"Michael Moore's Shticko"

[Universe Prince]

I can't do this article justice with excerpts. I invite you to go read the whole thing. But here are a couple of excerpts just to whet your appetite:

Sicko also introduces us to Diane, whose brain tumor operation was initially denied by Horizon BlueCross because it didn't consider her condition "life threatening." She eventually received treatment, but "not without battling the insurance companies," Moore says. Jack Szmyt found himself in a similar situation. After waiting two months for his initial diagnosis—he too had a brain tumor—Szmyt was told that it would be another month until doctors could start the necessary treatment. Rather than wait in a queue, he borrowed $30,000 from a friend, and flew to a private clinic in Germany. Had he not sought private treatment abroad, his German doctor said, he would likely have died. When contacted by the media, his insurer, again the Swedish government, said it didn't consider the assigned waiting period "unreasonable." Such examples suggest that Moore's depiction of European-style medicine as an easy panacea for America's problems is rather more complicated than presented. Massive queues and cash shortages have plagued all of the systems profiled—and celebrated—in Sicko. In the case of Cuba, whose system Moore also praises, this includes shortage of basic medical materials and medicine. And the credulous audience member is none the wiser.

   [...]

After the critical reaction to his previous films, Moore opts for elision over outright falsehood. So when he marvels that a doctor working in the [United Kingdom's National Health Service] owns an Audi and "million dollar home," it is hardly in his interest to point out, as The Independent did in January, that "soaring salary levels of doctors are worsening the NHS cash crisis." And while bitterly lamenting the U.S. system of "wage slavery"—American students, Moore says, are saddled with debt and, thus, "won't cause [employers] any trouble"—he ignores a recent report from the British Medical Association suggesting that, by their fifth year of medical school, British students "have accumulated an average debt of" $39,000. It is these sections, where Moore uncritically praises institutions with which many locals have ever-declining levels of faith (only 4% of Britons surveyed think the system "has enough money and the money is spent well"), that will likely alienate his non-ideological foreign fans. It is one thing to nod one's head in agreement with the Bush-bashing Fahrenheit 9/11—likely a mere reinforcement of previously held views for most Europeans—but it is quite another for a Briton to watch Moore tell viewers that English pharmacies don't sell milk and laundry detergent, when there is a Boots—the British version of CVS—just around the corner.

The whole article can be found at Reason Online.

[gipper]

I didn't see the film yet, didn't read the full review provided by Prince, but only the excerpts, but nonetheless I'm drawn to comment that documentaries are not recapitulations of reality but rather approximations with a definite point of view, usually. Their worth is usually judged by their raising issues with enough facts and context to spur thought and maybe drive action. "Schticko" is a clever pun but to the extent it's dismissive, it's schmucky.

[fatman]

I watched the film two days ago, and like any Michael Moore film it was riddled with half-truths and his smug, smarmy narrations.  That said, it did raise some interesting concerns, such as the policy of Kaiser Permanente to dump patients on skid row and the fact that terrorists in Guantanamo get better medical treatment than American 9/11 rescue wokers that don't possess health insurance.  It is sad to see so many mentally ill homeless (not in the film, in life) not able to get the help needed or getting a limited amount because of limited resources.

[Xavier_Onassis]

The fact is that a large and growing number of Americans have no insurance whatever. This is harming our economy (because many industries must pay insurance for retirees and workers, while those in other countries do not.

Pretty much everything made these days with the brand "Chevrolet" on it is built in Canada or somewhere other than the US.

In eight years Juniorbush has done NOTHING about health insurance.

The main problem with Michael Moore is that there is only one of him.

[sirs]

The Orange Grove: A post-office version of health care

You wouldn't restore a government monopoly in package delivery, would you?
By RICHARD E. RALSTON, Executive Director, Americans for Free Choice in Medicine in Newport Beach

The U.S. government now pays for and controls half of the health care in America. That is up from less than 10 percent 40 years ago. Government spending on health care has increased at a rapid rate as its share of health care has increased. Yet those who complain about the total cost of health care to justify complete government control never discuss how much of the current spending is attributable to or mandated by government programs.

