Michael Moore’s “Sicko”
“Sicko” reminds me more of “Bowling for Columbine” than “Fahrenheit 9/11″, which I think most people would agree is a good thing. Another bonus, healthcare is a more relevant issue than gun control. Maybe it is stupid that anybody can buy a gun, but I am not losing any sleep over it. The fact that people want to kill other people in the first place is a bigger concern to me than the means they use to do it.
There are 2 separate issues that Moore somehow co-mingles.
First – he had a Kevin Hinton style attack on Special Interest Groups. Insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies are clearly evil, and their obscene influence on Capital Hill is driving up America’s health care costs to an absurd level. This was the better part of the movie, and I agree. Those SOBs need to be put in check.
Second – universal, government sponsored, socialist health care is better than private health care. Is that even true?
I don’t really know, but I don’t really think it is the slam dunk that Sicko makes it out to be. There is too much focus in Michael Moore films on individual stories that play the sympathy card. I want more facts, less propaganda.
How much are our taxes going to go up if there is universal health care? Isn’t that the most obvious question that should be answered? Healthcare isn’t free. We can either pay for it with taxes, or directly through a private market. Is there any data that suggests a bureaucratic government run health care system is more efficient than a private one? Although capitalism has its flaws - it is typically way more efficient than our piece of crap government.
Moore implies that health care is free in the UK – but fails to mention that payroll taxes there are like 5o%. How much of that goes to health care? I don’t know – but it is not like there is some magic going on over there, somebody is paying for it. Standard Moore propaganda where he misleads you with just part of the story.
In Moore’s extended interview with Tony Benn, an old English dude/labor leader, he explains the socialized healthcare as “Pay according to your means, get treated according to your needs.” This is the heart of what bothers me about socialism and universal health care. People getting punished, because they have greater “means”.
Yeah, it sounds great if you are the poor guy that couldn’t afford your own health insurance to begin with – now you get it for free. But what about the guy that worked hard all his life, and now has to pay for the lazy dudes health care and his own? Well, that guy is me – and I say fuck you. Go get a job and buy some insurance.
Maybe that is ruff - but guess what, that is life. When you were born, you were given the responsibility to take care of yourself. Quit looking for handouts. You are a looter. Why do I owe you anything you son of a bitch? Because I actually went to class in high school? Because I paid for my own college, and now work my ass off for an almost decent salary? Screw off – you got to fuck around all through high school – now it is my time to shine. Enjoy your diabetes.
When poor people are having a tuff time it always seems like an easy answer say – hey, why don’t we just take some more of the rich people’s money to pay for it? Well, because I earned that money. It is not yours to take.
That was a bit of a crazy conservative rant I just went on that I don’t actually believe. But I do think that it raises some important questions that Moore fails to answer. Typically I am fine with socializing things that qualify as fundamental needs that all people should have a right too – like education. Health care probably falls into that category. I just wish Moore would get into how it is actually implemented, and why it will make sense. I am pro socialized health care for kids – it is not their fault their parents are incapable of taking care of them.
On another note – rather than government sponsored health care – why isn’t there a not-for-profit insurance organization? That seems like it would solve a lot of problems, and could prevent the necessity of socializing health care.
This entry was posted on Sunday, March 2 at 7:24 pm and is filed under Big Dog with tags Ayn Rand, Corey is a communist, HMO, michael moore, pharmaceutical, sicko, socialism, Special Interest Groups, universal health care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Monday, March 3 at 5:14 am
Just to help your point. The UK spends about 9% of it’s gross domestic product (don’t know what it is as a proportion of total tax income) on the National Health Service – about £90bn in 2007 to cover 60 million people. (which is midway down the table in Europe, and less than the US). Our income tax, or pay roll tax is banded. The highest tax band is for those earning over about £32,000 per annum roughly (which is I think $64,000 at current exchange rates), which is 40% and applies probably to about 30% of the working population. Everyone else gets the first c.£4000 they earn tax free and then is taxed at just over 20% for everything they earn above £4,000 and up to the £32,000 mark. (These numbers are approximate). Noone is taxed as high as 50%! So it’s not as expensive as your suggesting – in fact for a free service we spend a lower percentage of GDP on healthcare than the US government does (which is up at about 15 or 16%), and that’s for a largely private system. Per head of population with access to healthcare we spend less – BUT it certainly is not free. I too find it very annoying when people confuse the “free at the point of use” system, on which the NHS is based – (i.e. you don’t pay when you use healthcare you pay an amount from your taxes) – rather like insurance. It is NOT a free service for most of us – it IS free for people who don’t pay taxes though (a small minority). By the way a key reason why it costs less per head in the UK is a) we pay our staff much less, b) we don’t have as much of the newest equipment per head of population as in the US, c) we try to use cheaper drugs and consumables whereever they are clinically good enough and d) certain very expensive procedures are not available on the NHS.
