I finally got around to seeing the new Michael Moore film, Sicko. It is stunning. But rather than drone on like I am prone to do (and in the interest of being fair and balanced), I thought the first "volley" on this film should be from a conservative and, coincidentally my date for the evening when I saw it. Yep, that's right. We've all been anxiously awaiting his re-appearance. It's the Return Of Crabmaster Scratch. Let the grand health care debate begin. Take it away, Crab. 
Guest columnist this week is Senor Scratch who is still last in line. Thank you to Markadelphia for turning the reigns over for the time being. Moore makes entertaining pieces of work and I like his style of film making. There are very few documentary filmmakers nowadays who can open a film in a wide theatrical release and Moore is top dog at this point in time. The strength of Sicko is that he's arguing for most American citizens as opposed to his earlier movies when he was really arguing against any 1 narrow constituent of people.
Contrary to what many conservatives will say, this is not a left-wing propaganda piece. Everyone - liberal, conservative, and everything else - will come away outraged at the way insurance companies treat the people they claim to work for. Perhaps the coldest of capitalists will be able to rationalize insurance companies' practices as "good business sense," but one would have to be a seriously evil bastard to ignore how little sense those practices make from a medical perspective IMO.
Michael Moore takes aim at the US health care system, how damaged it is, some of the reasons why that came to be, as well as showcasing the successes of the universal systems in four other countries (Canada, England, France, and Cuba). If it works so well in Canada, England, France and Cuba, why can't it here? Well, the first answer would have to be that the insurance companies wouldn't allow it. The second would be that the lobbyists have all members of Congress in their pocket. Third may be lawyers. Mix and match to your heart's content. In my opinion, facts are indeed presented but it's not the whole truth. Did Moore even touch on the subject of the millions of dollars that illegal aliens cost our system? No, he just blames everything on drug companies and insurance companies. Illegals cost the system billions in unreimbursed care. That's not racism. It's common knowledge for those of us who work in the health care industry.
Moore reports that his research shows that Canadian, British and French citizens live longer, healthier lives than Americans but he doesn't say it is because a lot of people here are overweight, don't exercise, and have 15 things going on every night when they get off of work so the only time they find for dinner is driving their crumb crunchers through the drive-thru at McD's. Then you have the people who aren't happy with their lives for any number of reasons and many of those people look for the solution at the bottom of a bottle of booze or some pill. The only pill I ever take is a couple of Aleve if I am sore after a softball/volleyball tournament. Moore takes all the worst-case scenarios he can find in the United States and then compares them to all the best-case scenarios in all these other countries.
Imagine if you did a documentary on poverty and you found all the poorest people in America and then compared their situation to the most well-off people in, say, Afghanistan. I guarantee you the poor people would all universally say they'd rather live in Afghanistan.When Moore takes a look at the health care systems he loves in France and England, he interviews white, middle-to-upper class people (a common affliction of many Americans who travel to Europe - they tend to associate with people exactly like themselves). You wouldn't know that France has a very high unemployment rate or that there are thousands of Muslims burning buses in the outskirts of Paris or that, 2 years ago, the UK government "discovered" that about 1 million UK men had simply disappeared from the Island over a period of 10 or 20 years. That is 50,000 per year or 1,000 men per week moving to another country. When, just a couple years ago, a third of French voters demonstrated their willingness to vote for 80 year old Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front - a party that makes the Ku Klux Klan seem like Human Rights Watch - all predictions of Europe going gently into that good night don't hold much weight with me. Europe has its own system of haves and have-nots and anyone who is saying otherwise is lying to you.
He shows protests in France where people are demanding free housing from the government. That type of garbage is where I draw the line...buy your own house/apartment because a government that is powerful enough to give you all that free stuff is also powerful enough to take it all away.Nope, only the upper-middle class in England and France get interviewed in this film. When he's in America, its working-class people, inner-city blacks, and one skid row patient who are interviewed. So America is seen right up from skid row, whereas when you go to England, you're now dealing with people who live in $200,000 homes. Yes, Moore found six people in the US who got denied health care. What about the six million who did get their care? I've never had a problem with an insurance company and no one in my immediate family has either. That being said, I know that if you deal with insurance companies often enough you will get burned eventually.All the Canadians, French and Cubans interviewed have nothing but praise for their national health care. There are no dissenting viewpoints, no investigations into the economics that make these systems possible. Moore interviewed the daughter of Che Guevara.she wonders why an impoverished island nation is able to provide free health care for its citizens while the United States cannot. Completely left out of this film was any mention of Cuba's massive Soviet subsidies in the 1970s and '80s of $4 billion to $6 billion annually, which kept the nation afloat and made this system possible.
Also not mentioned is Cuba's subsequent decline once these subsidies ended with the collapse of the USSR.