During a recent interview, a talk-radio host told me that all private health insurance should be eliminated in order to give us all a reason to work together to make sure the government runs a good health care system.

My first reaction to that statement was to question how such an approach has been working for public education. But I will come back to that. A better analogy would be to argue that conditions in our prisons might be expected to improve if we were all required to live in them. Socialists and some liberals would find this level of government-enforced uniformity to be a noble sacrifice. Many Conservatives would reluctantly agree – but suggest a voucher system that would allow us each to select the prison cell of our choice.

The same reasoning would require the government to outlaw Federal Express, UPS and other private carriers and force everyone to use only the U.S. Postal Service. After all, America spends more than any other country on package delivery. Even worse, poor people cannot afford to send anyone a FedEx package. Why allow rich people to have access to a better service? Would it not be social justice to require everyone to use the Postal Service? So what if it provides slower and less reliable service? Would not everyone be forced to band together to ensure that the post office does a better job?

Of course, we tried that for nearly 200 years, when postmasters were politically appointed as a part of a federal spoils system. The Postal Reorganization Act of 1971 created the U.S. Postal Service as a semi-independent agency with less political interference. That plus only limited competition, in the likes of FedEx and UPS, was enough to cause the U.S. Postal Service to improve its efficiency and reliability considerably.

What would be the consequences of eliminating that competition and restoring a total government monopoly? Would the Postal Service become better and cheaper?

Parents certainly have reason to band together to improve the near-monopoly of public education. They can exercise control only through politicians, who often place their own interests – or those of public employee unions – ahead of those of students. Heads of unions, vying for political pull, use mandatory contributions deducted from teacher salaries to place their interests in the front of the line – ahead of students and parents.

Imagine for a moment what the power of a national physicians union or a national nurses union would do to health care, or imagine the prospect of a national health care strike.

There are those who tell us that if we only place all of our trust in the government to control our health care, our problems will be solved. If only enlightened intellectuals ensure that each and every election puts their candidates for president and Congress in control, efficient and loving government will meet all of our medical needs. We all have surely learned that government always does a good job, and has a swell record at keeping down unnecessary expenses.

What would really happen if we had no options except government health care and no place else to go? What choice did wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center have? If that scandal happened right under the nose of Congress – indeed, in view of the hospital's VIP suites reserved for Cabinet members and Congress members – what kind of quality and oversight should the rest of us expect from a government system?

One of the things that helps curtail the inferior standards that exist in government health care is a comparison with services provided by private medical care. Such private care must be protected. Without it the 50 percent of care now paid for by the government would get much worse.

Collectivism does not work. The immoral use of government force cannot compel better health care. Putting us all in a government health care prison will not ensure better health care. Only freedom can do that.


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[The_Professor]

The fact is that a large and growing number of Americans have no insurance whatever. This is harming our economy (because many industries must pay insurance for retirees and workers, while those in other countries do not.

Pretty much everything made these days with the brand "Chevrolet" on it is built in Canada or somewhere other than the US.

In eight years Juniorbush has done NOTHING about health insurance.

The main problem with Michael Moore is that there is only one of him.

A good friend of mine was and is an advisor to Hillary Clinton on health care issues. She indicates that one of Hillary's first major projects, as President, will be to push national health insurance, primarily to be funded via a surtax on large businesses. Various plans apparently are being explored, with even smaller businesses paying their fair share, with the expecation that they will simply increase prices to pay for it, similar to what typically happens when the minimum wage is increased.

[Religious Dick]

It is sad to see so many mentally ill homeless (not in the film, in life) not able to get the help needed or getting a limited amount because of limited resources.

Resources are always limited. There's no such thing as an unlimited supply of medical goods and services. What's at issue isn't the supply (which is and always will be finite), but how the available resources will be distributed.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Collectivism does not work.