Monday, March 3 at 10:00 am
thanks John –
I definitely was exaggerating when I said 50% payroll taxes – but I was referring to the payroll taxes paid on the business side for their employees rather than at the individual level. They are very high in the UK.
That is very interesting that the US Government spends more per capita than the UK Government on health care, yet you get a free service for that spending. What the heck is the US spending our money on if we are all paying for private health care in additon to the government spending?
This is the kind of analysis that I wish Michael Moore would do with his films. The fact that the UK government spends less than the US and is able to provide universal health care makes it pretty clear that it is a model we should copy.
Monday, March 3 at 2:22 pm
I haven’t seen Sicko, but…
If something needs to be done better, giving a government agency a gigantic budget is probably not going to help. Thats not to say that more people are not in need of medical coverage. It seems obvious that children should be universally covered, as for the rest of the country I’m not so sure. As soon as I start paying for for universal coverage imagine the hordes of overweight southerners that are going to flood into hospitals for enough diabetes medicine and knee braces to get them back to the local Grandma’s Buffet. If I am paying for their health care they should at least have to pay for my gym membership.
Monday, March 3 at 3:17 pm
Maybe instead of Universal Health Care we should just force all poor people to get on board stronglifts.com with you Parker.
Tuesday, March 4 at 10:36 pm
-To start off with I want to say that there is no issue that I find more relevant and emotionally stirring than our current Health Care situation. Though I am a huge supporter of a lot of people dying in the near future in an attempt to reduce the horribly inflated population of this planet, I do not support going about this by slowly killing poor people who can’t afford health care. In fact if I am ever able to push my mass genocide legislation through you can be assured it will be almost entirely aimed at trophy wives, lawyers, and sitcom television actors. For this discussion I will be reverting back to my preferred method of writing: the bullet point.
- I pretty much hate Michael Moore. I think his style of documentary is pathetically misleading and almost entirely built around propaganda and fear mongering. He takes really valid social concerns and completely perverts them with his blindly one sided half truths, some how during the course of Fahrenheit 9/11 he actually had me starting to route for George Bush. That being said I really enjoyed the movie “Sicko”. Besides being about an incredibly important issue I think his method of playing with your emotions with tragic personal stories was actually a somewhat valid method of presentation for the Health Care issue. My thought is that with the issue of Health Care personal stories and human experiences actually matter more than tax burden and financial feasibility. I know that sounds like I am just some bleeding heart liberal, but I just can’t see how to justify to myself that a little more money in my pocket is worth more than someone else’s life.
-I do agree with Kevin it would have been nice if he would have presented and fully explained the answer to the problem. Yet, in actuality that is really not what someone like Michael Moore is meant to do; his real function is to shock mainstream illiterate America into understanding that there is an important social issue out there that they should maybe pay a little attention to. Hopefully no matter what he said people would not just blindly believe something they saw on a movie. It is only when people start actually educating themselves and really giving a shit that things will actually change.
- I really think the idea of a non profit universal health care organization could be a great answer.
- Here is my own little personal story of why I feel like there has to be a better system for Health Care for the richest nation on the planet. The situation is this: my mom currently works as an aid for a convalescent home (the place insanely old people go to die when their family gets sick of them) in Selah, WA. She makes $9.00 an hour and her employer provides zero health care benefits. She currently supports 2 children on her own. To say that she can’t afford health care is a gross understatement, she cannot afford anything but her 500 dollar rent, utilities, and groceries. The truth of the matter is that if my mom finds out she has cancer tomorrow; baring a miracle she is probably going to die without basic treatment.
Now Kevin’s conservation argument (whether he supports it or not) is a view that a large amount of people do support. Here is why in my mind it is complete bullshit. You can say well your mom sounds like a real loser, why didn’t she work a little harder or get a “real” job. There are two major problems I see with that train of thought.
