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FILM REVIEWED
Minette Marrin reviews Michael Moore’s latest, now released in the UK:
Sicko is a dishonest film.
There’s more, but she’s essentially nailed it.
UPDATE. Moore didn’t pick a good month to launch a film praising the British health service.
UPDATE II. Readers discover some flaws in Marrin’s review.
Michael Moore is a dishonest man. He can’t but help making dishonest movies.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2007 10 29 at 12:37 AM • permalinkAnyone who extolls the virtues of a “free” health system has never lived under one.
Posted by Quentin George on 2007 10 29 at 01:31 AM • permalinkWhat’s hilarious is Sicko has been banned in Cuba.
—Nora
Posted by The Thin Man Returns on 2007 10 29 at 01:50 AM • permalinkActually, the author is not as completely rational as Tim’s snippet would suggest:
None of these problems mean we should abandon the idea of a universal shared system of healthcare. {Nope, none of them, not singly or collectively. In fact, not a sixteen wheeler truckload of problems would suggest that we rethink the premise! “Communism is a great idea—it’s just never been done properly…”} It’s clear we would not want the American model, even if it isn’t quite as bad as portrayed by Moore. {Naah… You wouldn’t want that! The richest sick people in the world all come here because they like having a McDonalds within walking distance! And whoe knows—maybe if they get care in the US, they’ll meet Brittney Spears! That’s it!}
Posted by zeppenwolf on 2007 10 29 at 02:23 AM • permalinkOT anyone hear the ad they just played on RN?
ran something like:
Fran Kelly: while our leaders squabble about climate change, in Kiribas they’re practically handing out the lifeboats
(sorry- they don’t do transcripts of in house promos but it might turn up at the end of the podcast of this weeks Counterpoint when it’s posted)
Posted by eeniemeenie on 2007 10 29 at 03:06 AM • permalinkI heard an interview a while back, on The Naked City, with leftie filmmakers Rick Caine and Debbie Melnyk, who’ve done a demolition job on their one time idol. Being Canadian, it was news to them that the waiting time in Canadian hospitals was 45 minutes. It was also news to them, having lived in Cuba, that Cuba’s pharmacy shelves were stocked with product.
OT (again)- the MSM’s supporting our troops again
Posted by eeniemeenie on 2007 10 29 at 03:21 AM • permalinkIt’s been noted before that many lefties have no military service. I don’t know if that really is true, but it does seem to me that anyone who has ever been subject to military medical care would want a nationalized health system.
Posted by Steve Skubinna on 2007 10 29 at 03:25 AM • permalink11. zeppenwolf,
You beat me to it. That is precisely what I thought when, after several paragraphs worth of horror stories, she could make such a statement. But isn’t that precisely the problem? It is the virulent Noble Idea Syndrome. It makes no difference to the moral status of the Noble Idea—we are all our brothers keeper—if in practice the Idea comes dressed as the Grim Reaper.
They have taken the judgment of the individual and his physician and replaced it with layer after layer of slathered on good-intentions that translate into the judgment of thousands of middle-men standing between you and your physician. This costs an enormous amount of money that has absolutely nothing to do with health care. But the cost of this “free” health care isn’t mere money. It is your very life.
Would NOT want a nationalized health… aw, fugeddaboudit.
Posted by Steve Skubinna on 2007 10 29 at 03:28 AM • permalink#13 egg_ Michael Moore sure could use some cosmetic help, like, perhaps a little moob reduction surgery, courtesy of some nationalsed health scheme, someplace.
But while he’s researching where to get on a waiting list for that, maybe he can do a comparison study of how long it would take in New South Wales to get some shiny new ball joints for when his hips give out.
Or, better still, how long he might have to wait, critically injured, in the emergency ward of the Royal North Shore Hospital before he just plain bled to death!
# 21 sorry- my spelling- i was typing what i was hearing.
The ACA naughty soldiers thing is on now- who do they think joins the army?- young men or graduates from Miss Precious’s finishing school for politically correct young ladies?
