In order to fulfill the expectations of readers who perceive me as a Birkenstock-wearing, bong-toting, everything-protesting uber liberal, I just finished watching Michael Moore's latest, Sicko. I think I've seen all of his movies except Canadian Bacon, and this one has by far been his most thought-provoking, so I thought I would catch some freshly-baked thoughts as they came off the stove.

Opponents of universal healthcare say, "Sure, they have 'free' healthcare in France and Canada, but they're drowning in taxes! What of the taxes?!" Well I pay taxes, too, and a pretty substantial sum, considering my puny paycheck. Yet in France not only are they getting free medicine, x-rays and CAT scans, you also get a mandatory five weeks of vacation every year -- even part-time employees -- and a government employee even washes clothes while your wife is pregnant! There's more, a lot more, but I think that alone shows the U.S. government is in arrears of several weeks of paid vacation to me, let along a few aspirin, considering how much they're chopping out of my paychecks. I'll even give `em a pass on the washer woman.

Universal healthcare opponents also say, "It costs money to do the research that create all these great drugs. You think drug companies are going to do that for free? And what other countries do you see pumping out great meds other than the good ol' U-S-of-A?" Yes, it costs money to create those drugs, so it's even more of a mystery why a pill that costs $120 in the United States costs five cents in Cuba. It's the same pill, same R&D, vastly different price.

Penicilin, by the way, was invented in Great Britain, which also has a universal healthcare system. Listerine, the first antibacterial, invented by Joseph Lister, is another product of jolly old England. (This stuff isn't in Sicko, by the way, it's stuff I just know.)

You remember a couple of years ago when we were hearing on the news how the Bird Flu might make it's way around the globe and kill at least 500,000 people? The only drug company that had a treatment was in Switzerland...not the U.S. But they had heard about our ways in the U.S. and had taken notes, apparently. The Swiss company didn't have the resources to manufacture the amount of the drug that it was projected would be needed. The idea was put forward that other drug companies could cooperatively manufacture the drug in a crisis. But you know what? The Swiss company declined and said they were concerned about their patent issues. Yeah, 500,000 people could have been kicked into their graves because these guys were worried about ownership. Fortunately that bird crap never happened, so we didn't have to worry about that bird-brained bickering (did you see how I turned the bird flu into a comically sarcastic closing sentence?).

"Well tell me where in the Constitution you see the guarantee of health care?," a guy once asked me. Indeed, I didn't see any mention. I also didn't see anything saying I could borrow books from a library, or that the police would investigate a robbery at my house, or that the fire department would douse it with water if it was on fire. No mention of a tax-supported educational system, either! Yet these are all services that exist that I avail myself to, and I'm sure Rush Limbaugh does, too (Rush Limbaugh went to Southeast Missouri State University, a taxpayer-supported school. He dropped out in his first year).

The New York Times review on the Sicko DVD cover said this was Moore's funniest movie yet, but that review was a fallacy. There's a joke or two, but there's just not really a lot of humor to be found in illness, unfortunately. It doesn't have to be funny to be informative, though. In fact I know a guy who said Michael Moore would be spoiled by the success of Farenheit 9/11 and his next film would be an action-adventure movie. Much like the weapons of mass destruction that were never found, he was wrong on this one, too.

So that was my stream-of-conscious review. Doesn't it make ya sick?

2 Comments:

 Anonymous said...

Anthony Daniels writes under the pseudonym Theodore Dalrymple. He is a recently retired physician from the National Health Service in Great Britain, much of his time spent attending to the medical needs of prisoners. He tells of a man who was told he needed a hernia operation and that someone from NHS would be in touch with him. SEVEN YEARS later, having heard nothing, he contacted NHS and was told to wait his turn.

My girlfriend's granddad was a surgeon in Victoria, British Columbia. He would hop a ferry over to Seattle to get medical treatment because the wait in Canada was too long. He was lucky; he could afford it.

"National Health Care" is simply the latest in a long series of grabs by (1) people like Hillary Clinton who want to nationalize 15% of the entire GDP; and (2) the average citizen who wants something for nothing.

The problem with health care in America is not that the government does not do enough, it is that the government does too much. No one can be turned away from an emergency room. I know of a gangster who was shot in the head by his cousin. He didn't die. After 3 months in intensive care, followed by 3 more months at the hospital, he was discharged, and 6 months later was arrested for murder. His hospital bill was a little over 2 million dollars. He paid not a dime; you and I did.

If our health care system is so bad, people wouldn't be clamoring to get here for treatment.

Dirty little secret: the hospitals Moore shows are no available to the average Cuban, but only for wealthy tourists and connected politicos. The services available to the average Cuban, especially the dark skinned Cubans, are atrocious and unsanitary.

Eventually we will have national health care, and only the wealthy and well connected will receive what we now regard as the norm.

Please remember that no government ever created wealth.

8:36 PM, November 12, 2007  

 Art said...

Jack Straw! I haven't seen your nom de plume around in quite awhile. Good to know you're still out there.

Medicine isn't about creating wealth. That's for stock brokers. Doctors who are more concerned with creating profits over healing is the crux of Moore's movie. An HMO and insurance companies make money based on who gets turned away, not who gets help.

I talked to a woman who was laid off, cancelled her COBRA because she couldn't afford it, then found ou she had cancer. She said if it hadn't been for the American Cancer Society she wouldn't have made it another month. Is she just a freeloader if she wants to live?

How about that Swiss company with the bird flu vaccine? Should we be concerned with patents over stopping a worldwide plague?

Sure, one huge, gaping hole is that there are a lot of bums in the USA, and I tend to think we might have more bums than some of those European countries. There's got to be some other reason America is the one Western, industrialized nation without a similar health care plan, however.

The movie is still well worth checking out and mulling over, though.

12:05 AM, November 13, 2007  

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