OK -- Just finished watching Sicko on TMC

[abumbyanyothername]

1) I am crying. It's that sad.

2) I seriously asked my wife if she wanted to move to Paris.

3) The Labour Party MP from England is right up there with Dennis Kucinich on my hero list this week.

4) I loved many of the people in the movie. Perhaps especially the young Detroit mother who tried to bust into Canada's system.

5) I hope Mike does a movie on debt eventually, because he started making the point about half way through the movie that debt is the root cause of our disempowerment. We are indebted from the word go and accordingly we are docile. We dare not stand up to corporate interests because if we do we will be unable to pay our debts, or keep our health insurance.

[bumbum]

1. France has some of the cancer death rates in the world.

If you want to move, move, but don't move to Europe thinking you will get better treatment for anything and for god's sake don't come down with Cancer anywhere other than in the USA where you at least have a chance to survive it.

[Texasgal]

2. Oh bullshit!

You come down with cancer here in the grand OL' USA you go bankrupt!

[bumbum]

6. Oh come on. You don't actually believe that do you?

People come down with cancer every day and walk in and out of hospitals with nothing more than maybe a $2,000 to $5,000 co-pay. Now if you don't want to go to school and improve your abilites to get a GOOD job, I can't help you.

[Texasgal]

8. Are you just stupid or dense?

Seriously.

And NO... people DO NOT survive cancer without insurance. Idiot.

GET A CLUE.

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Texasgal]

15. OIh WAHHH!

Up yours buddy!

get a clue and then we'll talk.

[earth mom]

30. So when are you going to start calling Michael Moore names?

That's what you're here for, right? :eyes:

[eridani]

36. Did you realize that Michael Moore is FAT?

That obviously invalidates any reported facts in SiCKO.:sarcasm:

[abumbyanyothername]

12. btw -- Welcome to DU

:hi:

:popcorn:

[HughBeaumont]

19. Seriously, are you FUCKED?

People across the nation by the thousands are bankrupted every DAY for the crime of getting sick. There are examples on that movie. There are examples on this BOARD, one of whom died four years ago. We ALL have experienced for-profit horror stories.

Yeah, uh college education will get you a great jobZ!! Tell that to the MBAs who've been laid off in the last year, or the college educated people who are lucky enough to be employed and making the same wage they did five years ago.

Are you just massively that naive and ignorant or do you REALLY not have this whole logic or common sense thing down yet?

[Old and In the Way]

25. He's a freeper...just check his other posts of wisdom.

He's clueless on every topic point he posts. Nothing to back him up 'cept what Rush tells him to think.

[HughBeaumont]

37. A freeper who got DiGiorno'd.

Hee hee hee.

[XOKCowboy]

20. Have you seen the latest statistics about bankruptcies due to medical emergencies?

Over 80% of those are people with insurance.

Why I'm responding to your bs post I'm not sure. Just wanted to get in before the lock.

[alfredo]

When my wife got a brain tumor her insurance company dropped her

like a hot potato. They refused to pay for surgery, but failed to tell her of the refusal until after the operation and radiation treatment. She got stuck with crushing debt.

Fuck the insurance companies.


BTW, I have socialized health care and it is terrific. I go to the VA.

[DailyGrind51]

I have actually had cancer and you have no clue as to what you are talking about!

At the time (1980 - 1982), I had 100% hospitalization and 80/20% major medical through my employer's group plan and my co-pay was $75,000.

You have to stop listening to Hannity because you are clueless!

[nadinbrzezinski]

26. If you have insurance... and not all will cover you that well

I know mine will, alas it is PUBLIC... the kind I WISH you had.

You are not insured... you can kiss your life good bye

If you are insured, you MIGHT be cancelled in the middle of treatment... see Kaiser and California, also blue shield\ blue cross.

Here is the point, 48 million don't have this care you think exists.