Sheesh, they won’t be happy till our troops go into combat armed with lollipops.
dragging myself back on topic
Mike Moore is a shabby buffoon
shaped like an overblown baloon
When it comes to health
Despite his ill gotten wealth
He likes the Cuban system, the loonPosted by eeniemeenie on 2007 10 29 at 04:47 AM • permalinkO/T
On the radio thisafternoon.
Campbell Newman (Liberal) Lord Mayor of Brisbane promoting the “I (green heart) Brisbane” wank.
He was interviewed and among other things he is encouraging all people and businesses of Brisbane to go “Carbon Neutral” and display the I (green heart) Brisbane sticker/sign.Does this mean that he wants all Brisbanites to die? No. He wants them to plant a few trees and offset all their carbon emissions…
Sounds like a bloody licence to print money to me.
Read more about the wanky project here.
O/T
Saw an ad on TV this afternoon. Colonial something or other. Some insurance company. They’re the guys that keep sending letters to someone who hasn’t lived here for over 12 years despite the fact that we used to religiously send them back marked “Not at this address”. (Now we just chuck them.)
Anyway, the ad was all about some terribly green or self-sustaining thingy they’re doing and guess who they’re naming as someone who’s joined them in this project.
Go on. Guess. No prizes. It’s too easy.
I don’t know. It does seem like free nationalized health care for all is a good thing, if the service is good. But to be honest, as a middle class American I’ve had nothing but excellent health care services provided to me my whole life. If that was to change to naturalized health care, I believe that would change significantly.
Posted by wronwright on 2007 10 29 at 05:13 AM • permalink#28, wronwright,
We’re in the business which is why we’ve had health insurance for the last 25 odd years. When you need health care you need health care. It is possible to actually get health care through the private system. Through the public, tax-funded-only system you get waiting lists and maybe you get heath care or maybe you die first. But there you are, you makes your choices and you pay, or don’t pay, your money.
#29, splice,
NO! What is wrong with you? I said it was easy and you go with Paco? Paco? Paco isn’t easy. At least, I think he isn’t easy. Clever, I grant you, and a great mercantilist, but not easy.
I have lived in the UK, US and Australia and have had health experiences in all 3. Australia, in my personal experience has served me best although I can see it changing for the worse. Not for funding which is always inadequate for some but for litigation. My experiences in US healthcare made me angry at the doctors who refused to do anything real for me due to fears of litigation and in the UK healthcare was a joke unless you were privately covered. But even private healthcare fails to cover birht costs in the UK.
Australia has a good system with a lot of warts. But a reasonable working class family can get good care at an achievable price.
All you need to know about the British health system is that soccer players go to the US or France for surgery. There is one exception: for knee reconstructions, they go to Belfast. Surgeons there have enormous experience in reconstructing 2000 chards of bone and gristle back into what might resemble a knee.
#31 Janice,
There are limits to Australia’s blend of private and public health care. If you have serious cardio-vascular, oncological or renal problems, for example, you may exceed the technical capacity of private hospitals rather quickly - even at the diagnostic stage - well before organ transplant or other leading edge procedures. Patients will often be referred, in these cases, to one of the major teaching hospitals.
Off-topic, but it concerns a man much closer and dearer to our hearts than Michael Moore.
From Counterpoint tonight: PJ O’Rourke’s speech to the Commonwealth Club on Adam Smith’s The Wealth Of Nations.
Don’t deprive yourself.
Link here.Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2007 10 29 at 06:40 AM • permalink#24 eenie :)
No pedantry intended, juz punning at Auntie’s expense - wouldn’t have a had a clue myself if I had worked in International Comms (yours truly switched off their (mainland) radio phone transmitter* when they went to Inmarsat c. 1986 ... here come the age jokes :)*One of our donations to the RAN IIRC.
Alternative link for PJ’s speech here.
The video version.Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2007 10 29 at 06:47 AM • permalink#36, splice,
Ah, yes. But then the public hospitals have to take you and try to do something for you. You become an urgent case and so, usually, bypass the waiting lists.
