Sicko (Special Edition)
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Movie Reviews of Sicko (Special Edition)
Movie Review: Superb, Nails American Medical Association, Provocative
Summary: 5 Stars
Our oldest relative received a quadruple by-pass and none of us have ever had any problems with insurance, so I began the movie somewhat sceptically. I was won over fairly quickly after that. This is the "new new" Michael Moore, and as an estranged moderate Reblican, I attest to his value to the center. This is a very thoughtfully put together movie, very artful in combining interviews and news clips, and I now see the depth of despair that hits those disqualified by mendacious insurance comapnies. With the help of this movie, I now understand medical math: keep the middle happy, and screw over the poorest of the poor who fall into that smaller category of "catastrophically expensive" medicine. In essence, the medical industry is practicing genocide/medical triage, based on income and cost, not on need. Now that *should* be a crime.
He opens with Ronald Reagan, one of my personal heros, and thus disconcerting to see "selling" the concept of socialized medicine to create the hospital industry. I lunch regularly with Jim Turner, #2 Naderite who continues to do for health and food what Nader did for cars, and we talk often, not about whether health should be nationalized and universal, which we think it should, but rather about why the American Medican Association continues to focus exclusively on profitable remediation and drugs, does everything it can to conceal and drive out of business those who offer natural and alternative cures, and ignores completely the benefits of preventive medicine in the form of healthy life style and healthy environment.
He opens his damnation of Congress by pointing out that as a Senator, Hillary Clinton was bought--her silence was bought--for $800,000. That is one reason I think Senator Obama contrasts so well with her: Mrs. Clinton is "old partisan polkitics," Ron Paul and Barack Obama are "new transpartisan citizen-driven" politics.
I have four pages of notes on this movie. I took it seriously, and I will also watch John Q now, a movie I avoided despite the great stars.
The obscene costs of medicine are dramatically illustrated, and in one case, a person is told they can choose which of two fingers to attach, one for $40K the other for $60K. That really IS sicko.
The middle part of the movie is a superb review of Canadian, British, and French medicine and may have included Nordic as well.
He returns to the US, and to point out how our current health care system has been manipulated for profit and shielded from excellence by the AMA, asking--very intelligently and pointedly--why we have such excellent police, firefighters, and teachers who are "provided." He's right. The AMA and Mrs. Clinton are wrong. We need to follow the French/Cuban models (more on that at the end).
There are some sensational and intellectually satisfying interviews in this movie. A couple of highlights:
+ Labor Leader in UK: US is willing to spend trillions killing others, why not spend billions healing its own?
+ UK doctors get substantial bonuses for improving the health of their assigned sector.
+ Giving poor the vote led to the corruption of Congress.
+ People who are healthy, educated, and confident are harder to govern. Both Wall Street and Washington *want* "working poor" and "fearful populations. TIME TO END THAT.
+ Corporations use health benefits to enslave and discourage movement.
+ Keiser will deny coverage if the individual--not matter how acute their condition-refuses or cannot get to a hospital *owned* by Kaiser. THAT ought to be criminal.
+ France, by the testimony of Americans living there, is the most family-friendly country on the planet, down to providing mother's helpers so mothers can have two four hour blocks during the week to care for their house and husband without concern.
The movie documents the scandalous misbehavior of Los Angeles hospitals of "dumping" patients, dressed only in a thin hospital gown, by taxi in the vicinity of but not directly in front of a rescue mission for the homeless. I watched this on security video in horror.
He then moves into 9/11 health aftermath. I personally believe that President Bush is impeachable on a number of counts, but supressing the extreme danger of the asbestos released by the controlled demolitions of the three buildings (Larry Silverstein's dream--conspire with insurance companies to empty the building of insured gold, get a portion of the seven billions to reconstruct the WTC after it is brought down and cleared at taxpayer expense.... In my lifetime, we will see the truth come out about Bush, Cheney, Guliani, Rumsfeld and others who have disgraced our Nation--lying to the firefighters and the citizens of New York is one reason I consider Rudy "scoop and dump" Guliani to be toast.
The movie moves to a close by discovering that terrorists being held captive at Guantanamo receive the best of medical care, free, at our expense, at the same time that 9/11 workers go begging. There is a dramatic staged effort to reach Guantanamo via boat, then they suddenly appear in Cuba, probably via jet arranged in advance with the Cuban government.
