Sicko

I went with Stef to the Washington, DC premier of Michael Moore’s new documentary, Sicko, which examines the U.S. health care industry. Now, as many of us have, I have had to watch some friends and family be royally screwed by the health care industry; an industry where paying for a treatment is referred to as a “medical loss”, and medical reviewers are given bonuses and incentives for denying coverage as much as possible. So I wasn’t exactly neutral going into the film, and as I thought it would, it made me really angry. Not that it presented anything particularly new, but some of the people he spoke with, including insurance company employees past and present who were brought to tears thinking of the consequences to individuals of their actions, had the most appalling stories to tell.

Mr. Moore was there at the premier and spoke to the crowd, and while he himself is unapologetically liberal, as am I, he made a point that I have often pondered myself, which is why is universal health coverage a partisan issue?? This is something that is a humanitarian issue. While everyone knows that those without health insurance are royally screwed in this country, looking at the astonishing, bankruptcy-inducing bills that those with health insurance can rack up is appalling. Which was exactly his point. He looked at the health care systems in Canada, the United Kingdom, France, and Cuba, all of which have national health coverage, or what is also referred to as socialized medicine, which is a term that all kinds of people jump on.

Including the absolute morons outside, who were wearing nurse’s outfits that looked like they came from a porn film, waving signs such as “So Sicko of Socialism” and “Michael Moore Just Wants The Free Gastric Bypass”, and chanting “Socialism Kills!!!”. Wow. That’s such a substantive argument; I don’t know how to respond to that.

Oh, wait. Yes I do.

If you can’t come up with a more coherent and mature argument than that, don’t waste my freaking time. Socialized medicine is NOT THE SAME THING as socialism. One is a system through which the government provides health care. The other is a completely different theory of economics and governance. And the government provides a lot of services, but we just don’t refer to socialized fire and rescue or socialized police protection. But when the fire department comes to put out a fire in your home, you don’t get a bill. It’s the same principle.

Yes, the systems that he examined in other countries have their flaws. But they also don’t see hospitals using taxi cabs to take poor people to a different part of town and dump them out on the street with IVs still in their arms because they couldn’t pay their bills. What have we become? As one very astute British man he interviewed said, “Governments can always seem to rally the resources to wage war. And if you can find the money to kill people, you should be able to find the money to heal them as well.”

I’ll step down from my little soapbox now, but just to say that I’d highly recommend seeing this documentary, as I found it very compelling. You may not agree with Michael Moore, but he will make you think.