Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/06/28/sicko.fact.check/index.html" target="_blank">http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH /06/28/sicko.fact.check/index.html</a> Excerpts from the link: "CNN) -- Michael Moore's "Sicko," which opened nationwide Friday, is filled with horror stories of people who are deprived of medical service because they can't afford it or haven't been able to navigate the murky waters of managed care in the United States. It compares American health care with the universal coverage systems in Canada, France, the United Kingdom and Cuba. Moore covers a lot of ground. Our team investigated some of the claims put forth in his film. We found that his numbers were mostly right, but his arguments could use a little more context. As we dug deep to uncover the numbers, we found surprisingly few inaccuracies in the film. In fact, most pundits or health-care experts we spoke to spent more time on errors of omission rather than disputing the actual claims in the film." In no way shape or form am I an admirer fan of Michael Moore. To me, he represents everything that's wrong with the extreme left. So if HIS latest film doesn't go far enough, what does that tell us?
Originally Posted By DVC_dad It tells us you wish it were even more outrageous? I don't think you are giving him enough credit. I'm prrfectly happy with my INSURANCE. HMO's are not insurance. The problem isn't with the healthcare system. The problem is with Joe Public being mislead into thinking his HMO is out for his best interests, instead of huge profits. We have done nothing but take the money out of the doctors pockets, and put it into the HMO's fat bank account.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip I don't know. We've had health insurance through a not-for-profit Minnesota HMO for over 30 years now with two kids (I know, we're pikers) and have usually had very good care. The biggest rip-off I know of locally is United Health Care (a national company headquartered in Minnesota) which I'm quite certain offers traditional insurance. Every uninsured person in the country could get coverage for what their damned CEO has made over the past 10 years.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip Upon further review (research) I think United Health Care is probably a Managed Care (HMO) company. I guess the lesson with HMO's is to stay with the not-for-profits and run like hell from the others.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 From everything I've read, Sicko is pretty much universally being called Moore's best film, the one with the fewest questionable points, and the one even a lot of right-wingers can get behind, because a lot of them have had run-ins with HMO's too.
Originally Posted By Marko Polo If you want to wait 6 months to get medical treatment and jack up our taxes lets do it!!
Originally Posted By DAR I won't deny that our healthcare system needs to be fixed. But I have very little faith that the government can "fix" this problem alone. Or that that HMO's should be the only one's that controll health care. I'd like to see an effort between both parties to fix this problem.
Originally Posted By Marko Polo Why would anyone want to put government in charge of anything besides the military? The government screws EVERYTHING up it gets involved in. Do people really want to be told what doctor they can and can't go to? Do people really want to go on a waiting list for medical treatment instead of instant treatment? Please, this is yet another left wing idea that has been tried and failed all the world over... yet here we are with the same idiots trying to push it again on us.
Originally Posted By dsnykid Having had health care in both Canada and the US, I much prefer my Canadian Health care. I pay 44 a month and get unlimited coverage, I am never told who I have to see now have i been put on a waiting list for any treatment that can not wait. I have had a 2 week hospital stay where my family and I were treated fairly and with respect and prompt treatment, and a 4 month say that I would not have been able to afford in the US. In Texas, I often had to wait over 2 weeks to get in to see my regular Doctor, so I generally used a walk in clinic. I had to visit the ER twice and was treated like crap both times and then given a bill that would have made a nice down payment on a house - luckily I had insurance through work (but that cost $200 a month.) Yes, in Canada you can get bumped or wait a while for 'elective surgery' like hip and knee replacements (my father-in-law got bumped for his knee replacement 3 times) but after experiencing both , I will stick with Universal Health Care.
