Michael Moore's SICKO: A "Now that I've Seen It" Thread

Cafe Society
1

There are older SICKO threads on here, but they were written before most of the posters had a chance to see the movie. I just saw it last weekend as it was the first time it played within 100 miles of me. (This may be more for Great Debates, but I’ll start it here and leave it to the discretion of they who are but one letter removed from the gods.)

I think Michael Moore is a great film-maker and propagandist, but I’m well aware that he’s self-important and prone to embellishment/fact altering/misrepresentations/outright lies in his books and movies. I take anything he says with a grain of salt and put him on par with Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Reilly in terms of fairness and accuracy. That said, I thought this was by far his best and most powerful film.

I understood the reasons for the Cuban publicity/propaganda stunt and it was definitely entertaining, but I thought it detracted from the film. I agreed with a poster in another column that it’s about a .000001% likelihood that a Cuban citizen or an American would be welcomed with the same open arms, smiling faces, and the daughter of Che Guevara if they sought healthcare for the same ailments without a camera crew in tow. That said, it IS a fact that the Americans who accompanied Moore on the highly controversial stunt DID receive quality healthcare they’d be denied due to red tape nonsense in the U.S…

I thought the strongest moments were:

THE HORROR STORIES

examples:

-the Humana employee whose daughter died because she took her to the nearest hospital rather than a Humana hospital

-the woman whose ambulance ride was disallowed because she was unconscious after the car accident and thus didn’t get it “preapproved” (the exact same thing has happened to two people I know)
-The woman whose husband died even though his brother was a perfect marrow match because the procedure was “experimental” (and as she mentioned, had the company’s executives had a wife or child with the same condition you know it wouldn’t have been

-Dr. Linda Peeno, who testified under oath before Congress that she and other doctor executives caused deaths by denying treatment they knew to be neither experimental or unnecessary and were encouraged with bonuses to deny more

THE EUROPEAN HEALTHCARE SYSTEMS

I know that he’s showing England, Canada, and France at their absolute best, but that being taken as granted it’s still true that-

-Europeans still manage to live well on a middle-class/upper middle-class income ($100k in USD) in spite of the taxes they pay for national health plans
-English doctors still live very comfortably on what they’re paid by national health plans
-worry about medical bills just isn’t a factor in those countries (and they have higher standards of living/life expectancies)
-Canadians interviewed (and I’m sure there are others who’d differ, but I don’t have ready stats to know how many there are) didn’t seem to think that they had to wait exorbitant amounts of time to get necessary care

THE TONY BENN INTERVIEW

I hope they release the entirety of this on the DVD. Benn raised some excellent points and questions about the history of the British healthcare system, including the fact it was started when the nation was bankrupt after WW2 and cost far less than the military.
I’m not enough of an optimist to think that we’ll see massive reform in U.S. Healthcare as long as the medical and pharmaceutical companies have billions to buy politicians and lobbyists, but it is something that I’m surprised doesn’t cause more of a grass roots debates since the working classes are extremely affected by healthcare costs, we all would turn down a dream job if it didn’t provide healthcare, and even the rich can be bankrupted by healthcare costs. And most of us have either had healthcare nightmares or know people who have.

I’m missing three teeth that my dental coverage won’t replace due to a technicality, and I have severe arthritis in my neck because I couldn’t afford care for a neck injury I received in an accident 20 years ago (when I was making just too much to be covered by the state and too little to afford insurance). My mother spent years paying off $6,000 in bills for a knee surgery that was disallowed as a “pre-existing condition” even though the previous knee injury [many years before] in question was according to her doctor’s not connected to the one she had the operation for. A a former co-worker’s insurance would not cover reparative surgery to repair the scars caused when her daughter was injured in a fire because their experts said it was elective and cosmetic in nature. At the same point, when I worked for a state funded mental health agencies I knew millions of dollars worth of healthcare fraud on a first name basis including (and I’m not making it up or embellishing) a male hypochondriac for whom the state paid for PMS medication (his girlfriend had it and he swore he had the same symptoms) that he didn’t even need to see the doctor to get the scripts for (the doctor would write him anything to shut him up).

