Michael Moore's Sicko revisits the poor state of the American health care system.
My wife, son, and I went to see Michael Moore's Sicko last weekend. While I have generally agreed with most of Moore's positions over the years, I have not been a fan of his modus operandi. His prior films have depended largely on cheap shot humor and guerrilla or predatory journalism. While Sicko includes some of that, overall it depends far less on those tactics than Moore's prior work.…
Article comments
— go to most recent comments26 - Baritone
Clavos,
A comment I wrote last night apparently get lost cause it's not here now. What I said (more or less) was:
I believe that most people, young or old would carry medical insurance if they could afford it. Obviously, young people are perhaps less likely to see it as important to them as older folks do, but it's also true that generally, younger people just don't have enough income to support having coverage of any kind beyond the obligatory auto insurance.
By the way I don't believe my comment regarding conservatives casting judgement on films, books and other artwork without the advantage of having read or seen it was so out there. Consider all of the christian fundamentalists who condemned the Harry Potter books and movies. Historically, various types of art and literature have been banned most often by religious conservatives through the years, and usually without having been seen or read by the respective "banners."
Baritone
27 - Les Slater
Bariton,
I grew up in Catholic Massachusetts. The church used to come up with a list of movies and books that should not be seen or read. It was used as a guide as to what was hot at the movies, bookstore or library.
Les
28 - Baritone
Les,
Oh, no doubt. No better way to impell people to see or do something than telling them they can't. Since my kids went to a catholic high school, we receive The Criterion in the mail a monthly catholic magazine. They include reviews of films, TV shows and books and notes whether they should be seen or read by good catholics.
Baritone
29 - john
"John, you mean feeling good and living longer isn't incentive to people to be healthy?"
Obviously it isn't incentive enough if 64 percent of americans are overweight or obese and near 20% are smokers. If the government is taking my tax money to pay for their health issues, then I should have a say in what they can eat and wheter they can smoke or not.
"John, most medical innovation occurs at public universities and the NIH."
This is very true. However many universities sell the medical technologies to companies and many proffessors even start their own company in order to make a PROFIT. It costs MONEY to bring things to the market. For a single drug it can cost close to 800 million dollars. Just recently Pfizer lost a BILLION (yes thats with a "B") dollars on its drug that raised HDL (the good cholesterol) when clinical trials didn't pan out.
The reason it costs money to bring medical technologies to market is that they have to go through clinical trials to PROVE efficacy. These trials are what cost the MILLIONS of dollars. So even if the universities had created every single medical technology (which they haven't), they would still need to make a profit because of the cost associated with bringing the technology to the market.
30 - Clavos
Baritone,
Well, at least you qualified as to WHICH conservatives you meant.
I took exception because I call myself a conservative, yet I'm totally opposed to censoring anyone but child pornographers. I'm opposed to censoring pretty much anyone else, including purveyors of racial and other kinds of hatred, pornography, seditious literature, etc. I'm also opposed to the censorship already in place (and accepted by pretty much everybody) on the public airwaves; TVs and radios have "off" buttons, and even parental control chips, these days.
Adults should be allowed access to anything they can stomach.
31 - Baritone
Clavos,
I certainly agree with you regarding censorship. When I think of the hoopla that surrounded the exposure of Janet Jackson's boob it seems unfathomably ludicrous. I was watching it and didn't see it because it totaled less than 2 seconds of exposure as I recall. Oh, the humanity!
Baritone
32 - Baritone
John,
Is it impossible to consider that the costs of R&D and clinical trials for new drugs could be provided for under the umbrella of a national health care system?
Baritone
33 - Arch Conservative
"So I had a choice! I was Free To Choose which gang to surrender my fortune to: the Pfizer Gang or The Aetna Gang. Ain't it great!"
Typical. Everything wrong with the health care system in this nation is the fault of the drug companies and the insurance comapnies.
Maybe you have heard of these gangs too Bliffle.....