Of COURSE it does. Sharing the collective risk is the basis for the entire insurance industry.
If highways were not collectivized, we would have nothing close to the Interstate system.
--------------------------------------------------------

 The immoral use of government force cannot compel better health care.

Immoral according to whom? Is there some Great Phlabog sitting up there, telling you what is moral and what is not?
Shared risk and universal management works. It has worked quite well for Social Security.

I suppose you think VA hospitals for veterans are immoral as well. Why deny a bigger pension to the clever soldiers who have had no limbs blown off just so the foolhardy can be treated?
===================================
 Putting us all in a government health care prison will not ensure better health care.

Canadians, Brits, Danes, French, Germans, Swedes, Norwegians, Japanese all live longer than we do. So, you are flat wrong.
=======================================
 Only freedom can do that.
Freedom is an abstract concept. ands it hasn't, and it won't.

Not now, not ever.





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[Universe Prince]

Collectivism does not work.

Of COURSE it does. Sharing the collective risk is the basis for the entire insurance industry.
If highways were not collectivized, we would have nothing close to the Interstate system.

Your words lead me to question if you grasp the concept of collectivism. You seem to be applying the term to anything that occurs as a cooperation between people. Individuals can cooperate without collectivism, and that includes insurance. Collectivism is not about people doing things collectively. Collectivism is about assigning more value to society than to individuals. And I don't see how anyone can say the highways are "collectivized". That flat out makes no sense.

The immoral use of government force cannot compel better health care.

Immoral according to whom? Is there some Great Phlabog sitting up there, telling you what is moral and what is not?

Immoral according to Mr. Ralston, obviously. Or do you not recognize his capacity to have an opinion on what is and is not moral? My guess is you do not since you bothered to imply that he must have someone else telling him what to think.

Shared risk and universal management works. It has worked quite well for Social Security.

That's a joke, right?

Putting us all in a government health care prison will not ensure better health care.

Canadians, Brits, Danes, French, Germans, Swedes, Norwegians, Japanese all live longer than we do. So, you are flat wrong.

A longer life span does not equate to better health care. And many people in those countries are discovering that Mr. Ralston is in fact correct; a single payer, government run, no private practice allowed health care system does not ensure better health care.

[Xavier_Onassis]

A longer life span does not equate to better health care. And many people in those countries are discovering that Mr. Ralston is in fact correct; a single payer, government run, no private practice allowed health care system does not ensure better health care.

=============================================================
The major purpose of health care is to keep people alive and well. Unless the country is being strafed and bombed, longevity is the ultimate index of the health of the people.

There are no countries that have universal health care that have decided that returnoing to the for-profit crapola system we have here in the US.


Social Security is NOT a joke: it works, and pays more to the beneficiaries than any private system will, dollar for dollar.

Hundreds of private insurance policies have collected premiums for years and never paid out one dime.

The public highways are a prime example of a collective pro0gram that benefits the public.

You have yet to explain how "freedom" provides better health care.


You cannot because it does not.

I have found that the USPS provides better package delivery service than UPS for the money as well. No one is purposing that the govermmnenbt do away with FedEx or UPS or any private health care, either. That is the sort of argument known as a straw man.

[Universe Prince]

The major purpose of health care is to keep people alive and well. Unless the country is being strafed and bombed, longevity is the ultimate index of the health of the people.

Even if I accept that as true, it still does not mean that a longer life span equates to better health care. The level of health care in a country is not the only factor influencing life expectancy.

There are no countries that have universal health care that have decided that returnoing to the for-profit crapola system we have here in the US.

Yet. Give them time. Many of those universal health care programs are having serious money problems. Plenty of people in those countries with universal health care paid for by the government, i.e. the taxpayers, have found that they have to leave the country to find a privately run facility for what the consider adequate care. And as I recall, not that long ago, Canada was mulling over allowing people to pay for their own health care again.

Social Security is NOT a joke:

Yes, it is.

it works, and pays more to the beneficiaries than any private system will, dollar for dollar.