The movie closes with the 9/11 firefighters receiving the best free treatment on the planet, and being honored by Cuban firefighters who come to attention for them. I was moved on a number of fronts.
First, Cuba and the Amish have the only sustainable agricultural practices on the planet;
Second, Cuba can afford to send 10,000 doctors to Venezuela for a prolonged period, and we cannot take care of our own.
Third, my libertarian roots vis a vis the Federal Government are reinforced. This is a government that makes war and betrays the trust of the American people, and I hold BOTH the Democratic and Republican partisan machines to blame. We need Electoral Reform to include an end to the "winner take all" nonsense.
This is a great movie. On Monday I will be sending Michael Moore a fax outlining the Earth Intelligence Network model for healing the planet. The model starts with the ten high level threats to humanity, among wich poverty (caused by government and industrial corruption), disease, and environmental degradation outrank war, the twelve policies (agriculture, diplomacy, economy, education, energy, family, health, immigration, justice, security, society, and water), must be addressed not just for the US and Europe, but for the eight challengers as well (Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and Wild Cards like Malaysia, Pakistan, South Africa, and Turkey). If Michael Moore can repeat this success in vignette form for each of the other 29 factors. we get our country back.
BRAVO.
See also my reviews below and also my lists.
Why We Fight
The Corporation
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price
Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Movie Review: IN THE SIXTIES EMERGED THE CONCEPT OF HOLISTIC MEDICINE, THE WHOLE PERSON, THEN NIXON COMMERCIALIZED AND DEHUMANIZED IT ALL AND
Summary: 5 Stars
The most telling part of this excellent and important documentary, essential viewing in this electoral season (especially where he shows how Hillary got bought off after fighting briefly and with compromises for the universal health care enjoyed by most civilized Western nations, including here France, Norway, Cuba and Canada), arises when we learn how we went from a nation of concerned health care providers addressing the whole person and community to privatized corporations concerned only for the bottom line and thus aggressively denying any care at all in order to earn more profits, placing money before Americans. It once took a whole village to raise a child and heal the sick and to care for our elderly in peace and compassion; now our health management, insurance and pharmaceutical corporations in order to increase their records profits deny health care to anyone who is ill. The most telling and undeniable part of this important and pro-life documentary lies in the Nixon tapes, in which Erlichman in 1971 sells the concept of privatized health management of Kaiser Permanente to a Nixon growling at any whiff of our government providing health services to all. Erlichman forcefully assures the frowning one that this is strictly for profit, and so Nixon the Usurper, our own Richard the Third, gleefully agrees (wondering where he gets his cut of the pie) and the next night on national television sells this snake oil as good for Americans. Now we have the worst health care system in the once civilized world, which mercilessly denies health care to those who are sick in order to rake in greater profits at the cost of their lives and suffering, ignoring and abusing not only the once honored whole person, but also encouraging and waiting for their death by negligence. Thanks a lot, Dick. And now from Dick into Bush.
One of the major marks of the ministry of Jesus was his healing. We now have a nation which refuses to heal, having the resources to do so. As Michael asks, what have we become? Michael, a Catholic, in this documentary frequently resorts to Catholic clergy and religious for this explicit subtext, including a parish priest in south Texas lamenting the loss of a parishioner to conscientious industry negligence; a beautiful Eucharistic celebration is presented. Michael also interviews a nun in Havana who strongly and consistently assures us who view that there is no religious persecution in Cuba. And one of the extra features, on this disk documenting the US health care industry's exclusive eagerness for profit by denying health care, asks Whom Would Jesus Deny (WWJD)?
Despite the statement by Michael Douglass character Gecko in the epitome of capitalist films Wall Street (20th Anniversary Edition), in this case greed is not good. Greed never is. It does not clarify. It is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. It kills us, and when it does not yet kill us, it brings us the most profound suffering possible, and it does not care. It is greed.
To see children addressing their own parents who have lost everything to health care expenses, despite having insurance, and who must needs sleep in their children's basement, to see those children disrespect their own parents as failures and as burdens, and giving them no more than a corner in the basement computer room (without moving out the computer, which comes first), to see those children demand to know how long this stay is going to last, of their own parents who gave them life and home and education and food and warmth, to see those children so corrupted by the brave new US mentality as to despise their own parents for their infirmity and poverty, to see their own children do not care, do not feel, this is to weep. Then to see that grandmother weeping in Havana because for once her health care and her emotional needs are being addressed, for free, is to weep once more. To see Canadians and British and French laughing as if an embarrassing joke, a concept which makes no sense, at our health care industry's demands and abuses and our government's eager complicity in this avaricious extortion of the American people, is to remember that, yes, we must care for one another, and the only pre-condition for going to the hospital is to be sick, and that the sign of a decent society is one which cares truly and wholly for its infirm, its elderly and its poor. This is a normal society, and we have come so far from it that we can no longer recall normal.
