It's embarrassing to be in a country that commoditizes people's health. Health care should be fundamental. For the price that we pay, we should have the best care possible. Instead, by any objective accounting, we have some of the worst among civilized (and some not-so-civilized) countries. This is one of the issues that Michael Moore's new film, SiCKO, addresses.
From Why Michael Moore's SiCKO is a health care documentary every American must see:
... The drug companies, surgeons, medical specialists, health insurance companies and private hospitals are making out like bandits, raking in multi-million dollar CEO salaries and -- I'm not making this up -- greater than 500,000% markups on prescription drugs. And while the American people get sicker, the drug companies, insurance companies and many health "care" providers (it's really more like "sick care providers") are rolling in cash. Drug companies are now among the richest corporations in the world, and they got there by inventing fictitious diseases, then selling drugs to people who mostly don't need them.
... the health care corporations actually have a plan to keep people sick. There's no money in preventing disease, especially in the cancer industry ... American Cancer Society's refusal to help prevent 77% of all cancers using affordable, scientifically-proven vitamin D supplements.
... Moore shows us the universal health care systems in countries like Canada, the UK, France and even Cuba... all countries where health care is free to everyone. It's called universal health care (or "socialized medicine"), and it's a system followed by nearly every modern nation in the world... and even some not-so-modern nations. Only America practices medicine in the Dark Ages, tied to a hopelessly corrupt system of financial exploitation and monopoly price controls, where Big Pharma gets richer, the FDA gets more powerful, and the American people get the shaft.
Some would say that socialized health care discourages good doctors. It does the exact opposite. Doctors that are freed up from having to deny care are actually allowed to do what they got in to medicine to do -- care for patients. American doctors are forced to be bureaucrats that choose patients based on money. We have a whole medical system that seems to have forgotten the Hippocratic Oath -- to do no harm. As the movie shows, foreign doctors are happy and well-compensated.
And I've had about all that I can take from the John Birch types that preach (literally) about the scourge of Communism and socialism. Would you accuse Great Britain or Canada of being Communist? Is the U.S. Communist because it has a police force, fireman or libraries that are not privately run? Certain functions of society should not be outsourced. Drugs and health care for profit does not encourage people to go for care when they first get symptoms. It does not encourage preventative health care.
The right wing messiah, Ronald Reagan, even starred in propaganda films trying to scare people about how "socialized" health care is one step from Communist Russia: Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine. Thank you, Joseph McCarthy. Conservatism is a movement that has become as insidious and dogmatic as that which it hates so much. Great ideas should be evaluated on whether they work, not on whether they fit into your narrow little ideology.
SiCKO, I believe, is not a partisan (at least not in the political sense) film and calls out Democrats (specifically Hillary) as much as Republicans. But it's not really about politics. It's about calling out a society that talks about our caring and compassion while doing the exact opposite. We will care for you only if you have money and even then we will give you half-ass care.
Even those that don't like Michael Moore should see this film. It emphasizes the positive aspects of Moore -- his humor and compassion -- while limiting that which some who don't like him might call strident. It's most effective when it focuses on real-life victims of our system. The people documented actually have insurance. You could have a whole other film on the 50 million that are not even covered. I believe SiCKO will go a long way towards bringing the subject of universal health care into the public forum.Grade: A+