Does it indeed? Please, would you mind showing me the evidence that supports your claim?

Hundreds of private insurance policies have collected premiums for years and never paid out one dime.

Never? Have you the names of any of these hundreds of private insurance companies that never pay out? What am I saying? Of course you do. I'll wait here while you pull the other leg. Oops, I mean, while you type out that list.

The public highways are a prime example of a collective pro0gram that benefits the public.

A collective program? Uh-huh. Perhaps you should lay out exactly how the national interstate system is a "collective program".

You have yet to explain how "freedom" provides better health care.

Perhaps because I didn't make that claim. People provide health care. That is to say, individuals provide other individuals with health care. And I will say that a system allowing individuals to be treated as individuals, rather than as parts which are of secondary importance to society, will make for a better system than one centrally planned around collectivist ideas.

You cannot because it does not.

Oh, I dunno. I think the people who prefer going to doctors who refuse to take payment from the various government run health care payment programs might disagree with you on that one. The doctors might disagree with you as well.

I have found that the USPS provides better package delivery service than UPS for the money as well.

Then you are an extremely unique individual. I doubt I know anyone else who would make that claim. And, in point of fact, if the U.S. Postal Service regularly and consistently provided better package delivery service than U.P.S. or FedEx, then U.P.S. and FedEx would probably not be in business. At the very least, they would not have the market share that they do.

No one is purposing that the govermmnenbt do away with FedEx or UPS or any private health care, either. That is the sort of argument known as a straw man.

You have to be joking. How do you think a single-payer, universal health care system operates? Private practice remains private in little more than name. Canada has still has supposedly private health care available, but Canadian law prohibits a private individual paying for his own health care. If a Canadian person wants to pay privately for private care, the Canadian individual has to leave Canada, which usually means coming the U.S. for medical treatment. Private health care in a single-payer, government run system is an Orwellian notion, imo, because it does not actually exist. Doing away with private health care is exactly what a single-payer, universal health care system achieves. To say no one is proposing that is either incredibly naive or incredibly ignorant.

I think your comparison of the U.S. Postal Service to U.P.S. is funny. You're comparing a monopoly, which you would never tolerate from a privately owned business, to a private privately owned business that is prohibited by law from infringing on the U.S.P.S. monopoly on first class mail delivery. And of course, you're making the comparison in an argument about allowing the government to do establish a monopoly on health care insurance, something your would also not tolerate from a privately owned company. Why people who dislike capitalism seem to so favor letting the government run monopolies is something I confess I do not understand. If a business coerced you, with the threat of imprisonment, to pay the business money for something, you'd tell me how it was an example of the evils of capitalism. Propose that the government do the same thing, and you actually argue that it's a good idea.

[BT]

Ther is nothing prohibitting local communities from providing universal health care, financed by sales tax. Guess it isn't that high a priority.

[_JS]

After the critical reaction to his previous films, Moore opts for elision over outright falsehood. So when he marvels that a doctor working in the [United Kingdom's National Health Service] owns an Audi and "million dollar home," it is hardly in his interest to point out, as The Independent did in January, that "soaring salary levels of doctors are worsening the NHS cash crisis." And while bitterly lamenting the U.S. system of "wage slavery" American students, Moore says, are saddled with debt and, thus, "won't cause [employers] any trouble" he ignores a recent report from the British Medical Association suggesting that, by their fifth year of medical school, British students "have accumulated an average debt of" $39,000.

It is these sections, where Moore uncritically praises institutions with which many locals have ever-declining levels of faith (only 4% of Britons surveyed think the system "has enough money and the money is spent well"), that will likely alienate his non-ideological foreign fans. It is one thing to nod one's head in agreement with the Bush-bashing Fahrenheit 9/11 likely a mere reinforcement of previously held views for most Europeans but it is quite another for a Briton to watch Moore tell viewers that English pharmacies don't sell milk and laundry detergent, when there is a Boots the British version of CVS just around the corner.