How about the "I snuck into your contry and go to the emergency room and ring up huge medical bills but never pay for it so the cost gets passed onto you legal citizens because I am an illegal who screws you over six ways from Sunday with a smile on my face" gang? You ever heard of that one Bliffle? At least with the Pfizer and Aetna gangs you do get something for your money in the end. With the gang I just mentioned, you get nothing in return.
Or how about the " I eat tons of junk food all day long and never exercise so I've become obese and now have all kinds of medical bills I can't afford to pay so I became an advocate of socialized medicine" gang. That's a good one too.
It is completely valid and worthwhile to suggest that we scrutinize the practice insurance and drug companies. However, to suggest that they are the only parties deserving of blame in hurting the system is ludicrous.
34 - moonraven
The professional pipsqueak John has the nerve to say that it's communist countries that lie about everything!
If The US government were not the biggest liar and the biggest threat to survival of the planet I would have fallen on the floor laughing.
But I didn't because it's serious business that YOUR government lies to everybody--but especially to folks in the US to keep it in power--and you sit and pick your zits happy as a clam.
Babalu Blog!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now that IS funny for a source of supposed FACTS about Cuba's health care system!!!!!!!! I see John has caught the disease of blogcritics of quoting somebody else's OPINION to support one's own.
Sorry, kid--it won't wash. Nor will telling a longtime resident of Latin America who makes damn sure she is educated about the region she lives in that she is ignorant about Cuba.
Ignorance Is Strenth (pax, Orwell) is the battle cry of the folks in the US--not for those of us who choose NOT to be ignorant nor tarred and feathered with the brush of being stupid gringos.
But since you have shown, John, that you can selectively use the google search engine, try again--and this time instead of reading the blogs of crackpot gusanos read the United Nations studies on Cuban biotechnology--as just a START towrd finding out something about the world you claim to live in.
35 - moonraven
John wants a say in what other people eat--but he doesn't mind a bit that his tax dollars are MOSTLY spent on weapons and other military apparatus to invade other countries and kill their citizens.
That's a fascist for you!
And a really stupid one, too.
36 - Baritone
Arch,
There is far more evil afoot in corporate board rooms than in the bario.
Baritone
37 - moonraven
Considering that 66%--not 64% as someone on this thread indicated--of folks in the US are obese, I find it interesting and dreadfully hard to believe that ALL THE THIN ONES are posting on blogcritics.
As for the great undocumented Mexican immigrant conspiracy to make you pay for their health care--I say, if they can pull that off, more power to them!
Personally, all I do is I go to a Colombian doctor who trained in China for acupuncture treatments two or three times a year and reluctantly take beta blockers to lower my BP--and that's from someone who has had systemic lupus since early childhood!
You folks are a bunch of whiners who have no idea how to take care of yourselves, but you are still entitled to health care.
38 - moonraven
Have the balls to read An Open Letter to CNN on www.michaelmoore.com
Go on--it won't hurt your fat fingers to mouse over there.
39 - Doug Hunter
"If the government is taking my tax money to pay for their health issues, then I should have a say in what they can eat and wheter they can smoke or not."
Exactly the point. Once the government owns your body they own you (which is the point of the leftist ideology anyway). If the precedent is set that the government owns your health and that carbon is a pollutant literally every single facet of your life will be at the whim of some power hungry sadistic bureacrat. Most sheeple like that though. Most value security, or the illusion thereof, far more than freedom.
40 - john
Moonraven I don't know where you get the idea that I am somehow in love with the U.S. government. No where in any of my posts do I say I am for the war or pro-Bush.
Doug Hunter, thank you, I think you understood my point. Do we really want to give the government all our medical records? Our government is the problem not the solution. If anything we should be diminishing the governments power over our lives not increasing its power.
41 - bliffle
BC cleaned of Iraq talk!
It's a clean sweep folks. 'Iraq' no longer appears on the BC Politics page nor on the "Fresh comments" page. Not at all. And the Politics page goes back 2 weeks.
What can account for that?