Go here -
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSN1936307620070719?feedType=RSS&rpc=22&sp=true
See where it says "But the hospital where SiCKO's patients were treated is an exception in Cuba, where patients of many other hospitals complain they have to take their own sheets and food" in the middle of the article? Again, you aren't and never will get the whole story from Moore.The rose-tinted stories about all the benefits French citizens get like 1 year off for maternity leave and 35 hour work weeks.those type of things are only affordable in a wealthy, capitalist system. Hell many of those countries don't even have to worry about their military.let someone else worry about Iran or North Korea I guess.He goes to Cuba and gets inhalers that cost $120 here for 5 pesos. I'm all for cheap stuff but that fact remains that there is very little oversight or regulation in pharmacies in the third world regarding the medication they sell. Hell I could have walked into that exact same pharmacy and walked right out the door with hundreds of bottles of steroids that would kill me off in no time.
The state of Wisconsin has been trying to get a universal health care bill passed recently. I hope John Waxey will stop by to tell us what he hears about that issue in his home state. From what I have read thus far the plan would cost an estimated $15.2 billion, or $3 billion more than the state currently collects in all income, sales and corporate income taxes!! Looks to me like one big problem is that we are paying a whole lot for health care. Wisconsin would do well to look at Oregon, a state that has malpractice caps as well as a three strike law on doctors who are sued for malpractice. Under the Oregon Plan there are no malpractice lawsuits until a proposed case is reviewed by an Administrative Panel of Health care professionals as well as legal professionals to determine if this is a whiplash Harry kind of case. Under the Oregon plan (written by Democrats), it is illegal for a lawyer to take a percentage of the winnings, thereby taking away the carrot for abuse. Does anybody on here think it is a coincidence that they have the lowest health care premiums in the nation? More lawsuits drive up malpractice insurance, which drives up health care costs, which in turn drives up your premiums for insurance.
With tort reform there would be fewer claims since the frivolous claims would be disposed with, the lottery mentality broken, and just like in Oregon, the costs for premiums would drop. Thought should also be given to capping medical malpractice at $250k. It does not cap actual medical claims, just the difficult to define "pain & suffering". Victims of malpractice would have all of their medical needs taken care of, yet they would not be bankrupting the system while doing it.
I favor a limited universal health care plan for this country that I have posted on this blog before. The bottom line is that, right now, Medicare is the best system we have going right now in this country. IMO there needs to be more of a balance between medicare, private insurance, and co-pay. Congress passed a law some time ago (not sure when) that stipulates that Medicare cannot negotiate prices with insurance companies. I would reverse that so Medicare is allowed to negotiate for prices like everybody else.Therefore I favor a medicare-style plan that everybody is on...sort of a National HMO if you will. 2 ways to go about this, and I'm not sure which way is the best...one way is to have basic hospitalizations covered 100%. Really expensive things like transplants and prescription drugs would not be covered under this. Everybody would have the option to purchase supplemental private insurance from insurance companies to cover such things based on their own or their families needs.
The other way is to have all catastrophic things covered and have the option to buy private insurance for basic hospitalization or whatever else you want you and your family to be covered for. US companies would drop medical insurance as a benefit and they would get to keep that money for their own bottom line. Increase payroll taxes to pay for the plan.Regarding co-pay, it is at about 20% now...increase it to 30% over a period of time...say 10 years or so...don't implement that change right away all at once. You have the option to buy private insurance from private insurance companies to help you out with co-pays.In terms of implementing any new plan, the free market will determine the next great health care plan. When it will be successful will be when there is a market demand for it, sooner rather than later I bet.
Maybe it will be something along the lines of what I typed. Maybe it will be some socialists wet dream, I don't know for sure. Whatever it is will come about because somebody has found a way to work with the free market and will allow people in the free market to sell services for a profit and the market has found that it is cheap, efficient, and is preferable to the current system. People have to want it, not be guilt tripped into accepting it. In other words, it can't be forced. The main problem I still have is that US politicians and US government bureaucrats will be running the plan and the service we will receive and the implementation of the plan will be absolutely horrible and corruption will be rampant. I mean, look at the areas that the government controls now - the post office, Department of Motor Vehicles, VA hospitals, Public Education.areas like those are horribly mismanaged with bureaucracies, corruption, overhead and waste as far as the eye can see, not to mention a poorly motivated workforce who all know it is impossible for them to get fired.
In conclusion, I have learned to take all of Moore's facts with a grain of salt. Sure, there is a ton of truth to what he says, but there is also a lot of editorial discretion in how the facts are presented, ensuring that they back his vision. There always needs to be a "this is the truth, just not the whole truth" clause attached to his work. Fortunately, I do not expect, nor require, all sides of the issue to be contained in Moores work. My main focus is the entertainment factor, the thought-provoking factor - does it succeed? The answer is yes in my opinion. I just have a gut feeling that Moores cure may be worse than the disease.
You can always rely on Dick to take it that one extra step for "national security." Last June, his office refused to hand over confidential documents to the Information Security Oversight Office, or the ISOO. The ISOO is is responsible to the President of the United States for policy and oversight of the Government-wide security classification system and the National Industrial Security Program. The ISOO is a component of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and receives policy and program guidance from the National Security Council (NSC).