The first is that how much someone gets paid has nothing at all to do with how important their job is. The fact that America completely undervalues things that don’t produce monetary gain in my mind doesn’t really mean shit to actual value. In fact when I really think about it seems like how much money you make has nothing to do with the actual importance of your job. To not offend anyone else I will use myself as an example. I make a considerable amount more money than my mom and have full health care benefits, and yet I am well aware that what I do doesn’t make one bit of difference. All I (and most of us) do is just facilitating the moving of money from one place to another. One rich person/bank/cooperation pay/gets paid by another rich person/bank/cooperation. Money is the only thing my job amounts to, I do it solely for money; if I quit the only ill effects would be monetary. There is no heart in it. What my mom does actually makes a legitimate difference. There are very few professions that I feel that way about. She provides genuine care, compassion, and honest friendship for human beings in one of the loneliest and most helpless situation I could imagine. The fact that she doesn’t get paid shit for doing something so inherently important is not her fault, the guilt for that lies squarely in our system that cannot look past the all mighty dollar.
The second point is this even if my mom did quit her job and got a “real” job making a lot of money, someone else would need to be an aid at the Selah Convalescent Center, so that just means someone else is going to be in her exact some situation. You can’t have jobs that need to be done and then have those jobs not provide even the potential of Health Care. There are tens of millions of jobs that our economy and society depends on that do not allow people the means to acquire basic medical coverage. The truth of the matter is that even if everyone in America was equally smart, hardworking, and white there just is not 303 million $60,000 dollar a year jobs available. When you have an economy is dependant on low income jobs you need to take care of those people. Everyone in our society (especially the rich) have benefit from these people’s hard work and sacrifice. I am not saying socialize health care is the only way, but I am saying that in my humble opinion the fact that America does not have some form of Universal Health care is truly sad.
(non edited)
Wednesday, March 5 at 2:36 pm
- I think someone fully employed but still living below the poverty line should receive subsidized healthcare, along with Children, disabled, etc. Like Corey says not all jobs out there provide high enough monetary compensation as would be nice (mine included). But in a highly competitive capitalist economy, supply and demand set the wages. If you are arguing for anything but that I am probably not going to agree with you.
– Group Health Co-op is a, Seattle based, example of a nonprofit healthcare provider, there must be others.
Wednesday, March 5 at 7:41 pm
-I really liked one point that Michael Moore made in “Sicko” and that point is that the United States has socialized systems in place already (schools, Postal service, etc.), so why don’t we socialize health care? I think that the government should supply essential social services to its citizens, no matter how much money they make. Setting a definitive poverty line to be eligible for a subsidy just ends up hurting another group of people. There should be a comprehensive level of health care services provided to everyone. People can pay extra if they want their doctor to wear a Panda suit or whatever else rich people expect.
-Another important point from that movie: insurance companies fucking suck. It is in our interests to pay these companies to take care of us in case something horrible happens. However, insurance companies’ interests are to make as much money as they can. So why would these companies want to pay out as little as possible for the claims their customers make. The interests and incentives just don’t match up. This is also why free market capitalism doesn’t work for certain aspects of society (sorry Parker, as an Econ major I’d like to believe those supply and demand curves hold all the answers too).
-I am a member of Group Health. I have one of the most minimal levels of health insurance they offer and I still pay $90 a month. The deductibles for any doctor visits are still a few hundred dollars and there’s always co-payments and prescription costs. Just because they are nonprofit does not make them affordable to everyone.
Thursday, March 6 at 7:30 am
I still think that there is a demand for health care that is affordable and that provides better service. Why isn’t the free market working with insurance companies? Shouldn’t there be an insurance company that offers a more competitive insurance premium, and that provides a better service? It seems as if that company would steal all of the business if it were true that insurance companies were just hording so much of the profit.
I am not saying it isn’t true that the free market for insurance companies isn’t working – I just don’t understand what is stopping me from starting a low cost insurance company with a smaller bottom line, and stealing all of the market share. Is the government building in some sort of protection to the insurance companies that allow it to operate without competition?
Thursday, March 6 at 9:19 am
And I agree that we should provide health care to everybody – my question is if socialized health care is actually a better option than private health care with costs subsidized for low income workers.
Thursday, March 6 at 12:49 pm
My questions is still, if we are all so concerned with the afordability of health care, then why is the only solution to throw more money at it? How is all of us throwing a percentage of our annual incomes going to solve the problem that it costs too much? Won’t socializing it just remove anyones concern with the actual costs? Warren Buffet asks why, when you need surgery, you don’t go around to all surgeons, get estimates and take the lowest one available. Because then you will end up with a shitty operation. Imagine once you have removed all patients concerns with costs and efficiencies. Probably there will be bad healthcare for everyone, not just the uninsured.
My guess is the problem with the industry has something to do with the amount of regulations and the requirement of government involvement. HMO’s, maybe they are to blame. They are bad right? OK, I have no idea what they are. As always, I am shooting from the hip here and have no basis, just my gut feeling.