We make war for record profits for the war industry, including Blackwater and Halliburton. We deny health care for record profits for the illness industry. We see a 9/11 rescue worker weeping to discover in Cuba that the same inhaler she buys in America for $120 costs in Cuba $5, as she weeps to be heard for the first time and releases all of her pent up emotion not only from her rescue experiences at ground zero, but at the persistent denial of care needed because of the effects of the selfless rescue, because of losing her home and everything and moving her children into hopeless situations because of the high health costs above and beyond insurance.
Cuba sent medical teams to New Orleans to save lives before the brutal Bush military regime even woke up, as our poor and elderly and infirm drowned and died.
The Bush military regime turned the life-bringing medical teams away at the point of heavy artillery. Watch Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke - A Requiem In Four Acts (Documentary).
What's wrong with this picture? Just ask Michael.
Cuba exports doctors while we export war and deny health care to our own people. What is wrong with this picture? Go ask Michael. Ask your Congressional representative. What health care have we brought to Iraq?
We wish to laugh with the woman whose ambulance fee was denied because it was not pre-approved, as she asks how she could ask for approval while unconscious, but we realize this is too true and too common. It is very common. We weep with the mother whose baby daughter was let die of a fever because she was not in a hospital owned by Kaiser Permanente but a competitor, the closest one to the mother's home. The illness industry's only response was to throw that agonized mother out of their hospital for disturbing the peace. I guess that I would, too, as my baby daughter dies, denied care. We see injured and lost people dumped on skid row because their insurance money has run out, while still in pain and suffering, with IV's still attached.
Nixon. In the pursuit of impure profit turned our once great and committed health care industry into a bloody avaricious carnivorous monster as brutal as any prison doctor in an old chain gang movie demanding cash for relief from pain and suffering and lethal illnesses easily cured. Bobby would never have permitted this, and this is why they killed him now forty years ago. Bobby would have made America, not Cuba, the greatest exporter of doctors to the Third World. Bobby would have cared for all Americans, and eased all suffering without thought of cost, as do the civilized nations of the Western world. But, then, Bobby was a Catholic too, and heard the command of Jesus to heal the sick and to do unto others what we want them to do for ourselves, to love our neighbor as ourselves, to love our enemy.
See this movie again today. See this movie before you vote. See this movie and all of the excellent extras attached on this Special Edition disk.
Corporate capitalist illogic, recently condemned again by the good Pope Benedict, echoing the words of his predecessors, laughed at in disbelief by the citizens of our civilized Western nations, as applied to human rights and needs: limit supply to increase costs; deny care to cut costs and increase profits. Only in America.
Movie Review: "Sicko" by Michael Moore Forget your political beliefs...
Summary: 5 Stars
This is less about pointing fingers than it is about working together to resolve this situation in America today. By sticking (for the most part) to that premise, and not blaming one party or the other, Moore comes up with a film that everyone should see.
It is time for Americans to demand a change in our healthcare system. No, not by saying it is important to us, not by writing it on the internet. It takes more of a revolution than that. We are all going to have to demonstrate, visibly, whatever it takes, that we will only elect a President and legislators that have a concrete plan to provide a system of healthcare in this country that is similar to the rest of the western world. And that means that doctors will need to go to work for the healthcare system, and medical insurance companies will need to close their doors and distribute their shareholders' equity to the shareholders. Perhaps they can pony some of it up to a National Healthcare Fund before they go.
I don't pretend to understand all the economic ramifications, the project of transforming the system from private to public. That's what I elect all those people to figure out. A better day is coming. It has to.
In Michael Moore's past films,he spent too much time on himself and his sarcasm in the films, substituting his political beliefs sometimes for his judgement as a filmmaker. Thus, he was destined to polarize a lot of potential viewers.
I saw "Sicko" today, Moore's film about healthcare in America. As for pointing a political finger, he chose not to blame one political party or another ... oh, there are a couple of Bush jokes and one poke at Hillary, but for the most part, what Moore was trying to express was, with our deep-seated fear of socialism, we have allowed a corrupt and ineffective system of healthcare and health insurance to permeate (and in many families' cases, nearly destroy) our country's way of life.