Still, I’m pretty sure St Vinnies private used to do major cardiovascular stuff - not that I’d trust them to look after me. Had a bad experience with a family member there once.
But, as they say, common things occur commonly. Common things cause much more of the morbidity out there in the general community than do rare things and can usually be looked after perfectly adequately and much more quickly in the private system.
#42 Janice,
Correct. It is St Vinnies who have the reputation as world-class pioneers of heart transplant and other cardiothoracic procedures.*
Moreover, I agree, the private health system has ample resources to address a very broad range of diagnostic and surgical procedures.
But, to stick on this one, there’s more than I can possibly name when I think of the advances in medical imaging, diagnostics, and avant-garde procedures that, here in Australia, we take for granted.
Advances that are the immediate and outstanding result of the US health system that Michael Moore so despises.
*Cynical disclaimer: being a public hospital they have an abundance of patients and near-cadaver candidates for double-blind, controlled research.
#39, kae,
I know nothing about hospitals in Brisbane and, quite frankly, am not up on the latest rules re gap payments and such. It all got too boringly bureaucratic and I dropped out. But I think gap payments are only incurred for treatment while not an actual hospital inpatient so if you use PA (can’t be Prince Alfred) as an outpatient you won’t be asked to pay any gap. But if you have to go in as an inpatient then, depending on what sort of health insurance you have, you may be able to choose your treating doctor without subjecting yourself to charges that can send you broke. Seventeen years ago my dad started off as a private patient in a private hospital. He was in Medicare Private and after 7 days in ICU his insurance ran out. If he’d been in HCF it would have been a different story. But, anyway, he got transferred to an associated public hospital where he hung onto life for several weeks before his “carers” got bored with all their stuffing around and decided to not bother any more. Mum got stuck with a bill for about $10,000 simply because dad was a private patient in a public hospital. I don’t think that sort of distinction applies any more. That is, I think that private patients in public hospitals don’t have to pay the gap anymore. But I don’t know for sure. My best advice is to ask your GP.
#43- kae, 30ml-that’s good- it’s been raining on and off here since last night (good, seeing we’re not allowed to top the pool up anymore) and overcast all day (also good- otherwise it would be as sticky as Kruddy’s index finger)
Posted by eeniemeenie on 2007 10 29 at 07:30 AM • permalinkYears ago I had some surgery privately in a private hospital up here. Wesley. I had to pay the specialist up front. It was only a few hundred dollars for the gap, but it was a struggle. I had received an inheritance and so could afford to pay - three procedures, three different surgeries. Not only the specialist, but the anaethestist as well, and they cannot give you a firm price on their services - although sometimes they don’t charge more than the scheduled fee and it’s free (that’s only ever happened once).
For my cardiac ablation I went public in PA (Princess Alexandra) Hospital. I’ll ask about the private cover in PA next time I’m there - but I think there’s still a gap to pay - depends on which health fund you are with - I’m with Defence Health and they are pretty good. It’s a day procedure and they kept me in overnight last time - hopfully the second attempt will work. I go private for my five-yearly bum-cam and it’s free. (You’ve heard of Car Cam? Stump Cam? I have bum-cam.)
I think it’s rude that your mum got stiffed $10k by the hospital, did they waive it eventually or did she have to pay?#57 nah- they’ll send Fatty there when the islands fail to sink, to make sure they damn well do.
