Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Sicko
Brigid
Veteran
I'm putting this thread in the Current Events section because although I'm going to discuss what I think of the film I don't think it belongs in the Review section because this isn't about entertainment.
I finally saw Michael Moore's film Sicko and to put it bluntly I was horrified. I knew, in a general information sense, that the American health care system was a nightmare but I didn't realize just how bad it actually was.
I want to be very clear here; I'm not criticizing the U.S. as a country nor am I criticizing its citizens. Quite the contrary. I've always felt U.S. citizens deserved better health care coverage. But now I really feel strongly about it.
After I watched the film I decided to do some of my own research and after three miserable days of it and discussing it at length with my own doctor my conclusion is that Michael Moore was very fair in his assertions. In fact, I don't know how the film makers were able to produce such a tempered film. I've been swinging from grief to rage for the past three days and it boggles my mind how the people who are in power in the U.S. can sleep at night knowing their actions are directly causing the deaths from refusal of medical care to its citizens. It seems like some sort of insane nightmare.
How is it possible that the richest and most powerful country this planet has ever seen has the highest infant and mortality rates in the western world?
During my research I've read things that would make your hair curl. If you don't have time to do your own research, please watch the film. It may break your heart and/or make you extremely angry, but it's better to know the truth because the American people are being lied to repeatedly by those with a vested interest in the profits of the American health care system.
If you're an American citizen and you're told by someone that the universal health care system in Canada, or every other western country, doesn't work, you're being lied to.
You all deserve so much better.
I finally saw Michael Moore's film Sicko and to put it bluntly I was horrified. I knew, in a general information sense, that the American health care system was a nightmare but I didn't realize just how bad it actually was.
I want to be very clear here; I'm not criticizing the U.S. as a country nor am I criticizing its citizens. Quite the contrary. I've always felt U.S. citizens deserved better health care coverage. But now I really feel strongly about it.
After I watched the film I decided to do some of my own research and after three miserable days of it and discussing it at length with my own doctor my conclusion is that Michael Moore was very fair in his assertions. In fact, I don't know how the film makers were able to produce such a tempered film. I've been swinging from grief to rage for the past three days and it boggles my mind how the people who are in power in the U.S. can sleep at night knowing their actions are directly causing the deaths from refusal of medical care to its citizens. It seems like some sort of insane nightmare.
How is it possible that the richest and most powerful country this planet has ever seen has the highest infant and mortality rates in the western world?
During my research I've read things that would make your hair curl. If you don't have time to do your own research, please watch the film. It may break your heart and/or make you extremely angry, but it's better to know the truth because the American people are being lied to repeatedly by those with a vested interest in the profits of the American health care system.
If you're an American citizen and you're told by someone that the universal health care system in Canada, or every other western country, doesn't work, you're being lied to.
You all deserve so much better.
0
Comments
Having sent them to Irak or Afghanistan to fight (no matter what the rights and wrongs of these conflicts, the military people had to go, they were ordered to do so) when they come home in bits, they are given derisory compensation, not always given the best health care possible and their families are housed in squalor.
Shame on the British Government too.
Over the course of my lifetime, I have seen a shift in 'paradigm' around what the feminist economist Jane Jacobs termed "Guardian" institutions. These are those areas of public action around health, education and so on. When the British people, assembled in Parliament, enacted universal, free, compulsory education (1944) or the National Health Service (1948) the aim was to educate and to promote health. It was not to make a profit. The nation decided that it had a communal duty to encourage education and health - and to pay for the communally.
It was a statement of a duty required of government. Indeed, historically, it was a duty that central government had abrogated to itself over the centuries. As soon as Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, it fell to others to provide health-care and education. In view of the fact that the profit of the monasteries went to the Crown, they devolve onto the successors, along with the duty to replace the lost resources.
So it all comes back to a fundamental question: what do we want government to do? If we want it to be a "Trader" organisation, we cannot ask it for free education or health-care. Personally, I find this attitude repellent: the result of so many years of governors enriching themselves at the expense of the people.
Palzang
I'm pretty much in agreement here. I don't like the idea of government controlling more of my life and the choices I make. What Moore may have failed to mention is that Canada is also plagued with longer waiting lines for MRIs and Britain suffers from long waits for dental care.
The proper start is a few multi-million dollar class action anti-trust lawsuits against the major medical insurance and hospital companies.
And who will start these class actions? The government?
I needed to get a medical procedure done after the fact and although it didn't cost me a dime monetarily I waited in the hospital for 15 hours because it wasn't a medical emergency and I needed to be fit in between C-sections and any other emergency. Would I have paid for the procedure, you bet in a heartbeat because my time is worth more than it might have cost me.
I think if there was a way to combine all four systems (Cda, US, UK and France) all four countries would be better off but alas that isn't likely to happen.
Just my two cents.
Babyanne
I couldn't agree with you more, Babyanne - and my deepest sympathy on your loss. I lost twins over 30 years ago and the pain is still there.
