the poor in this country is indefensible. And as usual, Wall Street Journal compassion extends only to the wealthy, just as I would expect the daily journal of the wealthy would do.
MJ
by
Joan Brunwasser (164 articles, 3538 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 634 comments)
on Tuesday, July 3, 2007 at 3:02:59 PM
What BS -- the horror stories in the US of those with no health insurance and those with it are much worse than any of the so-called socialized medicine countries. This is more propaganda for the health care industry -- overpaid docs, rip-off insurance and rip-off pharmaceuticals.
It is good to see the big business propaganda arm -- the Wall Street Journal -- feeling a need to respond.
KZ
by
Joan Brunwasser (164 articles, 3538 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 634 comments)
on Tuesday, July 3, 2007 at 3:37:39 PM
Just back from the Electoral reform Society AGM where the Director said it was 'inevitable' that we would introduce e-counting if and when we get Single Transferrable Vote voting system. Some of us aim to prove him wrong: Here is the leaflet I handed out.
I enjoyed your review of Moore's documentary. One small nit pick (grooming) however: I have a problem with the phrase the '9/11 attack' or the attack(s) on America - 9/11 murders or Manhattan murders of 9/11 will do the trick. ('Attack' seems like from outside, which Moore accepts but I don't, the inside job demolition evidence is SO overwhelming and it is vital we refuse the racist myth of external bad guys in this case (as others) for which there is NO good evidence (just evidence of some patsies being positioned).