[DailyGrind51]

38. Insurance companies "dump the sick", according to former exec.

Health Insurance Whistle-Blower Knows Where the Bodies Are Buried

Posted on Jul 14, 2009

By Amy Goodman

Wendell Potter is the health insurance industry’s worst nightmare. He’s a whistle-blower. Potter, the former chief spokesperson for insurance giant CIGNA, recently testified before Congress, “I saw how they confuse their customers and dump the sick—all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors.”

Potter was deeply involved in CIGNA and industrywide strategies for maintaining their profitable grip on U.S. health care. He told me: “The thing they fear most is a single-payer plan. They fear even the public insurance option being proposed; they’ll pull out all the stops they can to defeat that to try to scare people into thinking that embracing a public health insurance option would lead down the slippery slope toward socialism ... putting a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor. They’ve used those talking points for years, and they’ve always worked.”

In 2007, CIGNA denied a California teenager, Nataline Sarkisyan, coverage for a liver transplant. Her family went to the media. The California Nurses Association joined in. Under mounting pressure, CIGNA finally granted coverage for the procedure. But it was too late. Two hours later, Nataline died.

While visiting family in Tennessee, Potter stopped at a “medical expedition” in Wise, Va. People drove hours for free care from temporary clinics set up in animal stalls at the local fairground. Potter told me that weeks later, flying on a CIGNA corporate jet with the CEO: “I realized that someone’s premiums were helping me to travel that way ... paying for my lunch on gold-trimmed china. I thought about those men and women I had seen in Wise County ... not having any idea insurance executives lived.” He decided he couldn’t be an industry PR hack anymore.

Insurance executives and their Wall Street investors are addicted to massive profits and double-digit annual rate increases. To squeeze more profit, Potter says, if a person makes a major claim for coverage, the insurer will often scrutinize the person’s original application, looking for any error that would allow it to cancel the policy. Likewise, if a small company’s employees make too many claims, the insurer, Potter says, “very likely will jack up the rates so much that your employer has no alternative but to leave you and your co-workers without insurance.”

This week, as the House and Senate introduce their health care bills, Potter warns, “One thing to remember is that the health insurance industry has been anticipating this debate on health care for many years ... they’ve been positioning themselves to get very close to influential members of Congress in both parties.” Montana Sen. Max Baucus chairs the Senate Finance Committee, key for health care reform. Potter went on, “he insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry and others in health care have donated ... millions of dollars to his campaigns over the past few years. But aside from money, it’s relationships that count ... the insurance industry has hired scores and scores of lobbyists, many of whom have worked for members of Congress, and some who are former members of Congress.”

The insurance industry and other health care interests are lobbying hard against a government-sponsored, nonprofit, public health insurance option, and are spending, according to The Washington Post, up to $1.4 million per day to sway Congress and public opinion.

Don’t be fooled. Profit-driven insurance claim denials actually kill people, and Wendell Potter knows where the bodies are buried. His whistle-blowing may be just what’s needed to dump what’s sick in our health care system.

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 750 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times,” recently released in paperback.

© 2009 Amy Goodman

Distributed by King Features Syndicate

[Lars39]

3. You laying down a bass line....when's the rhythm going to show up?

[abumbyanyothername]

4. Well

:popcorn:

just sayin'

[WorseBeforeBetter]

13. Popcorn? For this one?

I imagine it will be over before you have time to get it out of the wrapper and nuked.

[City Lights]

5. You're getting sloppy.

:crazy:

[WorseBeforeBetter]

7. Is that you, Sean Hannity?

First link returned from a quick search:

Cancer Survival Rates Vary by Country
Study Shows U.S., Japan, and France Have Highest Cancer Survival Rates

http://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20080716/cancer-survival-rates-vary-by-country

You're really going to have to do better if you want to play at this site. I mean, kee-rist, at least put forth some phuckin' effort.

[bumbum]

10. That must have killed you to point out the US has better survival rates than France..NT

[Lars39]

16. For *some* cancers.

You need to re-read the particulars.

[WorseBeforeBetter]

Keep twistin'.

You're amusing.