It is time, I believe, for the UK NHS to review the 60 years of its life to see what it does well and where it falls short, and, above all, what it is truly for.. It has to be understood that the system has always been a 'mixed' one, with private and public medicine functioning side by side. We need to understand how this has come to fail to work having begun well.
At the same time, I would welcome an international forum at which the different systems around the world can be compared and contrasted, probably under the aegis of the WHO. After all, disease is no respecter of national boundaries and a pregnancy north of a frontier is no different in importance from a pregnancy south of it!
The strange contradiction is that there are two 'medicines': the public, which exists to deliver medical services free at the point of use and according to need; and the private which exists to make money by delivering the same services.
A sad note to begin your sojourn with us. I too send you every sympathy....
Thank you for your post.
I think combining the best aspect of any system of all countries would be wonderful... but I can't see it happening in my time... people are still too stuck in the "What's in it for us, then?" mentality.....
I look forward to getting to know you better on this forum.
Thank you also for the warmest of welcomes and I look forward to engaging everyone in wonderful discussions.
Babyanne
Problems from so many frickin' lazy ass people in the US that would rather "sue" than earn a living. I mean, c'mon, this IS the country where people can sue a burger joint (granted, they are a corporate giant with evils of their own) because they are too retarded to be able to hold a hot cup of coffee.
Do we not know THAT COFFEE IS HOT FOR CHRISSAKE!?!?!?
Then you add insurance companies trying to cover for multi-million dollar losses, that they graciously hand down to "us" - the consumer. Doctors needing insurance upon insurance to cover their asses - the medical field charging outrageous prices for medicine (I have an ointment I get - a small tube costs over $400 dollar - $400 frickin' dollars... really!?!?! Are you serious?!?!?!).
The greed has gone on for so long it's like the US Health Care system has become a horrible cartoon of what "providing health care to a human being" is all about.
And other countries have people who abuse the crap out of any system as well - just like Canada. People taking an ambulance to the hospital because they don't have to pay for an ambulance - but they would have to pay for a taxi.
But!, at least other countries realize there is going to be abuse and learn to live with it. Here?, we'd just raise everyone's insurance rates again.
Now, I should say, before anyone gets up in arms about my Canada statement - that was just a general statement. People "everywhere" work ever sort of system. Canada should pat itself on the back for at least "trying" to provide health care - and any other nation that does as well.
American Health Care is a joke. Even if they are making advancements in medical cures. Medical advancements shouldn't be made on the blood and suffering of people who can't afford medical care.
If we built a huge coliseum, we could send these miscreants to the lions for our general entertainment, along with a little "binging and purging". That way, we wouldn't have to worry about caring for them AND hey, we might as well learn to like what we're becoming, eh?
-bf
It's just that when I was researching the issue it hit me like a ton of cement. I mean, I've always known health care in the U.S. was problematic and that many, many people couldn't afford health insurance. But I had no idea how dangerous the situation was and how badly the poor and vulnerable are sometimes treated. When I saw the part in the movie where that poor old lady, in her hospital gown and bare feet, is let off in that rough neighborhood by the cab driver...it was just heart wrenching. How could any human being who isn't sociopathic play any part in that? It boggles my mind. It's so sad it made me want to cry.
I did cry during the part in the movie when Michael Moore brings those 911 volunteers to Cuba. Everyone in the U.S. needs to see the movie, but especially the Cuba part. It was beautiful, bless their hearts.
The part about France quite frankly made me a little envious. Imagine the government sending someone over to your house to do your laundry for free when you're a new mum! I thought we had it good here but France is like some kind of enlightened society by comparison. It makes me wish for better things for Canada. I'm still, and I hope I always will be, very grateful to live here but seeing France's example and reading some of the stuff I've read, I really dislike the Canadian inability to protest. We're SO deferential it's ridiculous.
I go to a website for people with disabilities and I've made some American friends there who are always telling me that they can't believe how good I have it, especially with the paid medication. Here I was, thinking I'd had to go through hell to get help and how horrible the process had been and so on. But then I realize, I got the help. My American friends still haven't. They're all in debt up to their ears, they're having to ask family members to help them financially. It's just a nightmare for them. I had it so easy by comparison that I sometimes feel guilty. They're under so much stress that my heart breaks for them. It's not right to get hurt at work, especially at a job that doesn't offer health insurance or a salary large enough to allow for the purchase of insurance, and then be abandoned completely without any income or way to earn an income while having to suffer the disability and pain, not to mention the emotional toll of having all your hopes and dreams for the future torn away. It's just too unfair.
Anyway, enough ranting on my part. All I really want to say is that my heart breaks for all the people who can't afford health insurance in the U.S. and having a health care system controlled by insurance and pharmaceutical corporations is a monumentally bad idea. Americans deserve SO much better.
I learned "here" about the 80/20 rule. I've grown more comfortable with it.
-bf