Also, like Eric said, we already have socialized institutions like schools and the postal service, lets try not to fuck health care completely up like those.
Thursday, March 6 at 1:50 pm
My opinion is that I don’t give a shit if people get mad they have to pay a little more taxes it is the RIGHT thing to do. It would make economic sense to do a lot of horrible things, but that is in no way justification for doing them. Our country can afford to spend 440 Billion dollars a year to kill people yet doesn’t provide basic health coverage for its citizen, is that not completely fucking retarded? Health Care is the basic necessity for a human being I don’t see any reason why our government gets a free pass on providing it just because they do a shitty job at other things. The fact our government does not run social programs efficiently just means we need to change the way our government does things, it says nothing about the validity of universal health care.
With regard to Parker’s concern about cost and socialization of health care, I believe the socialization of health care could greatly reduce costs if done even slightly efficiently.
First way it would cut costs; stop paying doctors so much money. I will guarantee you will have just as many people who want to be doctors if they are paid 1/2 as much. You may lose some smart people who got into the medical field to make money, but they will be quickly replaced by slightly less smart people who genuinely want to help people and are getting into medicine for the right reason. England is having no shortage of doctors and they pay a fraction of what we are paying.
Second cut would be all those profits corporations are making. Look at the profits some of these HMO are making each year. Put those back into the system. I understand profits are making them work in a streamlined fashion, but is that really in our best interest. Do you really want the person deciding if you get an operation making that decision with a cost benefit analysis? There is something inherently evil to me about deciding matters of life and death by dollars and cents.
I disagree with Parker’s comment that socialized health care would just mean shitty health care for everyone. First off you would be welcome to keep your private health care coverage if you wanted. Second, our private health care isn’t even good. Here is some info from the World Health Organization about world health care.
This is a pretty interesting article
(http://www.photius.com/rankings/who_world_health_ranks.html)
Passage from the article
“The U. S. health system spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product than any other country but ranks 37 out of 191 countries according to its performance, the report finds. The United Kingdom, which spends just six percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on health services, ranks 18th . Several small countries – San Marino, Andorra, Malta and Singapore are rated close behind second- placed Italy.”
Rank of the top 50 countries in health services (you will notice a majority of those above us have socialized health care)
1 France
2 Italy
3 San Marino
4 Andorra
5 Malta
6 Singapore
7 Spain
8 Oman
9 Austria
10 Japan
11 Norway
12 Portugal
13 Monaco
14 Greece
15 Iceland
16 Luxembourg
17 Netherlands
18 United Kingdom
19 Ireland
20 Switzerland
21 Belgium
22 Colombia
23 Sweden
24 Cyprus
25 Germany
26 Saudi Arabia
27 United Arab Emirates
28 Israel
29 Morocco
30 Canada
31 Finland
32 Australia
33 Chile
34 Denmark
35 Dominica
36 Costa Rica
37 United States of America
38 Slovenia
39 Cuba
40 Brunei
41 New Zealand
42 Bahrain
43 Croatia
44 Qatar
45 Kuwait
46 Barbados
47 Thailand
48 Czech Republic
49 Malaysia
50 Poland
(again non edited)
Friday, March 7 at 10:15 am
corey -”It would make economic sense to do a lot of horrible things, but that is in no way justification for doing them.”
Yes it is, and I think you are missing my point. Let me run my logic here for a second. We need to defend profits. Profits from medical companies or healthcare providers are not transfered into bank accounts of the CEOs. Most companies, especially those involved in technology fields like medicine, reinvest profits heavily into Research and Developement. If not then they pay out dividends to shareholders, which rewards investors who made the good decision to invest and allows them to invest in new companies. Quick example, 2 medical companies will IPO next week on the NASDAQ. Bioheart and MAKOSurgical (symbols BHRT and MAKO), two companies that put robots in you and save your life. Next week they will raise a couple Million $ each for the company to use (obviously making the founders and early investors very rich along the way). The company would use this money to get their robots in you as soon as they possibly can. I don’t think that letting the government dole out giant health care contracts (think: special interest groups, bureaucracy, Kevin’s jews, blah blah blah) will help us.
You could use the same example above with whatever companies Sicko says does a bad job. Insurance companies work no differently (they just dont use robots, yet…). Although Corey’s chart does not show it, these companies make our hospitals the best in the world (that’s why people from Canada and the UK come HERE for care). Does your heart bleed for the all the lives lost because the R&D wasn’t in place to stop some future disease? Mine (apparently, who knew?) does.