Is the Iraq war over? Did GWB win his private war? Have the troops returned home? Was the 'surge' a huge success? Is Petraeus the greatest general since Alexander The Great? Is the fabulous Victory being celebrated on Fox news by Krauthammer, Kristol, Kagan and all the other KKK guys?
It must be so, for what other reason can there be for all news and comment on Iraq to disappear from BC?
I've noticed that recent BC political threads have turned to discussions of vacations in Portugal, the red double-decker buses in Baghdad and even disposable diapers!
When do we have the victory parades?
Or is it all a ruse? Does the war continue? Was it all a concerted effort to take an uncomfortable subject off the BC political site? To what end, to salve the damaged egos of the BC staff editors and Bush supporters?
Will people soon be saying about BC:
"A sinister cabal of superior blog cleaners"
Gloom.
Have we been suckered by propagandists?
And those of you who are not privileged to be BC Political editors: what does it feel like to you? And how does it feel? Good?
42 - handyguy
Moore, as usual, ignores logic and the construction of a real argument with actual, you know, history and facts. Instead he gives us slanted, sentimentalized/joked-up anecdotes.
But he does make his one big point extremely effectively: The US is the only rich country not to have universal health care. We are willing to let a certain percentage of our fellow citizens suffer.
No one in France or Britain will go bankrupt because of medical bills. They may have to wait 3 or 4 years in line to get a hip replaced, but they won't have to worry financially about their health.
This will be a huge issue in next year's presidential race.
43 - Les Slater
All health care in the U.S. is paid for by the corporations and their owners. It's a cost that they do not want to continue to pay.
44 - Clavos
"All health care in the U.S. is paid for by the corporations and their owners. It's a cost that they do not want to continue to pay."
Except for Medicare/Aid, true.
Which means that UHC is a given. Only the timing's in question, but my money's on it becoming a reality during the next administration, no later.
45 - Les Slater
"Except for Medicare/Aid, true."
I didn't think anyone would take my statement at face value, but I said all, and I meant, including Medicare and Medicaid.
The healthcare of a worker building cars actually increases the cost of producing the car. Whether it's the corporation directly paying for the healthcare, or through the government taxes directly from the corporation or the worker. Even if it is the worker himself totally paying for his healthcare.
46 - Baritone
If we assume a democratic win in the presidential race, most certainly efforts will be made to radically change our health care system. I doubt, though, that it will succeed. Even assuming the dems achieve greater control of Congress, the powers that be amongst the health care providers, insurance companies and HMOs are so heavily entrenched in Washington - many dems receive heavy bread from the drug companies, HMOs & the like just as do the reps - they will fight change tooth and nail.
Some changes will doubtless ensue, but they will be hit and miss, probably more along the lines of Dave's "fill in the gaps" measures, rather than any wholesale rebuilding of the system. Congress will likely botch it up so badly, that the system won't work at all. I would love to see a well considered and constructed UHC here, but I don't hold out much hope for it. Instead it will likely be batted about and transmogrified into a monster that no one will benefit from except for those who figure out how squeeze tons of money out of it.
But perhaps down the road, probably long after it will no longer matter to me, a properly equitable health care system may one day emerge from all the sturm und drang that will have spewed forth from Congress and the various and sundry administrations that rise and fall between now and then.
By the way. I don't think anyone has forgotten Iraq. But it is largely the same old, same old everyday. All of us on all sides probably need to reload our political rhetoric scatter guns with venom pellets. We will soon rise up and take aim at each other soon. Fret not.
Baritone
47 - STM
The government won't own your medical recods. There'll be a record of a fee for a certain service (which might indicate numerous proceedures). That's all. Doctors and hospitals keep your records, same as they do now.
Wake up to yourselves and smell the hospital-grade disinfectant.
None of you have ever lived with a decent single-payer healthcare service, so how can you make judgments. The term government-funded is a misnomer, BTW. It just operates it - you pay for it. You pay taxes, don't you?
But you are all guessing at best, and panicking about what it might mean. I'm not, and I can tell you it's really bloody good - and adds the option of taking private cover as well.