So, that said- what’d you think of the movie? Weak points-strong points- non-committal points? Did it do anything to strengthen, weaken or change your views on whether we should have a nationalized healthcare plan?

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All I’ll say about the European aspect of socialized care of all kinds — from medicine to child care and the rest of it — is that the US might not be able to afford it since it cannot get what Europe has, namely an ally that will subsidize its defense budget to the tune of billions of dollars in money, personnel, base commitments, and weaponry.

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Whcih European countries have subsidized defence budgets? I was unaware the U.S. paid part of, say, the Spanish Army’s salaries.

4

To forestall nitpicking, incidentally, I’m aware Canada isn’t part of Europe- too late to edit though.

The “subsidized” comment has most validity I think when addressing German and Canadian militaries as the former has a very reduced military post WW2 and Canada would, according to theory, have to spend a lot more on its military were it not for having a downstairs neighbor with a huge military budget.

A good point Benn made in the movie is that when nations go to war they find the money somehow, yet they can’t seem to find it for infrastructure and healthcare. Also, we supply free education to all children who need it (something that was not always the case) and nobody seriously argues that all education should be returned to private hands alone.

5

As I said, it ain’t just the money. If my missiles hold off your enemy, then the missiles I built are a subsidy to you.

6

Actually, I know a guy who thinks all education and health care should be privatized. However, said genius is also on disability and doesn’t understand the complete disconnect between what he’s saying and how he’s living.

7

Since universal health care would cost less than the system we have now, your fact doesn’t really seem that relevant.

8

You misspelled “could”. Your editorial says that it could save money. Not only that, but it claims the possible savings, which it computes by comparing American apples and Canadian oranges, could pay for insurance and drugs for everybody! — a veritible perpetual medicine machine. Of course, Cato editorials would offset your Ralph Nader editorials (Public Citizen was founded by Nader), but then we’d just have dueling editorials. But I don’t think a bias in either direction is required to understand that American government is more expensive to operate than Candian government, if for no other reason than its sheer size.

9

So where’s the marginal cost to the United States? If Spain had sunk into the ocean in 1946 would the USA have built fewer missiles?

Don’t other NATO countries have nuclear arsenals?

10

You are a master debater.

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I thought the Benn interview was the best part of the movie. His quote about how in other countries the government fears the people and in the US the people fear the government. How he read the original universal health care pamphlet that said “this is not a charity.” And how he said if the country can pay for war, why can’t it pay for healthcare?

I don’t know if there can be change. There are some very powerful forces against it, that’s for sure. But I am really happy with Sicko and have shown it to many people so far. Everyone is blown away after seeing it - and angry. And talkative. I guess talking about it is the best we can do right now.

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The movie was sort of an “A-ha!” moment to me. After seeing it, it’s so clear to me that people, especially the poor and powerless, are NOT going to get the treatment they need if other people, i.e, the rich and powerful, can make money by denying the treatment. It’s a rigged system.

We need a system where treating the sick is the sole priority. Not “Let’s treat the sick and make a buck while we’re at it,” not “Let’s give lip service to treating the sick,” nothing except, “Let’s treat the sick.” If there’s a way to do it besides national healthcare, I don’t know it, so I think we need national healthcare, warts and all.

Liberal, have you seen the movie yet? If not, read the TITLE of this thread and then go start your own damned thread. Or, better yet, see the movie.

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Let’s also go past ‘let’s treat the sick’ to include ‘let’s allow doctors, nurses and other health care professionals be human’. Malpractice rates in the US are exorbitant.

About 30 years ago, my father-in-law died of stomach cancer. He had a diseased digestive tract. The surgeon (a good and honest man) did his best in surgery to cut the bad part out and stitch up the rest. Alas, his work did not hold and Papa Harold died of complications from surgery. The family completely understood and thanked him for his hard work and dedication.