The plight of many who have suffered in the American healthcare system is staggering, and sad. Moore tells his story through a series of vignettes, and chooses NOT to discuss the most obvious issue - those who have NO healthcare insurance. Instead, he focuses on the issues faced by those who DO, or who can apply. Most of the issues, portrayed in the first half of the film deal with those who cannot get a policy because of pre-existing conditions (e.g., those who are the sickest, those who have the most debilitating diseases, who need healthcare the most) and cannot get covered. I'm lucky. My employer takes all employees and their dependents into the policy at 90 days, with or without pre-existing conditions. Most do not.
Then there is the matter of what is covered, and what is not covered. Moore shows the plight of a 50 something couple (he's had three heart surgeries, she's a cancer survivor). They've been bankrupted just by co-pays and deductibles and are forced to live in a small room with their daughter. He shows the fate of a man who is the spouse of a healthcare worker at a large Midwestern hospital....his brother has been diagnosed as a perfect candidate to donate bone marrow to prevent his death from kidney cancer, but the hospitalization policy won't pay for the surgery. You can guess what happens to the man with cancer. Throughout this series, he points out the issues with the big insurance companies (also including some very difficult to deal with situations where their employees who have to deny care try to cope with the blame they lay on themselves), the big pharmaceutical companies, the employers who are trying to cut costs and specify the terms of the plans, the legislature, the past attempts by executives to do something about it, and the general malaise in government about the situation. This is strong stuff. It is nothing we don't know, but to see it assembled here, in essay format, is to feel some of the shame and sense of hopelessness we have all faced when friends, relatives or we, ourselves, struggle with healthcare and its costs. To wonder where America took the wrong turn, the wrong fork in the road.
Moore moves into the danger of socialized medicine by showing some of the rhetoric we have been subjected to in the US about how bad the system is. He points out that our healthcare system is ranked 37th in the world, just above Slovenia's. He lets us visit the healthcare system in Canada, Britain and France, to make the contrast between their government systems and our startlingly inept private system. The biggest laugh in the film is found here, when we learn why the British hospital has a cashier's desk. (No spoiler, go see it!)It is at this point that the realization hits home. In contrast to those in friendly democratic and quasi-friendly, quasi-socialist western companies..... well, we suck at this.
And that, my friends, is the message. Through our shame and our ineptitude, we have allowed the most important elements of our society, our people, to suffer. We have used our tax dollars unwisely, we have had the wrong social priorities, and we must change it. NOW.
Moore's film is not without its stunt. And even if you recognize it for the stunt it is, even if you know that what you see on camera was somewhat staged, you can't help but break down. This is the controversial scene where Moore learns that we have universal healthcare for the inmates at Guantanamo, so he takes some EMT volunteers from the 911 cleanup effort, who have become very sick, and a few others from the film, by boat, to Guantanamo. They can't get it to get free healthcare. So, he takes them to a free clinic/hospital in Cuba, and everyone receives some of the help they needed that they couldn't get in America. And a tribute is made by Cuban firefighters to some of these unsung heroes of 911.
The film is grainy, has some inserts of scenes from the 40's and 50's that are hokey, there is still too much Michael Moore. I'm sure there are things that are inaccurate. I'm told that the wait times to see doctors in many universal healthcare systems are appalling, but by and large, you can see that we have allowed our own system to erode appallingly, in this film.....but it is much more than just a film. It is a wake up call. So join me, go see it. Wake up. This is one of the greatest countries in the world. It's time we got our priorities straight and started acting like it.
Movie Review: A Massive Indictment of Our Criminal Health-Care System
Summary: 5 Stars
If you vote "not helpful" on this particular review, please tell me why. That's only fair because it is a subject of such importance to America. If you think Moore exaggerated, then please read my own horror stories below.
No one should oppose National Health Insurance without first seeing Michael Moore's unrelenting line of horror stories about American health care--a mere selection of 25,000 stories.
But I will not repeat Moore's horror stories. I'll give you some of my own. A doctor tried to talk me into a hernia operation. Coincidentally, I saw another doctor a week later. He checked me and said that I didn't have a hernia and that I should never go back to that doctor. Hello, in other words, I was going to pay for that doctor's swimming pool!
In the US the incentive for doctors is to perform more and more operations, not to keep people well (as in other countries).