Originally Posted By ecdc The powerful part of "Sicko" (which I saw and highly recommend) is that it's not about those who don't have health insurance, it's about those of us who do have it. The antecdotal stories here that say "Well my insurance has always been great, and the government screws things up" just doesn't cut it. See Moore's film before you knock it. That was partly my initial response: my wife asked me what I thought of the film and I said that while I thought it was very good, I couldn't relate because we hadn't experienced this kind of stuff. But then she reminded me, when she was pregnant with our first, she had some really horrible, unnatural pains so we took her to the nearest emergency room. They refused to admit her or see her because it wasn't an in-network hospital. We had to drive 15 miles away to an in-network hospital. When some Canadians were interviewed and said that Moore paints too rosy a picture of their system, they were asked if they would trade their system for the American system. Not one of them said they would. Health care is a basic right: people are treated like clients in America, not patients. If we say everyone has a right to an education, or police services, or mail services (all socialized in the U.S.) then why not health care?
Originally Posted By CrouchingTigger I'm watching an example of this playing out right now. My MIL has been told she has stenosis in her lower back, and that is closing in on nerves and producing incredible pain. She has been found just laying on the floor of her bedroom by my FIL a couple of times, trying to summon enough strength to get on to the bed. She's always had faith in HMO's, and that is what they are covered by now. The doctor refuses to send her in for an MRI for a more detailed look. Absolutely refuses. He offered to _consider_ it if her chiropractor would write a note requesting it. The doctor sent her in for one xray, looked at it and said "You have stenosis. There's nothing that can be done about it. You'll just have to learn to live with it." Ahem. My wife just had surgery last year to correct two problems, one of which was (ta-da!) stenosis that was pinching the nerves and causing incredible pain (sound familiar?). (Thank's for your prayers, cmpaley. She's doing very well.) We happen to have a more conventional, PPO insurance plan, where we can pick our doctors, and almost all of them are in-network (our insurance is Aetna). The difference between the level of care my MIL is receiving and what my wife got is staggering.
Originally Posted By DVC_dad Hard work and education are available to MOST people in America. I mean I don't get it. Gov will never fix healthcare in the US. As a country we have bought into the HMO scam, and now we own it and we don't like it.
Originally Posted By DVC_dad The whole Canadian system vs. US is silly. I have no complaints so far with the care my family and I have rec'd. No offense but I'll leave off the Canadian comparison. If its so much better, its easy to find the border.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <I have no complaints so far with the care my family and I have rec'd. No offense but I'll leave off the Canadian comparison. If its so much better, its easy to find the border. > I believe you have to be a Canadian citizen. And if they have a better system, why not adopt the best parts of it? I have a friend who's Canadian who married an American. They're living here now, but if her condition worsens, they're thinking they might have to move there. Since she never gave up her Canadian citizenship, that's an option for them, but for most of us it's not as simple as "finding the border." My case isn't a horror story yet, and God willing never will become one, but... I have a mass on my pancreas. So far it appears benign. But pancreatic masses can turn malignant (cancerous), and pancreatic cancer kills just about everyone who gets it within a couple of years if it's not caught IMMEDIATELY. So the prudent course of action seemed to be to look at it (scan it) every six months. If it's unchanged, great. If it grows, CUT IT THE HELL OUT! That's what my doctor (in the network) ordered. So they did that a couple of times, and paid for it. But now they won't pay for it more often than once every 12 months. My doctor tried to explain to some person in a cubicle in Wichita (or Bangalore??) that pancreatic masses are different; they could start growing at any time, and you don't want to scan it in January, have it appear fine, have it start growing in February, and not discover that till NEXT January, i.e. it's had 11 months to grow and spread. In fact, the protocol used to be to look at it every 4 months; he just asked for 6. But no, they said, once every 12 months is the max we'll pay for. So now I sort of have to worry that the next scan will be bad news and wonder how long it's been growing and spreading (if, God forbid, it turns malignant). Why not just have it taken out, you ask? They won't pay for THAT unless it shows signs of being malignant. Kind of a catch 22. All I'm asking for is a scan on the schedule my in-network doctor recommends. But I can't get it. The trouble with our system is you don't have doctors making these decisions. You have insurance company functionaries making those decisions, and their function is to maximize profits for their company. And how do you maximize profits? You deny care to x-number of people. No system is perfect, but I'll take the Canadian system, flaws and all, over ours any day. Any doctor here can tell you how much of his day is spent dealing with billings (or he hires an assistant just to deal with it). That ends up raising prices. Administrative costs go way down with a single-payer system. Also, Insurance 101 tells you that the larger the pool of insured, the more the risk is spread around, and therefore the smaller the cost per insured. Of course, the largest pool of all would be "everybody" - another reason why single-payer makes sense. A lot of people are suspicious of anything government-run, but of course we have many things that are government-administered (a more accurate term), as ecdc points out, and most people don't even mind paying higher taxes if they see the benefit - all the Canadians who say they wouldn't swap their system for ours obviously do.