Posted by eeniemeenie on 2007 10 29 at 08:13 AM • permalink#61- that’s an idea- and if they hollowed him out they could pick up the survivors from several other island groups at the same time
Posted by eeniemeenie on 2007 10 29 at 08:27 AM • permalinkThe problem with the US healthcare system isn’t that it’s freemarket, as some would like you to believe, it’s because it’s the most horribly regulated system. Insurance companies are not only regulated by the federal government, but they have state regulations to deal with as well. In the 1960s before the government got involved with private insurance and medicare, insurance was quite affordable, so where simple Drs visits and such, back then Drs even made housecalls. The government decided to intervine, making it near impossible for insurance to be bought by individuals and had to be a benifit package gotten through employers. When this started to show signs of problems Ted Kennedy decided that HMOs were the way to go and introduced legislation to force that on us through the insurance companies. Then the states got involved with 50 different rules making it impossible for someone in NY to buy a policy in a less regulated state like Florida. This matters now that there are more small businesses and more freelance workers who now have limited choices because they can only buy what their state has to offer, and in NY, let me tell you it’s not much and it’s really expensive if you don’t qualify for the subsidised state insurance. In NY for instance, a 25 year old cannot buy a policy that just covers him for catastrophic care, he has to buy a policy that pays for everything including prenatal and infertility and many other things he would not use, that’s the law. So what’s he going to do, pay $900 a month for something he probably won’t need? If he was allowed to have a policy that didn’t pay for every office visit and just covered emergancies for $150 a month, wouldn’t that make more sense? One last thing, socialized medicine is hardly free. The Fraser Institute did a study and the amount of tax money per person that goes into “free” healthcare is as much as people paying for a policy in the States and you get so much less for your money.
Free care isn’t free. I know that.
I would be happy for the amount I pay into my health fund (about $100/month plus the 30% contribution from the government), to go into public health, but I’d expect a vast improvement in the system for that money.
I have worked and contributed all my life to the health system, now I am getting on and some of the bits don’t work so well I need to avail myself of the services. I think that’s reasonable. There’s things wrong with the Austrlian health system, but I don’t know exactly what they are (except for the obvious queues and waiting lists), and I don’t know how to fix them, but then again, that’s not my job.
I got election material in my letterbox today. Vote for Kevvie. He will fix the hospital system.
Funny, in every state the health system is screwed because the state government is LABOR. Gee, Kevvie, all you will have to do is stop the buck-passing between the State and Federal Governments…. sure, whatever.
(Why is it buck passing when it’s a STATE responsibility?)
My head hurts. I’m off to bed.The problem with politicians being in charge of your health care is that the care will be allocated politically.
I was in an argument with a Canadian and he pointed out that you could get breast cancer screening same day. Of course heart problems, the curse of old right wing men, can wait. When I asked him what drugs the Candadians had ever developed, he shot right back the HPV vaccine. Effective against what? Why cervical cancer of course.
Nursing homes are full of aged women, having outlived their husbands, but the number one priority for Canadian health care is women voters.
You don’t hear that many complaints from Americans about their own health care, btw. The vast majority of the complaints are that other people, besides themselves, are getting screwed. Americans know that if they get bad care, they can go elsewhere. Choose doctors, choose hospitals. The number one complaint Americans have against health plans is lack of choice. Something that will not be remedied by a single payer system.
If you compare this with stories you get out of Canada, for example, you will see that Canadians have personal complaints. And the biggest complaint they have it that they have no choice.
Besides, every American knows that one cannot be denied care at any hospital due to lack of ability to pay. One can have their credit ruined, but they were gambling with their credit by not buying health insurance. I don’t see why that is my problem.
There has always been a Michael Moore type around, and there always will be. What bothers me is that approximately half of the US and all of France buys his crap. It is obvious that this buffoon waddles around spewing out the first venom-filled, antagonistic doodoo that pops into that hamster pellet he calls a brain. The fact that so many fail to recognize this is a sad, sad testimony to that intellectual state of the West. Moore is the Captain Edward John Smith of the RMS Dimwit plowing full steam ahead into an iceberg (albeit a smaller, globally warmed one, but an iceberg nonetheless). Wake up world! It’s time to jump ship!
Will hip Britons have to fly to India to watch the movie?
Posted by andycanuck on 2007 10 29 at 11:12 AM • permalinkWill hip Britons have to fly to India to watch the movie?