My nephew went to see a find doctor at a major medical center, but the doctor refused to diagnose or treat my nephew. Actually, he was doing my nephew a favor because if he had tested him or treated him, he would not have been able to get long-term care insurance. He went out and got the insurance, and had to wait a year to go back to see the doctor! The waiting period!
I had to wait 90 days to get coverage with a new job. In the meantime, I was coughing all over my students.
Let us all agree to this American creed: No American should lose their home or life savings simply because they get sick. How can anyone disagree with that?
The American middle class had better wake up. Regardless of whether you have health insurance or not, you are only one or two diseases away from loosing our life savings and homes. National health insurance is the only answer, taking the best from the other countries that have it (and have a longer life expectancies--we rank 42).
Those who oppose national health insurance should do the honorable thing and turn down Medicare as a matter of principle. American cancer survival rates are higher, but note the following:
In response to an email that I sent, the Nation Cancer Institute said that "55.8 percent of all cancer cases are diagnosed in people 65 years and older." So Medicare has a big input in those survival rates. Probably even a greater impact in hip replacements. So the argument that government health insurance results in poor quality care is bogus.
Now quick, would you want to go to the Mayo Clinic, John Hopkins Medical Center, or a major VA hospital? ANSWER: THE VA PERFORMS BETTING IN ALMOST ALL AREAS. My two cousins love it.
Don't believe the lies told about Canada. Sara Robinson, who has duel Canadian-American citizenship, refuted common myths told about Canadian health care in "Ten Myths about the Canadian Health Care System" (see internet).
One of those great myths is that Canada's health-care system is "socialized medicine." False: In socialized medical systems, the doctors work directly for the state. In Canada (and many other countries with universal care), doctors run their own private practices, just like they do in the US. The only difference is that every doctor deals with one insurer, instead of 150.
The percentage of Canadians who'd consider giving up their beloved system consistently languishes in the single digits. A few years ago, a TV show asked Canadians to name the Greatest Canadian in history; and in a broad national consensus, they gave the honor to Tommy Douglas, the Saskatchewan premier who is considered the father of the country's health care system.
It is both true and false that there are longer waits. It all depends where you live. For the vast majority of Canadians, it is not true, but true for a few.
It is false that Canadians don't get to choose theirs own doctor.
Somebody, somewhere, is getting paid a lot of money to make this kind of stuff up. A bogus falsehood.
Canadian drugs are not the same. This is more preposterous bogosity.
They are exactly the same drugs, made by the same pharmaceutical companies, often in the same factories. The Canadian drug distribution system, however, has much tighter oversight; and pharmacies and pharmacists are more closely regulated. If there is a difference in Canadian drugs at all, they're actually likely to be safer.
It is false that publicly-funded programs will inevitably lead to rationed health care, particularly for the elderly. Sara Robinson calls this myth "False and bogglingly so." "The papers would have a field day if there was the barest hint that this might be true."
Basic morality 101: No person should loose their home or life savings because they are sick.
One of my readers is from Germany, and she worked at a private clinic in England. Their customers were wealthy Arabs, who could have come to the USA, but chose England. Why would they choose a so-called "socialist country"? Because England does not have socialized medicine--there are private hospitals, private doctors, and private insurance.
You cannot argue with life spans in countries with universal coverage. Here they are (overall, male and female--females live longer). I am looking only at major countries. There is something wrong when other capitalist countries are better off than our wealthy country.
Major Countries by Lifespan (all have universal health care). Except for communist Cuba, all these countries are ranked in the world's top 15 capitalistic economies.
Japan: 82.6
Switzerland: 81.7 (at the top of the economic competitive list)
Australia: 81.2
Spain: 80.9 (booming capitalist economy and universal coverage)
Sweden: 80.9 (leader in green energy)
Israel: 80.7 (major private investor in US economy)
France (metropolitan): 80.7 (the doctors make house calls)
Canada: 80.7
Italy: 80.5
New Zealand: 80.2
Norway: 80.2
United Kingdom: 79.4 (they must be doing something right. About tenth in world economic competitiveness)
Germany: 79.4
Ireland: 78.9 (booming private economy with universal coverage)
Cuba: 78.3 (Lacking the wealth to buy our medical marvels, Cuba still beats the US!)
United States: 78.2 (Shame on us.)
Movie Review: Time for the US to change their social course and for us not to follow their example....