I'd even go so far as to say that in a country I think is the best in the world in terms of overall lifestyle and standard of living (and that includes the US), this system (which has been operating since the early '70s in various forms) is really the icing on a very nice cake.
48 - STM
OK, Blif, I haven't fogotten Iraq. Two Aussies killed in Baghdad overnight.
But as Baritone says, same old, same old. There are other things to talk about as well.
49 - Dr Dreadful
bliffle #41:
Could it be that everything that could be said about Iraq, on both sides, has been done to death on BC?
With Bush intransigent and Congress seemingly impotent on the matter, not much is going to change in the foreseeable future.
I would like to make one comment on the subject, however. Newshour on PBS regularly shows, at the end of its broadcasts, the names and photos of the newly fallen. The last time I watched, I couldn't help but notice that every soldier shown - and I mean every single one - was a sergeant or equivalent rank. I wonder why this is? Only theory I could come up with was that perhaps the insurgents are adopting Indian tactics and aiming for the officers first...
I realize that sergeants are NCOs, not officers, but they do command squads. Also, I'm not sure how easily identifiable by rank the modern sergeant is in a battle situation. Any of our military commenters have any thoughts on this?
50 - Clavos
"Doctors and hospitals keep your records, same as they do now."
Wrong, mate. the insurance companies keep detailed records already, and share them with each other. It's a sure bet those records will be passed over to the designated "single payer" when the time comes, and the practice will continue.
Actually, Stan, after reading your comments and articles here on BC over the past year or so, I've concluded that Australia's evolution from the common system of representative government and set of laws from which we both sprang is significantly superior to that of today's USA.
How do I get a resident visa?
51 - STM
Clav: "How do I get a resident visa?"
Lol. Just keep saying stuff like, "I've concluded that Australia's evolution from the common system of representative government and set of laws from which we both sprang is significantly superior to that of today's USA."
I think you'll get in pretty quick. We are worse than you guys with this stuff - we like people to like us.
Seriously though, you probably could get in. Your wife would have a good case to mount as well, despite her illness. A good knowledge of pleasure boats would be considered "skilled migration" down this neck of the woods.
And these days, you can be a dual US/Australian citizen.
52 - STM
The only drawback is that you'd have to learn a new language.
53 - Clavos
Yeah, but languages is one of my strong suits, fortunately.
And yours does bear some resemblance to English.
BTW, I saw the the APC running through the SYD suburb on the telly last night.
What was the guy's beef?
54 - STM
Doc, re #49 ... the Poms have a good system. They wear a little pocket flap or shoulder flap with the badge of rank on it. You have to look really hard to see it. From a distance, you couldn't even notice it. I think they do it here too, as I know I've seen the pocket ones. I don't know what the Yanks do, but maybe they are displaying their ranks prominently. Either that, or all the non-coms are actually the ones leading the troops on these patrols and can be picked out by that.
55 - STM
Clav: "What was the guy's beef?"
A former employee of the owner of the vehicle, who just keeps it in his workshop because he likes it. A few too many beers, and thought it would be a good idea at the time, most likely.
He's been described in the papers here as "troubled" and was refused bail in court yesterday and ordered remanded in hospital for a psychiatric assessment.
The Cops were scratching their heads trying to work out how to stop him, as he was smashing into mobile phone towers out in the western suburbs. Perhaps he needed a tinfoil helmet.
Makes my effort on the golf cart in Miami look a bit sick in comparison.
56 - Clavos
"Perhaps he needed a tinfoil helmet."
He might have had one. I've heard they don't work inside armored vehicles.
57 - Clavos
"Makes my effort on the golf cart in Miami look a bit sick in comparison."
S'OK, mate. Next time you come, I'll get my mate here to lend us his Hummer.
58 - STM
"He might have had one. I've heard they don't work inside armoured vehicles"
LOL. Nice one ...
59 - Noah
Okay, I am 26 years old. I can not affored health insurance. I have not seen a Doctor or a Dentist in almost 10 years. Don't tell me this crap is working. I work my butt of every day so 1/4 of the money I make goes to the elderly, minorities, unwed mothers... everyone but me.
