Google Protects Healthcare From Michael Moore

An anonymous reader suggests we stop over to ZDNet for a case where Google may be stepping on the wrong side of that famous Don't Be Evil line. A Google staffer is offering to help the healthcare industry contain the damage that Michael Moore's film is about to do. (Here is the original Google Health Advertisement blog post by Lauren Turner; in case it disappears, it is reproduced in full in the ZDNet post.) Quoting from the Google post: "Many of our clients face these issues; companies come to us hoping we can help them better manage their reputations through 'Get the Facts' or issue management campaigns. Your brand or corporate site may already have these informational assets, but can users easily find them? We can place text ads, video ads, and rich media ads in paid search results or in relevant websites within our ever-expanding content network. Whatever the problem, Google can act as a platform for educating the public and promoting your message. We help you connect your company's assets while helping users find the information they seek."

Comments

Not Evil

[dreamchaser]

This isn't anwhere near as evil as collecting user's browsing data or cooperating with Chinese censorship. They are offering companies a PR service. I hope you're not saying that it's wrong to counter propaganda? That's all Moore's 'documentaries' are really, even when he makes good points (which isn't all that often).

Re:Not Evil

[FooAtWFU]

Indeed. From the title, one could expect something like "Google is censoring search results about Sicko!". But really, Google is saying "hey, healthcare guys, you've got stuff on your website - here's how to get us to index it better and find it" (insert standard non-spammy search engine optimization strategies here) "and you can even advertise with us while you're at it!"

Now, I guess if your friends in the Healthcare industry are pure evil, then Google is being evil, but I don't see how you can construe that as "protection". Apparently the submitter, however, would like to protect "Sicko" from the health care industry's web sites. Meh. Lame.

Re:Not Evil

[jorghis]

Dont get me wrong, I have a pretty low opinion of Michael Moore, but his criticisms of the health insurance industry are very accurate. They do routinely find ways to deny life saving operations to people who have been paying their premiums their entire lives. Let me repeat that, people who have been paying for the insurance their entire lives die because the insurance companies want to save a few bucks. This is very evil. Moore cant help but be accurate in his criticisms of the HMOs, its so easy to find outragous stories about what they have done to their clients. Socialism may be a bad idea, but something does need to be done about these insurance companies letting their clients die. Shame on google for trying to help them with their image. If they want to clean up their image they should stop trying to find ways to let their clients die.

Re:Not Evil

[ozmanjusri]

I agree that our health care system could be improved. However, Michael Moore's proposal - go to a single payer system - is not the answer. In Canada, one of the systems highlighted by his film...

The US has the most expensive per capita healthcare in the world, and Canada comes in second. The U.S. ranks only 37th in the world in quality health care - yet nationally America spends 82% more per person on health care than others. Canada also fails to fully benefit from the money spent, so I don't think either is a model for healthcare efficiency.

There are countries which perform better than the US while still spending less than the US government already spends. You'd be better looking at New Zealand, the UK and Australia to see what works.

The U.S. ranks last of six nations overall. As in the earlier editions, the U.S. ranks last on indicators of patient safety, efficiency, and equity. New Zealand, Australia, and the U.K. continue to demonstrate superior performance, with Germany joining their ranks of top performers. The U.S. is first on preventive care, and second only to Germany on waiting times for specialist care and non-emergency surgical care, but weak on access to needed services and ability to obtain prompt attention from physicians.
http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/publi cations_show.htm?doc_id=482678 The real tragedy from Australia's point of view, is that our government has an ideological commitment to drag our healthcare system down to the US's level, instead of bringing it up to match the top performers.

Re:Not Evil

[4e617474]

Now, I guess if your friends in the Healthcare industry are pure evil, then Google is being evil, but I don't see how you can construe that as "protection".

There's a film out that, if you take the point of view that the vast majority of the people who see it do, talks about how people who are sick and dying are not being helped by people who amass large amounts of money (and prestige, public goodwill, etc.) for helping sick people. Google, in the role that I and a lot of people understood them to have for most of the last decade, could reasonably be expected to do nothing about it - only make sure that people found the information on the subject that they chose to try to find. In a more realistic worldview, they sell ads, they advertise that they sell ads, and if people on side of the debate or the other, or both, buy ads that's how it goes - the service is there for anyone who wants to buy. Instead, when:

Many of our clients face these issues; companies come to us hoping we can help them better manage their reputations through "Get the Facts" or issue management campaigns.

they don't say "Fuck off. We don't do propoganda." No, they get involved. If no one's come to them yet, they actively reach out. To one side. The one with the money. The one with the blood money. If you weren't there already, this is the last nail in the coffin of the notion of Google as anything more than any old corporation with its requisite ration of evil.

Re:Not Evil

[jessiej]

Socialism may be a bad idea, but.. This is precisely one of the problems Moore touches on, universal health care != socialism

Re:Not Evil

[Pig Hogger]

Still, changing to the "single-payer" system would make things even worse in that regard.

Not at all. The Canadian "single payer" health-care system has only 3% administrative overhead, as opposed to 35%-40% for the private US one. And since everyone is covered identically, there is no time lost finding out if someone is insured for this or that treatment. Nor are people fired because the employer's insurance is tired of paying for the employee's children expensive cancer treatment.

There's also a significant incentive for the single-payer government solution to cut its own costs by, oh, passing legislation on what people are allowed to eat (and I'm sure there are some people out there who already would like to outlaw Big Macs).

There is no such thing in Canada, and pity the hapless government who would pass such laws...

Now, I'm not a big fan of such things, but the notion of that kind of legislation scares me... as does the notion of health care as a bureaucracy. (You thought insurance companies were bad? Wait until they're more like the DMV.)