Summary: 5 Stars
So, first and foremost, I watched this movie with an odd mixture of apprehension and amusement. Apprehension because the country I now live in, the Netherlands, has been embarking on an unexpected, experimental privatization of the national health care system under management by a cadre of big insurance companies, just as the US. A social enterprise I sincerily despise.. The amusement, on the other hand, comes from noticing how poor the standards of life and the expectations of basic social secutiry are in the United States, compared to what we enjoy in Europe, as well as Canada. You can hardly believe such a powerful and rich nation to be unable to organize basic security and assistance for its citizens without going through the accountancy departments! As if all in life were to be attached a monetary value: health, the feeling of belonging and contributing to a community that can support you if need be... The dignity of being a person no matter what your financial status and credit are. I guess these are the sick spots of American society, every way you wanna turn it... But I digress already! (I'll digress much more later!)
Undoubtedly, you can judge this to be an interesting and catching movie only if one is interested in the social issues that it exposes. Because otherwise rest assured it can provide you with a pretty grim couple of hours... In spite of the odd quips or humorous sections here and there. It's a typical Michael Moore documentary: no clean footage, low-budget set-up and very slowly coming to the main point. If you have a short attention span or prefer the glitter of National Geographic-like kind of info, be prepared for something less entertaining... On the other hand, entertainment was not the point here! The ideas and contents are fundamental to reflect on what western societies are heading for in terms of life-quality and people's mentality. The example of the American economic behemoth that can't take care of (or rather, doesn't give a damn about) its lower-classes or merely unlucky citizens, is probably the most negative you can rely on, but at least it's telling! That's why the five stars, and I'd give six if I could have six...
A warning: I do not believe Michael Moore is totally objective in his representation of facts and choice of examples, because it's well known that he has a hugely overflowing political agenda! I wish this movie were accompanied by another one, in which some raw statistics could reveal how Americans rate their health care, and how many times bad things happen in the name of the money-first ideology.
On the other hand, Moore's agenda sure is a whole lot better than the one of the Republicans and their associated economic lobbies and consortia (not to mention the blind-minded religious conservatives that merrily trail along!). Given a choice between what possible bias I have to pick, I dive head-down for Moore...
The somewhat unsettling side of this documentary is that for all the effort in rigging up a tirade against the health management in the States, not a iota of possible alternatives and suggestions is presented! Unless you seriously want to consider fake marriage with Canadians or mass emigration to France or England? There's a lack of constructive appeal to this, say.. But then it's also fair to note that on Michael Moore's website there is actually a section with a drafted proposal on how to reorganize medical life of America. Whether it's good or not, that's open for debate... (We won't believe Moore is can perform miracles, but at least there's an attempt at suggesting some new course, which was missing in the movie!)
On a personal note, the thumbs up for Moore is followed by a definite thumbs down for the Dutch government, who chose to go for private-insurance funding of health care. Although the spirit and laws holding Dutch society together are a far cry from the callousness of the American world, and I don't think anyone will ever get kicked out of hospitals here... Yet, simple truth is, the insurers are not going to be there for your health, but for your money! They rake in as much as possible, fork out as least as possible: it's their job! A few cases of people I know here already show how much they try to dodge assistance for you as soon as they legally can..
Two reasons why insurance-policy for personal health care is flawed:
1) The money you pay for your policy on a yearly basis doesn't even come close to cover the real expenditures of the medical establishment on a national scale even in such a small country. Not even close.. So it's actually still the government that finances the overwhelming most of technical bills and professionals' salaries there! Which it already did before... So what's new for the taxpayers? Just an added tax which goes to feed the wallets of powerful insurance companies, certainly not to fund emergency care departments or operating rooms. And this is a fact! (As well as an interesting political slip that should be worth some investigation a la Moore on this side of the big pond...)
2) Health care is a basic part of any system of social welfare associated with a logistically functioning and morally balanced society, if we look at the western democratic model. It's not something you can evaluate looking at the expenses, not in our wealthy countries. If even Cuba (as in Moore's example) is able to provide free medical assistance to its citizens, it should certainly be within the boundaries of European economies too! The biggest cost of privatized health care is not that monthly bill deducted from your salary, it's the moral and psychological burden one feels for it... You suddenly find your worth as a person accounted for by your monetary solvency, and not by simply being a member of a community. And this is a high price to pay for the single citizen as well as for society as a whole: it's one more significant step towards that dire feeling of being out there on your own bum, instead of being a member of a reliable group to which you contribute, and that, in case, will watch out on that bum of yours in return...
Big mistake!