SiCKO
Finally watched this last night. In case you don’t know, this movie is about the fraud that is our health care system. It spends the first part of the movie exposing all the major health insurance companies for their illegal, unethical and, well, downright evil business practices. Then it compares our health care system to that of other countries: Canada, England, France and, of all places, Cuba (the general hospital in Havana makes St. Francis and Methodist look like third-world outhouses). In a nutshell, it basically re-confirmed what I already thought about the crooked American health insurance and drug companies.
You’ve heard the arguments against universal health care. Long waiting lists. Sub-par service. Shoddy procedures, equipment and staff. It’s odd that it all seems to come from the same sources: Republicans, Conservatives, Big Business; most of all from Pharmaceutical companies, Health Insurance companies and the people they pay to spread their propaganda (I believe they gave Bush somewhere in the ballpark of $850,000).
As the film reveals, right before our very eyes, none of it is true. The months-long waiting lists: false. Bad facilities: false. Unqualified, underpaid doctors and staff: false. Poor quality of care: false. I wish the anti-universal health care bunch would just watch the film and see the lies. If they’re smart, they’ll get the drift: if they’re lying to us about that, what else have they lied to us about? More importantly, what is the reason they’re lying?
In the UK and France, they were able to get in and out without any problems. In England, for instance, they take no money for hospital visits, and even give you cash for a cab ride home after you’re done. The prescriptions cost roughly $12–that’s for all prescriptions. Need 30 pills? Twelve dollars. Need 50 pills? Twelve dollars. Need 300? You can see where this is going. In Cuba, they showed a pharmacy that had $120 inhalers for the equivalent of 5 American cents–and at their hospitals the sign-in process took a total of five minutes. All they needed was your name and date of birth.
Why do American companies gouge their countrymen for what our supposed enemies are practically getting for free? Why is it that 16% of our GDP goes towards paying these scumbags? As Moore points out, why are we tolerating the fact that 1 percent of the people on this planet control 80 percent of its wealth? Does anybody see a problem with this? Is anyone else seeing why it’s impossible for people to get ahead? Tell that to your conservative buddies that go on about the “American Way;” Ask them how we’re supposed to “pull ourselves up by the bootstraps” when we can’t afford boots! You might want to ask slowly while accurately enunciating each word so they have more time to comprehend the metaphor in your question.
One thing I wish they’d cover in the documentary that occurred to me while watching it was how they paid for it all. Moore addressed the topic briefly while surveying health care in France. Not surprisingly, “taxes” didn’t come up as a major source of financial worry. Keeping the refrigerator stocked with fresh vegetables, however, did. Surprised?
What occurred to me was this: our national priorities are different. In the United States, we police the world. But in the civilized world, they take care of their own.
The United States has a $481 billion dollar baseline for maintaining its military. This does not include the hundreds of billions of dollars that are used to supplement its wars overseas, nor the war on terror, nor its continued military occupation of other countries, nor the DoHS, nor does it cover the billions and billions of dollars of extra money that is used to line the pockets of private weapons manufacturers. What you end up with is basically 700-800 billion dollars of money spent on the military. Compare that with the piddly 56 billion we spend on education (and, due to NCLB, waste).
The only country that comes anywhere near us is Japan–our ally–at 47 billion dollars. No threat there. France spends about $34 billion. So, France’s baseline is about 1/10th of ours. Their GDP is about a sixth of ours. Percentage-wise, their military spending is comparable. And yet, they’re still able to offer free health care to its citizens. What gives?
The answer: the companies that provide health care for profit–and thereby make money by denying you service–are literally paying politicians to pass legislation that is favorable to the health care industry, and to oppose legislation that would hurt it.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I’d say that health care and drug companies are just two branches of the few centers of power that control the world. With them are the Defense Industry, the Oil Industry, the Banking Cartel, Wall Street, the gigantic companies that own the media, among others… Quite honestly, I think it’s these bastards who rule the world, not our elected leaders or even foreign dictators and most definitely not “the people.” It’s these assholes. And I’ll bet a bazillion dollars that they’re well aware of it, too.