I don't really care about Michael Moore one way or the other.

I do think these two paragraphs are complete crap, or at least are using the very tactics they are alleging that Moore uses by painting a very false picture and presenting it as fact.

For example:



This was from an IPSOS-MORI poll, a well-respected polling group in the UK. Try finding support that high for the United States health care system.

Here is the article that went with it: link

One excerpt from the article:

The British general public continue to view the NHS as one of the best of its kind in the world.

The report highlights that the public remain very concerned about funding the NHS and see this as the biggest issue facing the service. This is despite the fact that waiting times and waiting lists have been cut in recent years ? far more people in Britain still believe waiting times are increasing rather than falling.

So you can see that it is mostly a communications problem in the UK when it comes to waiting lists, something that continually increased under Thatcher, who underfunded the NHS badly. SOmething Blair promised to reverse.

A GP in Britain is paid ?118,000 per year as of January 2007. Many GP's are represented by UNISON and they take part in the contract renegotiations (as do the nurses), most were severely underpaid for many years. The very top specialists make somewhere close to ?200,000 per year. The NHS budget is roughly ?5.5 billion.

Health care in Britain is still far less of the GDP of the United Kingdom than health care is of the United States as a percentage. I don't see the problem.

Student debt is a different issue. The Tories and New Labour removed universal free higher education and introduced subsidised student loans and variable tuition fees. Costs have soared since that time, unrelated to the NHS.   

[sirs]

Whose health care is it anyway?
National Review,  June 6, 2005  by Scott W. Atlas

In the debate over health-care reform in this country, it seems that one vitally important question is too often left out of the equation: Why should we expect the government to be responsible for providing medical care in the first place?

Food, housing, and clothing are no less basic to our daily lives, and yet citizens don't want government bureaucrats to tell us what kind of cereal we can buy or how much it will cost. When it comes to health care, however, the assumption that government needs to be involved ignores the virtual stranglehold the government already exerts on health-care prices in this country and the failure of that system.

Despite the presence of private insurers in our health-care marketplace, it is the government that to a great extent controls the price of health care. It is bureaucrats who set the reimbursement rates that doctors and health-care providers use to set their pricing, rather than relying on the actual costs and profit margins for their services. The most overt example is in Medicare-covered health services, where bureaucrats set "rates of reimbursement." Some multiple of these Medicare-determined rates also serves as the basis for a significant percentage of payments by private insurers. And it is the federal control of the health-care dollar that has led to increased costs, delays in patient care, and frustrations for both doctors and patients.

Christopher Conover of Duke University has estimated the cost of excessive regulation in the health-care market to exceed $339 billion, with a net cost of $169 billion-more than U.S. consumers spend every year on gasoline and oil. His figures show that the cost of the medical legal system alone, including litigation costs, court expenses, and defensive medicine, exceeds $80 billion.

This artificial pricing structure that our government imposes on consumers and doctors is unique to health care, and it has done little to rein in costs or improve care. The real cure for rising health-care costs is direct payment from patient to doctor, eliminating the third-party-payer system that shelters patients from making cost-conscious decisions and results in massive administrative costs and the artificial pricing of medical care.

Prices come down when the patient is the customer--not the government or other third-party payer. Patients consider cost when they spend their own money: refractive eye surgery, whole-body-screening CT scans, and other procedures have come down in price when market forces are allowed to operate without third-party interference.

The isolation of the consumer from paying for health care and the inordinate amount of control that government exerts over health-care costs represent a startling exception to the free market system that has served us so well in every other major service industry.

This should lead us to ask the question, on what basis does "government" become the solution for escalating health-care costs? And why, when it has failed to rein in those costs in the past, should we expect even more government control to be the answer today?

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[The_Professor]

Hmm, "Blessed are the Peacemakers", so, therefore, I propose a middle position: keeping the existing system while imposing a surtax (2%???) on pay to fund proper health care for those who cannot afford it.