The surgeon came to the family and explained that he had done his best; that he had tried to make it right; that somehow he must have slipped a stitch or tried to make a stitch in a part which would not hold.

How many surgeons today do you think would admit that? To come to the room and tell the family “I’m only human too, I did the best I could…”

Zero, I’m thinking.

That’s the part of modern US medicine which makes me cringe.

These doctors, nurses and others are our friends … our neighbors … the moms and dads of our kids’ friends. To put them on some kind of “outsider” status … gives me the squickies.

ETA: sorry Sampy, I have not seen it but hope to.

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I don’t know how many doctors would do that, but it’s not zero. I had a similar experience, although it was (obviously) not fatal. My gyno had detected an enlarged ovary during a normal exam. I needed surgery to determine what kind of enlargement it was, malignant, benign, etc. I was finished with birthin’ babies so the surgeon was directed to remove anything that was a health hazard, and if anything capable of reproduction was left, to tie off the fallopian tubes. So when surgery was over, the doc came out to tell my husband that the news was good – no cancer. “So,” says Mr. MLS, “You tied her tubes, right?” “Oh, #*(%@!” replied the doctor. “I was so glad it was benign, I forgot!” So after I’d recovered from the first surgery, they did a laparascopic tubal ligation for whatever pittance the insurance would pay, no charge to me. There was a definite abject apology and, no, we had no thought of bringing a lawsuit.

15

I saw this movie shortly after it came out. Having been through less-than-satisfactory experiences with health care/insurance companies, I found the movie only highlighting the worst of these experiences. And shedding some light on alternatives in place in other countries.

I was a bit skeptical of how rosy the health care in England and France was portrayed. But have yet to hear of solid experiences to the contrary (the people I know who lived in England were there some years ago, and I wasn’t sure their experiences were still valid examples).

But after thinking about the movie, I kind of stepped back beyond “health care”, and saw that what this movie really kind of depicts is “capitalism gone bad”. Perhaps this was Moore’s real intent (and I’m just slow), but it seemed to me the profit/answer-to-stock-holders mentality of the insurance companies and how that influences health care was really the story of the movie. That insurance, which started out as a way to offset the exorbitant medical costs, has since turned the corner to now forcing the worst/minimal treatment in order to maintain profits.
Somewhere along the way of frivolous claims and malpractice suits, insurance companies no longer care about taking care of patients/customers - just answering to stock holders. So what started out as a way to help the common man, has now turned into this behemoth which has turned the health care system into this nightmare of unapproved procedures/tests, etc… From helping the common man to denying the common man for the sake of the bottomline: capitalism gone bad.

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MLS I am happy to hear that I was wrong about that. :slight_smile:

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Of course, many large insurance companies are nonprofits, but you didn’t hear that in Michael Moore’s “documentary,” did you?

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I haven’t seen it yet, so I hope that this taken as a comment on the subject matter, not the movie. I was in Canada this summer and was listening, as usual, to CBC Radio. One program on Maritime Noon was dedicated to listeners calling in to offer tips how to expedite their appointments for medical care. From the comments, I don’t know that they are any worse than we are, but it didn’t sound like they were a lot better, either.

19

What did the Canadians you spoke to have to say about their health care system?

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Just to clarify: I only heard an in-depth discussion on the radio. Such as folks talking about learning the “magic words” that would force emergency rather than scheduled care. This is the website to the call-in show; the show was in the week end of July/beginning of August. I can’t find the program, but assume it was archived.

Assuming that you are talking about my relatives: They are a quiet lot and don’t complain. :slight_smile: And I haven’t discussed this directly with them. However, my aunt in PEI (US citizen, stays all summer) whom I stay with says that folks there are concerned about the delayed access to health care.

Years ago I did talk to my aunt’s neighbor who had vision problems due a brain tumor or growth, to the point of being legally blind. It could take several months for him to get a doctor’s appointment, and it was off island (New Brunswick or Nova Scotia). I have no idea if it is still the case.