Industry-Led Smear Campaign Against SiCKO Makes Its Way To Drudge

[Hissyspit]

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/07/21/health-care-drudge

Industry-Led Smear Campaign Against SiCKO Makes Its Way To Drudge

Currently atop the Drudge Report is a gigantic ad by “Health Care America,” which states, “In America you wait in line to see a movie. In government-run healthcare systems, you wait to see a doctor”:

http://www.imgred.com/

The ad is part of the industry-led smear campaign against Michael Moore’s movie SiCKO. The group is “financed in part by pharmaceutical and hospital companies.” Its Advisory Board includes President Bush’s former HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson. In June, the organization “staged a conference call that drew nearly 20 reporters from around the country,” with the purpose of discussing “what Michael Moore left out of his movie.”

Additionally, the PR firm MultiVu is distributing a “fake news video” smearing SiCKO. The firm receives funding from Health Care America.

These industry-funded organizations attacking Moore argue that the United States has the best health care system in the world. But in reality, the United States is behind in preventing asthma-related deaths, vaccinating children against polio, and providing flu shots to seniors. Americans also, on average, die at a younger age compared to the average age of death of comparable nations. Yet health spending “per capita in the United States is much higher than in other countries — at least 24% higher than in the next highest spending countries, and over 90% higher than in many other countries that we would consider global competitors.”

[Selatius]

1. They may have wait times in Canada, but they don't in France, ranked NUMBER 1 by the WHO.

They can scream and holler about Canada, but they won't bother challenging the French where they beat the world.

[bluestateguy]

2. There is something worse than waiting in line for health care

It's called getting no health care at all. Or having to beg an insurance company to authorize payment for a life-saving treatment.

[Hissyspit]

4. A simple basic truth. And yet the public will fall for it being ignored?

The health care companies have for so long gotten away with scamming people and having everything their own way that people just accept it as normal.

[Dogmudgeon]

3. Do you smell that? It's the smell of FEAR.

--p!

[malaise]

7. Bingo n/t

[Dogmudgeon]

9. Yeah, but I have no bingo cards left

I didn't have medical coverage from the early 1990s until 10 months ago, when I finally qualified for medical assistance. (There was a period of about a year, around 2000, when I was covered, but even then the company stiffed me out of $7000 for a colonoscopy, the same procedure Bush got done for free yesterday.)

In that time, a chronic medical problem I have went from a minor annoyance to a disabling degenerative condition with chronic nerve pain. If I'd had coverage, it would have been easy to treat before it got bad. Now I need some major surgery, reconstruction, and I may lose the use of the muscles in the left half of my face and neck.

Actually, I am more hopeful than that, and my prognosis is good. But in a civilized country, this would have been unthinkable.

So -- let 'em sweat. Single Payer all the way, with mandatory prison time for misbehavior AND in the event a client dies due to refusal-to-treat.

--p!

[Yael]

8. Indeddy it is!

On Faux news this morning, they were clamoring on and on about Dems trying to "sneak in socialized medicine".

That meme is so last year.

We need to get the word out that single-payer (Canada, Japan, Australia) is NOT Socialized medicine (UK, France).

[chelaque liberal]

5. Not having to wait in line to see a doctor in the US is total Bull.

I am a nurse who has always worked in hospitals. I have heard the story over and over from patients about how long it took to get an appointment. I believe my own mother's death might have at least been postponed if she hadn't been shuffled from one specialist to another, with 4 to 6 week waits between appointments, before a diagnosis was made.

[Vinca]

6. Exactly. I've waited 6 months for a mammogram . . . and that's

when I could afford insurance (which didn't, incidently, pay for the mammogram).

[annabanana]

11. My HMO has 1 (ONE) endocrinologist who works, in rotation

through 4 different offices. She is at "our" office on Tuesdays from 1-4. Ask me how many weeks it takes for us to get an appointment.

[Hissyspit]

10. .

[Hissyspit]

12. .