I guess I’ll shut up now and stop pissing you guys off because its more of my economic philosophy on private enterprise that I am explaining, which you are probably well aware of, and took more classes on in college, and dont want to hear any more about…
Again I am not saying we dont need any change, but I wont agree with pushing a system that works against meritocracy.
Friday, March 7 at 11:13 am
- Parker I think you are a very intelligent person and you like everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but in this case I just don’t agree with your point of view which is good. I it nice to see something from an educated yet opposite perspective, though I do hope that eventually you will realize you are greedy capitalist maniac and change your ways.
- My understanding is that a lot of the R&D these companies do is government subsidize anyways. There is no reason you couldn’t have private health care continue to do research and development. The only difference would be that maybe we would stop just trying to find drugs that will make a lot of money (erection related products) and focus on drugs people actually need. Also aren’t we talking expressly about Health Management Organizations profits not pharmaceutical companies, what sort of research and development are HMO doing to help us? My guess is absolutely none. All the HMO does is sometimes pay your medical bills when they come.
“We need to defend profits. Profits from medical companies or healthcare providers are not transferred into bank accounts of the CEOs”
This list is from 1996 of HMO CEO yearly salaries (i am sure in 11 years they have gone up a lot)
Stephen Wiggins, CEO, Oxford Health Plans, Inc. $29,061,599
Wilson Taylor, Chairman and CEO, CIGNA Corporation $11,568,410
David Snow, Executive Vice President, Oxford Health Plans, Inc. $10,403,451
Robert Smoler, Executive Vice President, Oxford Health Plans, Inc. $10,085,972
William Sullivan, President, Oxford Health Plans, Inc. $7,823,076
Joseph Sebastianelli, President, Aetna, Inc. $7,394,506
Michael Cardillo, Executive Vice President, Aetna, Inc. $7,069,969
Leonard Schaeffer, Chairman and CEO, WellPoint Health Networks $7,010,698
It doesn’t bother me that these people make a lot of money, it bothers me why. These people are paid millions of dollars a year not because they do a good job taking care of their actual customers the people paying for insurance, but quite the opposite. They get paid like this because they basically are really good at stealing money from their customers. They take all the unpaid (and often deserving claims), as they call them profits and pay that to the CEO, investment companies, and stockholders: the people who in my estimation don’t deserve the money at all. (I know that is a simplistic way of looking at it)
-I think capitalism like all government systems that have ever been created is going to die eventually and something new and improved will evolve (at least I pray this is the case). I think there are fundamental flaws in our profit based ideology that need to be considered. A great majority of these problems are based around the reality that what is profitable and what is morally and socially correct often do not line up. Maybe I am wrong, but in my little world it just doesn’t seem like this is the best way for people to live.
Friday, March 7 at 3:44 pm
First – apparrently I just have an awesome deal or something with my insurance. I pay 140 bucks a month, and for it I can go to the doctor whenever I want for whatever I want, and it just costs me 20 bucks. 20 bucks for brain surgery, or 20 bucks for my ingrown tonail. I pay less than $2000 a year to keep me alive and well, which is pretty fair.
Second – Capitalism has some holes and may be shitty sometimes, but it is the best thing we have available. The harder/smarter you work, the greater your rewards. Seems pretty fair.
Third – I agree with your premise that our society depends on low income jobs, and therefore there is a responsibility to take care of those people with generla needs such as health care. I am perfectly fine with subsidizing peoples healthcare costs if they have a job/are on legitmiate unemployment.
Fourth – I don’t trust our government to run anything effectively.
Fifth – the postal service is not a government agency. It is just regulated by the government and is not allowed to make a profit. They have rights just like a business and unlike a government organization such as:
power to sue (and be sued) under its own name
power to adopt, amend and repeal its own regulations
power to “enter into and perform contracts, execute instruments, and determine the character of, and necessity for, its expenditures”
power to buy, sell and lease private property
power to build, operate, lease and maintain buildings and facilities
Saturday, March 8 at 12:58 pm
43rd best health care services in the world? I assume your list has been doctored because the mighty nation of Croatia should be around 42 spots higher.
Wednesday, March 12 at 12:15 pm
I loved this documentary! It showed me a world that I did not know. I believed that I was told by the American press. I really that that we had the best insurance.
Wednesday, March 12 at 1:18 pm
Did my mentally retarded little brother get really high last night and start an online insurance company???
Thursday, March 13 at 7:49 pm
Socialism is death.
http://sinblancaporelmundo.wordpress.com/2008/03/06/una-imagen-una-palabra/