SiCKO and Health Care - Great essay by Mark Harris

[ProudDad]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_mark_har_070712_sicko_and_the_health.htm

"Give Moore credit. With SiCKO he has overnight taken the proposal for single-payer, government sponsored national health care from the fringes of national political debate to center stage. In doing so he brands for-profit health care as immoral, and calls for the elimination of insurance companies from the health care system. It's a tour de force exposition of the perversity of turning health care into a commodity. More positively, SiCKO is an exposition of social democratic values that say society has an obligation to care for people in time of need. In this sense, SiCKO is less a movie about health care "reform" than a bold and brilliant vision of what our society could be, if only human needs came before profit."

<clip - and now a word from a couple nay-sayers from the right-wing>

"More SiCKO backlash comes from writer Gen LaGreca, whose viewpoint essay for the Bloomington, Illinois Pantagraph (July 1, 2007) expresses incredulity that Moore thinks people have actually a "right" to health care "simply because they need it." LaGreca compares a national health care system to the government dispensing Belgian chocolates and filet mignon to the public under a mythical state "Foodcare" program. If the health care system has deteriorated, she says, it's because of the "despotism" of "crippling regulation." For this libertarian writer it seems that the revolt against tyranny begins with the rallying cry: No One Has the Right to Health Care! It's apparently enough in some circles now to just club the poor, huddled masses to death with your barbarian ideology."

<clip - and now a word from your neighborhood libertarian loonie>

"Sometimes this game of political obfuscation involves catchy soundbites. Take Michael F. Cannon, director of health policy studies for the libertarian CATO Institute, who in 2004 told Fox News host Bill O'Reilly: "The problem is not that we have 43 or 45 million Americans without health insurance. The problem is that we have 280 million Americans without health savings accounts."

<clip - and our "top tier" Dem candidate?>

"Executive profiteering. Uninsured millions. Rising premiums for policies that increasingly offer fewer benefits. Is Moore wrong for declaring this reality immoral? Is he such a radical for arguing that insurance companies should have zero role in health care? Actually, the answer to the latter question is yes. The leading Democratic candidates for the party's presidential nomination, John Edwards, Hilary Clinton, and Barack Obama, all seek to set the health reform bar low enough that the insurance companies responsible for the current broken system remain a part of the system. But should we really expect different from politicians who say they're opposed to the Administration's war in Iraq, then reject an immediate pullout and repeatedly vote the money necessary to continue that war?"


And much, much more...

HR 676 -- call your congresscritter...

http://www.house.gov/conyers/news_hr676_2.htm

[BornagainDUer]

1. Moore's movie, as he said at the beginning of it, is not about

people with health insurance as much as it is about people who have it but are chiseled out of its benefits when needed.

[cutlassmama]

2. Moore was so right on with his movie Sicko

Until a person gets really sick they just don't understand what he's saying. I'm one of those people. Even with Medicare and Blue/Cross Blue Shield my co-pays for my 23 medications a month are literally eating my lunch. Also, BC/BS won't cover many things so I'm grateful to have Medicare also. I pity the people that don't have it and are truly sick.

[Timbuk3]

3. FUBAR

OK, so I went to "Sicko" last night. The review are out, and it's as good as they say it is. A lot less "political", in that Moore doesn't just "bash Bush" (who surely isn't far enough down in the polls for my liking, yet, but what are ya gonna do?) but he also points out that Hillary's done pretty well in raking in the bucks from those who'd prefer to see us all go bankrupt over healthcare since she stopped promoting reform, too.