It’ll be the in-flight movie, andy.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2007 10 29 at 11:42 AM • permalinkThe litigation against the medical profession and drug companies have done enormous damage. But it isn’t just the contingent lawyers, like John Edwards, who have made their fortunes on the backs of patients, who have done damage. The state and federal government, in their “War on Drugs” have done much to cause the pain and suffering of patients. Just because some idiots get off on a particular medication, doctors are under the gun to not write prescriptions for these drugs. The druggies don’t suffer, but those who legitimately need these meds certainly do. This is a problem that isn’t really spoken about, since you will be accused of being pro-druggie if you dare stand up for the rights of innocent patients.
Remember that when they talk about the American system, they are NOT talking about private anything. There is no area where medical care is truly between you and your physician.
The right to universal care never addresses the question of the rights of those who are to provide the care. Are they slaves of the system, with no right of individual judgment, but with all of the considerable responsibility, just because somebody somewhere has a need?
I say these things as someone who worked in hospitals from the age of 14, during a time when people were responsible for their own care (just like they were responsible for the rest of their life). I worked my way through high-school and college in the various departments of hospitals. I graduated from college as an R.N. I worked for the Navy and I worked in both public and private hospitals. The year I entered college, Medicare was instituted, along with other programs that damaged the profession. By the 1980’s I had had enough. Patient care has deteriorated because I was too damned busy trying to keep up with the paper work, most of which had absolutely nothing to do with the patient per se, and the rest consisting of forms that demanded the exact same information, but went to different departments. Costs soared at the same time.
When I got to the point that I worried about my patients the whole time I wasn’t there, I retired. I’m not being conceited here; I didn’t think I was the only one who could take care of my patients. But the level of incompetence had grown along with the rules making it very difficult to fire anyone. The disease that finally made an invalid of me was such that I was in pain most of the time. It just wasn’t worth putting up with the pain of my own disease to deal with the cancer eating away at the profession I loved.
Now I live without insurance because the costs soared beyond my ability to pay (fully half of my husband’s salary). I live with pain that could be controlled, but the doctors are afraid of a visit from the DEA. Our tax money goes to pay for everybody else, but we make too much to be one of the beneficiaries of everyone’s forced largess.
The petty tyrants running all of this won’t be satisfied until we are all “the poor.” Explain to me again why this is a good idea.
#67
Rob, I have been unfortunate in my choice of ancestors. From them I have inherited certain health problems which are now, in my 40s, appearing to cause problems. Not everyone is as well off as to be able to afford the exhorbitant costs of health care, along with the other costs of living.
Is your suggestion that those who cannot afford health costs, not because they are wastrels, but because they have a high financial burden already which ill-health will compound, just go without treatment and perhaps be unable to work and contribute to society and, eventually, become unproductive members of society, before just dying?Well, Rob, I guess I should just quit work, go on a pension, be unwell and die.
So did Jesus say that the Good Samaritan was the head of a political party and all were forced into this party? What made the Good Samaritan good? Would he be good if the choice to act was taken from him—and his actions were accomplished by the force of a gun at his head?
The moment a right can only be accomplished by the force of a government gun, it ceases to be a right. No valid right can be imposed on by another “right.” When that happens, the meaning of right becomes whatever someone’s whim tells him it is.
kae, I have physical problems that have slowly made an invalid of me. My problems, however, are not a blank check to be drawn upon the life and efforts of anyone else’s life.
If I must seek help, I understand that it is help generously supplied by another, and given freely by that person’s choice, and I can be grateful. When I am put into a position that my only option is a bureaucrat, I’ve run out of options.
Have we really come to a point where we can think of no other solution to a problem than the government?
Salty, I have no objection to assisting people unable to pay for their health costs, and I have for many years. In Australia there is a part of our tax which is supposedly earmarked for health care, if you earn over $50k p/a and are not in a health fund you pay a little more. It’s only about 1.2% of your income (another percent or so if you earn over $50k and are not in a health fund), which is probably not nearly enough to provide the level of health care which is needed.
Many years ago the hospitals in Australia were funded by lotteries. Unfortunately these were sold off and now that money has to come from the consolidated revenue coffers.