This stopped being America along time ago.
60 - Dave Nalle
Noah, if your income is low enough that you genuinely can't afford health insurance of any kind, then you ought to be way below the income level where you'd be paying 25% of your income in taxes - which is what I assume you were saying.
To be in the 25% tax bracket you have to earn a minimum of $39,000 a year, assuming you're single. At that level of income you ought to be able to afford insurance fairly easily, if it's a real priority for you.
But frankly, at 26 I didn't have health insurance by choice. At that age it was more cost effective to just pay for my dental care and an emergency room visit every few years than to have insurance.
Dave
61 - moonraven
In the case of Iraq's having disappeared from blogcritics--although it is certanly going strong with stories and pics in the papers here in Latin America--I suspect it has something to do with the callousness of folks in the US.
The Banality of Bloodshed. Hannah Arendt would be proud....
62 - handyguy
Dave, I assume Noah is including Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes as part of his tax burden...not sure about the math.
And you make it sound awfully easy to get health insurance. But insurance companies are given wide leeway to deny coverage or charge very high rates to people with "pre-existing conditions." This is one of the points Michael Moore makes skillfully [as opposed to some other points he cheats on a bit, or a lot].
Or even after you get and pay for insurance, you may have to deal with the fact that the insurance company is compensating its managers on how good they are at avoiding the payment of claims. This is the ugly side of a market-based system.
63 - Baritone
Moon,
Your characterization of Americans being callous is, I think, overstated. However, when the news is, as I noted, "same old, same old," even including mass killings of Iraqis by Iraqis, the killing of American and other countries' military personnel, ad nauseam, I suppose there is a tolerance level to repetitive news. What else can be said? Even those who support our incursion into Iraq are hardly disinterested parties. Many of those for and against the Iraq war have relatives and/or friends who are over there, or perhaps in Afghanistan in harms way everyday. I think few of us are complacent about the loss of life.
Isn't it a bit disingenuine for someone from South America (Columbia?) to be criticising other countries regarding killing and violence? Seems to me that one or two people have succumbed to violence in that part of the world over the years. Many Central and South American countries have a long history of political instability and violence against there own citizens and those of other countries around them. I don't think any country has the corner on the piety market.
Personally, I hate our involvement in Iraq. I detest GWB and his administration. Even the current Democratically controlled American Congress is rather despicable owing to its being weak kneed and politically unwilling and unable to counter Bush's agenda.
And while I am an atheist, I will here resort to a biblical reference: "He who is without sin, cast the first stone." The fact is that war and killing is not simply an American or radical muslim trait. It is a human trait we all share - our collective dark side, if you will. Until and unless we get beyond religious and/or nationalistic fanatacism, racial bigotry, ignorance and greed, we will continue to wage war and find other rationale to plunder and kill others. At our worst, humanity sucks.
Baritone
64 - moonraven
I was not aware that there was a poster on this thread from Colombia(!?)
Certainly not this poster, who is a Native American US citizen living for the past 15 years in Mexico.
Given that the US was founded on genocide committed against MY people, I clearly have a different perception of you folks than you do--a
singularly negative one, in fact--which most everyone who posts on this site regularly shows to be absolutely true.
As for the collective shadow of the species, in Jungian psychology the premise for integrating the shadow is ACCEPTING it. The Germans DENIED their shadow in the 20th century, passing themselves off as sweet, high-minded lovers of umpapa bands and philosophy.
I think most of us know what the results were.
65 - moonraven
Just for the record, so that you have a faint grasp of history: Most of the violence in Central and South America is directly traceable to US interventions.
66 - Dave Nalle
Dave, I assume Noah is including Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes as part of his tax burden...not sure about the math.
Without more info we can't be certain of anything. But even at the bottom of the 25% bracket you only pay a real tax rate of about 12% of your income. It goes up as you go higher in the bracket until it hits about 22% real tax at an income of $84K a year. There's no bracket where the combination of SS and tax adds up to 25% either on paper or as a real percentage of tax.