One message from the film that's worth repeating is, "Hopeless people don't vote." I pretty much agree that things are so fucked up that it goes a long way toward explaining why voter turnout in the US is so low. Think about it. We spend our lives in debt. "A college degree is necessary for success" is a mantra in America, and so college costs have risen while (especially under the Bush regime) government assistance for college tuition has fallen dramatically. Have you ever bought a car? There's the sales tax and license, yearly renewal, lots of interest on loans (for most people) and, of course, the insurance premiums. Try getting to work without a car in most of America, with our "emphasis" (/snark off) on mass transit. Social security isn't enough to retire on, any more, so a fortunate few put money into 401(k)s and IRAs and other investments for retirement, but many of us "buy" our house on 30 year installment plans (with compound interest we pay 2 1/2 to 4 times what our house is "worth"), and then work the rest of our lives to "cover our monthly bills." Hmmmph. In most companies for the first 5 years on the job you only get 2 weeks of vacation a year and these days many people "jump jobs" every 5 years or so since raises are so sparse (especially in comparison to CEO salaries) so we never really do approach the European standard of 5 or 6 weeks vacation a year. We are, for most if not all of our lives, "indentured servants" to a capitalistic society run amok.

But what's sad is those who work, or keep working beyond retirement, "for the benefits", only to find out that those benefits are worthless. It seems that the insurance companies (they really are evil) pay people huge bonuses for being the one with the most "turn downs" for reasons you won't believe. One woman was given the go-ahead for expensive surgery only to be retroactively denied because she "lied" about a "pre-existing condition". She'd had a yeast infection and didn't include it on the form when she signed up.

So, we work during the prime of our lives to pay off our houses, save for retirement, and (we're told to believe) because "the benefits" are so great. "I don't know what I'd do without employer sponsored health care" is a mantra, these days. Problem is, if you're like me, you spend more on the insurance than they pay if you just go to the doctor and pay cash, assuming you'd get the same rates from your doctor that the insurance companies get, which you don't.

And then, when we retire, we lose our emplyee sponsored health insurance and if we're not lucky/old enough to be covered by medicaremedicaid it takes only one "catastrophic illness" (think cancer or a heart attack, diseases that strike roughly half of Americans) to wipe out our life's savings.

Moore failed to mention that the GOP giveaway to big pharma was passed on the weekend in the middle of the night, and after the WH lied about it's cost to win votes, but he did at least mention that it's often costing senior citizens more for their drugs, and a recurring theme is that we're all over medicated, especially as we grow older.

The movie made me feel a bit like I was Truman in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truman_Show The Truman Show". This statement from "The Truman Show" is reminiscent of "Hopeless people don't vote": "We accept the reality of the world with which we're presented."

As Americans we're simply told to hate the French, and we do, even though the standard of living of the average Frenchman is far superior to ours. We're told that Canadians are a bunch of losers who wait months for "emergency surgery" when that's a blatant lie, and we believe it. For some reason we don't hate the British for having uinversal health coverage, but I suppose that's because they helped us in our illegal invasion of Iraq...

Anyway, back to "The Truman Show", in many ways I feel like he must have felt when he first walked through the door leading out of the massive soundstage they constructed as his "life". I'm actually thinking about dropping my health coverage, since I"m still (relatively) young and healthy, and I have no guarantee it'll do me any good if I have a "catastrophic illness" anyway, given the number of people who are paid those huge bonuses for disqualifying people. I mean, what if I forgot to put that ingrown toenail down on some form somewhere, and someone finds out about it? I'm definitely not going on any drugs prescribed by a "doctor" who (more than likely) gets kick backs from big pharma. Screw that. How about we promote eating good, preventive medicine (like those "socialist" countries that have national health care) and a little get-out-from-under-your-bed-you've-been-scared-by-"terrorists"-long-enough exercize?

Jesus threw the money changes out of the Temple. Seems to me the insurance industry needs to be shut down, completely, and the banks need to be regulated, heavily. Capitalism has it's merits but as a be-all, end-all system it's as flawed as any and needs to be supplemented by something other than "he who has the most wins" once in a while, and I don't see any reason to put off starting to look for areas where it's gone wrong. This is one of them.

So there ya go. That's what I thought about after I went to "Sicko".

[area51]

4. kick. (n/t)