Originally Posted By ecdc Wow, Dabob. I hope that mass remains benign. Sorry, but this thread is what frustrates me about some of the thinking in this country. People say, "Well, it works fine for me," ergo, there's no problem. Never mind that Dabob has a potentially life threatening issue. Never mind the lady who dies because her insurance company considers her cancer a pre-existing condition. Never mind the woman whose daughter died on the way to the second emergency room because the first wouldn't treat her since it wasn't "in-network". But *I've* never had a problem, so it must be a-ok. Plus, my taxes might go up. It's the intellectual equivalent of saying "It's cold today. See, there's no such thing as global warming." For a so-called Christian country, we are so damn selfish.
Originally Posted By Mrs ElderP I know studies have been done that show that we could insure everyone in CA in a single payer system for what all of those of us that pay, pay for insurance. Yes, absolutly if we get a National System taxes will most certainly go up. But have you ever looked at what you pay for insurance? Or what your employer pays, and could pay you if they weren't paying for insurance? At ElderP's last job *his share* was roughly $400 a month. With this job, nothing comes out of his paycheck (until we add BabyP), but look closely at the hiring papers and the contract. His employer is paying nearly $700 a month. For those of us educated people who do have insurance our net costs will not change signifigantly.
Originally Posted By DAR <<Never mind the woman whose daughter died on the way to the second emergency room because the first wouldn't treat her since it wasn't "in-network>> There's no doubt the system needs to be fixed, but you can expect to go through more red tape if the government gets a hold of health care. Sorry those are just the facts. Remember the government works best when they stay out of the way of the people.
Originally Posted By ecdc But DAR, those aren't the facts of the British, French, or Canadian systems. There's tons of red tape right now with our current insurance program - it just happens with a private company instead of the government. The major difference - and here's the rub - is that private companies aren't charities. They are for-profit businesses. Their bottom line is money. That's the fact. It isn't patients or people, it's money. Even with the deficiencies of the government, at the end of the day it's accountable to the people, not stockholders. For-profit is fine if your business is computer sales, landscaping, or Pepsi, not healthcare. The irony is, you operate on the unsupported assumption that government screws everything up while private companies make it better. As has been very well documented (see Iraq for Sale, for example), our government is outsourcing, for the first time, services that the military has long done for itself. The result? We the people are paying a lot more for poorer services. Our troops, who everyone throws a temper tantrum over any time a Democrat or liberal even hints they aren't practically deity, have poorer drinking water, insufficient laundry services, sub-par mess hall services, inadequate armor, etc. Know who the Abu-Graihb interrogators were? Outsourced non-government employees, none of whom were prosecuted or held accountable for their actions. Don't get me wrong - I don't believe in total socialism by any stretch. But this idea that government can't do anythng right is a myth.
Originally Posted By CrouchingTigger >>Remember the government works best when they stay out of the way of the people. << Say what you will, but I'd almost be afraid to eat if the FDA was disbanded. I know they are somewhat ineffective, and even obstructionist at times, but they do enough good that I like having them around. I recall a local radio talk show host describing how he had to go to a doctor in the UK. As he was leaving he got out his wallet and asked how much he owed and the receptionist reacted with some shock. She explained that they aren't even equipped to receive any kind of payment in the office. They wouldn't know how to handle a check if you gave them one. (Unless, of course, you made it out to everyone's favorite charity: CASH )
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder "There's no doubt the system needs to be fixed, but you can expect to go through more red tape if the government gets a hold of health care. Sorry those are just the facts. Remember the government works best when they stay out of the way of the people." Back this statement up with some facts.