And you make it sound awfully easy to get health insurance. But insurance companies are given wide leeway to deny coverage or charge very high rates to people with "pre-existing conditions." This is one of the points Michael Moore makes skillfully [as opposed to some other points he cheats on a bit, or a lot].
Yes, that's one of the big problems with the system. But Noah said he was 26 and didn't mention pre-existing conditions. That should mean relatively low rates and no problems getting insured.
Or even after you get and pay for insurance, you may have to deal with the fact that the insurance company is compensating its managers on how good they are at avoiding the payment of claims. This is the ugly side of a market-based system.
This is why consummer reports exists. There ARE good, honest insurers out there.
Dave
67 - moonraven
Right.
And about that swampland you are so eager to buy....
68 - Baritone
Moon,
Sorry if I misunderstood where you reside in the world. It was your reference to a "Columbian doctor" that threw me.
And, happily, there has never been any violence amongst Mexicans, so I am totally humbled.
It is absolutely and undeniably true that Americans have been the source of every act of human violence perpetrated throughout the world since before the Declaration was penned. We are a bunch of rat bastards who should be annihilated from the face of the earth so that the remaining always and ever peace loving citizens of the world can go about their lives in eternal harmony with sweet, unassuming, but pious smiles on their unblemished, unlined faces.
It of course undoubtably follows that the US has been responsible for ALL violence in Central and South America for which the native populations carry absolutely NO responsibility. They are all fucking saints. Americans were responsible for all of the "desaparecidos" over the years.
Again, I am not a great fan of US actions abroad. We have been the 500 pound gorilla, and have not accounted very well for ourselves. However, yours is a supercilious attitude. Your 14 years away from your original homeland has made you cynical, out of touch and, frankly, a self-righteous prig.
Believe it or not, most Americans are pretty good people - no better, but certainly no worse than the average Mexican or Bulgarian or Javanese, or whoever.
Why can't we all just get along? Oh, yeah. It's those damnable evil ompa bands (which were secretly developed by American sabateurs in Germany shortly after WWI.)
Baritone
69 - Rick
I think every person alive today on this planet has had an ancestor who was a murderer. Whether your white, yellow or brown. Indians killed other indians, whites killed other whites, then whites killed indians. This is the legacy of evolution and our selfish genes. We are alive today because our ancestors were the most ruthless, most cunning, most dastardly. If they didn't cut it in the world, we wouldn't be here discussing about it. The world is a cruel place and will continue to be so unless you understand this basic fact of nature. Luckily we are close to the point when we can control our genes, instead of letting them control us. Until that time comes however, racism, hatred and murder will continue in the world unabated.
70 - STM
Baritone, I'd take that even further.
It should read BEFORE the Declaration of Independence, because everyone knows the British have always been a peace-loving people who were only trying to look after the interests of Americans, and look where that got them ...
You pack of ingrates.
71 - STM
And bite the bullet on free health care. It's got more good points than bad. You'll all be fine, and once you've got it, you'll be scratching your heads wondering why you didn't wake up to it earlier.
72 - Baritone
Rick,
I don't think it's as bad as all that. Most people pretty much get along day to day in relative harmony.
We have a precarious future before us owing to the instability mainly in the middle east and particularly in Iraq. But in the meantime I think I'm relatively safe to go to bed tonite.
Baritone
73 - Clavos
"And bite the bullet on free health care. It's got more good points than bad. You'll all be fine, and once you've got it, you'll be scratching your heads wondering why you didn't wake up to it earlier."
Only if we can get the Australian government to run it for us, because if ours runs it, it WILL be fucked up.
74 - Baritone
STM,
We are a cantankerous lot, aren't we? Never happy until we poke our nose into everybody's business to make sure we get a piece of it.
And yes! The national health care bullet should be bitten. Them's is good eatin' with a little balsamic vinegar, sulphur and salt peter.
Baritone
75 - troll
if we go with a plan that actually works how will we ever get the human population down to 500 million and bring the infestation into harmony with nature - ?