I would like to think that a productive member of society as witty and entertaining as yourself, would be assisted in your, er, dotage and ill health, by people who are in good health and therefore don’t need treatment/healthcare.I knew a woman whose husband had bowel cancer. He fought for over 5 years, but lost his fight a year ago. She told me that she was in a health fund and after paying a lot of money for the most expensive chemo drugs most suited to his cancer the charges were waived after the first year of treatment (and several thousand dollars). They had already used up their savings. I’m not sure whether this happens to all patients in this situation. The particular drugs paid for by their health fund were not available to public patients because of their cost.
The litigation round-about is beginning here, a doctor has been charged (yesterday) with manslaughter.When I was growing up my mother had family health insurance. She sent the bills to the health fund and then didn’t worry about them, they were paid. No gap payment. Most of the people going to court for debt were those who owed doctors money, who didn’t for one reason or another have health insurance.
All our health systems are different, Australia, the UK and the US, and they all have their drawbacks. I’m grateful that I live in a country with a health care system, flawed as it is, because people here have a damn side better chance of living a long productive healthy life than people in many other supposedly advanced countries.
Late but heres more cheery news from the UKs, NHS
A surplus caused by not spending on maintenece?
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2007 10 29 at 07:10 PM • permalinkThere seems to be a general conflation between ‘health care’ and ‘health insurance’. The former is treating an ailment, the latter is one possible way to pay for the first. In the olden days (before the govmint got involved) people paid for their health care out of their own pockets, possibly with an assist from insurance available via the employer.
Here in the U.S. of A. I have on several occasions gone from first visit to a surgeon to the recovery room in a few weeks. Even if I had paid 100% it would not have bankrupted me, though I might have had to forego some niceties.
So please, Dear Government, get out of my life.
You can see what the scheduled fee is in Australia for a procedure if you know what the name of the procedure, ir it’s item number is, for example, cardiac ablation
Mind you, this is just the schedule fee, and private practice specialists are not obliged to charge this for their service.#85
I’m a bit behind, too, ChrisPer.I think that doctors say the scheduled fee is woefully inadequate.
In a private treatment situation it used to be that you could only ever get back 85% of the scheduled fee from Medicare (the government’s Health Insurance Commission) and the remainder up to the scheduled fee from your private insurance company (if you were a public patient you would only cost the Government 85% of the scheduled fee and there would be no gap), however if treated privately the fee was higher than the scheduled fee you had to pay the rest yourself.
Some doctors and hospitals have agreements with the Private Health Insurers (see Access Gap Cover and Search for a Doctor below - this is my health fund), that an insured person can be treated with no out-of-pocket expense, but it depends on what you need to have done and whether the provider has an agreement with your insurance company. You can contact your health fund and ask them which specialist doctors/hospitals have arrangements with them.
Access Gap Cover
Minimising the gap. Search for a doctor.The easiest way to get advice from the health fund is to phone them, they will not answer emails. And you must have the HIC Item number to get a dollar amount from the health insurer.
#75 Great post Salty,
You really emphasized that many of the burdens of our healthcare system in the US are because of the government not the free market.
Everyone in the world should keep in mind that to the extent that the US is more free market than other countries, most of the innovation comes from us. Since the 90s, pharmaceutical companies from Europe have been relocating here. If we were to do a Hillary style plan here, innovation would probably stop in it’s tracks at a time when our knowledge is changing rapidly because of things like the genome project and nanotechnology.
“by shockumentaries ...”
You know, I love the new and improved ways people have of referring to documentaries -hence:
-wokumentaries - on Chinese cooking
-frockumentaries - very girly fashion
-fock you! mentaries - life in Da Hood
-ticktockumentaries - subject: time and,
possibly, pest control.
-duckumentary - more great Chinese cooking
-yukumentaries - on subjects dealing with the funny.Posted by carpefraise on 2007 10 31 at 08:27 AM • permalink
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Oops. A Chris Shiel moment for Miss Marrin.