[Spazito]

9. Providing you are wealthy, yeah, you might have a chance to survive it...

in the US whereas, in your own country you identify as Canada, you don't have to be rich or risk bankruptcy to get treatment. I am from Edmonton too and I wouldn't trade our healthcare system for the one in the US for anything.

Oh, and welcome to DU! Come visit the Canadian Forum, your take on healthcare would certainly liven up the place!

[boppers]

17. Actually, most nations have some of the death rates.

That's kind of how death, and cancer, works.

:P

Have a nice stay!

[City Lights]

23. LOL!

:rofl:

[Rosa Luxemburg]

18. that's silly

[ZombieHorde]

27. This is not true. Check out this link for info on cancer rates.

http://rex.nci.nih.gov/NCI_Pub_Interface/raterisk/rates39.html

[slipslidingaway]

32. That was a short stay - thanks mods! n/t

[WilmywoodNCparalegal]

40. You lived in Europe???? Because I did...

and I never had to wait for medical services, never had to pay. To this day, my father, who has aggressive bladder cancer, will probably return to Italy for medical care because he can't afford it here in the US, despite his better-than-average income and a so-so employer provided insurance.

To this day, my family in Italy is taken care of in ways that would be unthinkable here in the U.S. For instance, my grandmother is taken daily by ambulance to a nearby clinic for back treatments (she lives on the Italian riviera west of Genoa). One of my dad's aunts, who lives by herself and is elderly, is having a new ground-floor apartment repainted so she can move there (from the third floor of an elevator-less apartment building), free of charge.

Stop spouting propaganda. I can tell you the many times I've had to wait here in the U.S. Just yesterday, I tried to make an appointment with an ob/gyn only to find a three-month wait for an appointment.

[Faygo Kid]

14. Mike's next movie, in October: "Capitalism: A Love Story."

We'll ALL be weeping at that one.

Maybe we have been already.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

21. The UK health system is so much better

[slipslidingaway]

22. knr #2 nt

[slipslidingaway]

24. "Doctors in Canada make about $42,000 annual" ...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6084338&mesg_id=6084597

We obviously do not want what the Canadians and French have for health care.

:sarcasm:

[slipslidingaway]

28. Bill Moyers has had some great guests on HC...last week

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/transcript2.html

Wendell Potter on Profits Before Patients

"WENDELL POTTER: They were afraid that people would believe Michael Moore.

BILL MOYERS: We obtained a copy of the game plan that was adopted by the industry's trade association, AHIP. And it spells out the industry strategies in gold letters. It says, "Highlight horror stories of government-run systems." What was that about?

Note: You can download the documents by clicking here and here (PDFs)

WENDELL POTTER: The industry has always tried to make Americans think that government-run systems are the worst thing that could possibly happen to them, that if you even consider that, you're heading down on the slippery slope towards socialism. So they have used scare tactics for years and years and years, to keep that from happening. If there were a broader program like our Medicare program, it could potentially reduce the profits of these big companies. So that is their biggest concern.

BILL MOYERS: And there was a political strategy. "Position Sicko as a threat to Democrats' larger agenda." What does that mean?"

[Laelth]

29. It's a great flick. Tony Benn rocks.

My wife and I are considering Canada. Have been for some time.

That makes me sad, but it seems unlikely the U.S. can stop itself from becoming a complete oligarchy. We are very close now.

:dem:

-Laelth

[baldguy]

31. "If you can find money to kill people,"

"you can find money to help people." - Tony Benn

[wroberts189]

33. MEDICARE FOR ALL NOW !!!! nt

[tucsonlib]

34. Link Here!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6079093&mesg_id=6079093

[FunkyLeprechaun]

35. I do wish that Aneurin Bevan's story would be required reading in the US

Here is a link to the NHS History website- http://www.nhshistory.net/.

I especially like this quote from there- "We take the National Health Service for granted now, but it is only 60 years ago that health care was a luxury not everyone could afford. "

[proud2BlibKansan]

39. I watched it again the other day for the 4th or 5th time and I cried

It's Michael Moore's best film, IMO.