FUD. There is no bureaucracy; treatment and/or procedure are covered or not. Every time a medical act is performed, it is clear-cut whether it is covered or not.

... drugs are expensive because researching them takes lot of money paying intelligent people with expensive educations, and which may or may not be successful.

Oxdung. Most drug research is performed in university labs with government money. Drugs are expensive because they have to be marketed to the public because in the US, it's a "free" "market".

In Canada, drug prices are strictly regulated, and for the most part, are not marketed to the public. Not having to market is a tremenduous cost cutter and leaves more money for what little research is done by pharmaceutical labs.

In the US, pharmaceutical companies spent three time as much for marketing than they did for research.

The outrage some people seem to express at wealthy people being able to pay other wealthy people for quality healthcare seems a silly to me.

That's because you believe that one day you will become a zillionnaire. Then, one day, you'll realize that no matter how hard you work, you'll get passed over by people sleazier than you who excel more than you in the art of bullshit and licking arse, so you'll never get a zillionnaire.

Maybe if the doctors were all humble and devout servants of the greater good of humanity, they would be just as willing to treat the poor, and not make a lot of money, and things would be more equitable in the world, yeah. But they're not charities, they're people, and their efforts are their own, to dispose of as they will.

But since this will never happen, you better have an universal system that is paid for everybody and that leaves no one behind. Not even the filthy rich.

Re:Not Evil

[martin-boundary]

It's wrong if a company wants to be taken as an honest presenter of information. Since when is it the job of a search engine to "educate" people on political issues anyway?

The internet is democratic: all points of view are available. When people on blogs and websites choose to promote some political ideas over others, this simply reflects the state of the internet world as it really is. If people choose to spread the word about global warming, or about Moore's movie, etc, that's a true reflection of the web world and of what those people feel is important.

And that's how it should be. Who is Google anyway to decide that some ideas on the internet are so repugnant that they should be balanced with privileged "education" messages in prominent positions? That's not the job of a search engine.

If some people feel strongly about "educating" others on a subject, they can do like everybody else does: make a website, and convince people to spread the word.

Google the company should stay out of "educating" if they value the trust people put in them. There are plenty of other search engines who can take their place if that trust is sufficiently eroded.

Re:Not Evil

[king-manic]

In Canada the gov pays 1/2 as much on our behalf for a longer life expectancy. There are wait list for surgeries but is more demographic problem then any real problem with the system. Any pay as you go system with a large number of upcoming takes and a smaller pool of givers is going to have some of these problems. But they are ironed out with time and a stable demographic spread. Considering your private system takes twice as much funds from the government per person then our public system, and a non-trivial portion of your population is uninsured or under insured I'd be careful about pointing fingers.

Re:Not Evil

[FooAtWFU]

If no one's come to them yet, they actively reach out. To one side. The one with the money. The one with the blood money. If you weren't there already, this is the last nail in the coffin of the notion of Google as anything more than any old corporation with its requisite ration of evil. Now, if you do believe that our friends in the health care industry are pure evil, and that they're spending blood money, then yes, Google is, indeed, being evil. And I suppose if you obediently believe every line that Moore has to tell you about the matter is the whole and honest extent of the truth, then there is no possibility that anything could counter it. As such, anything that the companies say to contradict that must, in fact, be evil propaganda utterly devoid of any informative content, with the ultimate design to boost their image (and their profits) - at the expense of all that is well and good in the world, if necessary.

And if that's your world view, you're probably adequately opinionated that no one can hope to convince you that it is otherwise. I'd like to hope that most people can entertain the notion of a middle road which characterizes both Moore and the health care industry as neither impeccable nor pure evil, ascribing to both the property of providing some information which is both true and valid.

Re:Not Evil

[General Wesc]

No, actually, most hospitals cannot legally turn someone down because they cannot pay.

I thought this was only true for emergency admittance. As in 'I'm bleeding! Help!' not 'I have cancer.'

Re:Not Evil

[jorghis]

Thats the whole point of insurance. People each contribute on the offchance they need super expensive surgery and if they end up needing it they can get it. If it werent for the chance of one day needing some high dollar surgery then noone would bother with health insurance. If you believe that a persons life isnt worth that much money and expensive surgeries should not be done as a rule then you should also be questioning why insurance companies exist in the first place.

Re:Not Evil

[blincoln]

If performing miracle operations at costs of millions of dollars means that the insurance company doesn't have the funds to pay for preventative drugs for tens of thousands of their other clients then you might be killing hundreds for every one you save with the surgery.

This argument would have more weight if US insurance companies weren't fat with profits. Even in states like mine where they're legally required to operate as non-profit organizations.

Re:Not Evil

[rpbird]

To paraphrase SNL: "You ignorant slut!" Communism is an historically well-defined political philosophy. It involves the wholesale confiscation of the "means of production" and destruction of the ruling classes. They are to be replaced by a "dictatorship of the proletariat." Communism is a complex and dense belief system, some historians have called it a secular religion. A Communist would consider healthcare reform to be puny stuff. In fact, many Communists in the early part of the Twentieth Century opposed reformists, considering them lackeys of capitalists. They considered Progressives to be the enemies of Communism. If Progressives could succeed in their reforms, the Communists felt this would strengthen capitalism. This is the last thing Communists wanted. They wanted capitalism to be destroyed by its own excesses. Judging by the results of the reforms of TR, Wilson, and FDR, they were right. Progressivism strengthens capitalism. Universal healthcare would strengthen our society and our economy. Thus endeth the lesson.

Re:Not Evil

[kir]

I'd like to see the reaction to your argument if you replaced any mention of health care industry with oil industry. It would be quite ugly I'm sure.

Re:Not Evil

[TheoMurpse]

True, everyone gets treatment, but many are unable to be treated in time or figure out their paperwork.

This is one of the things Moore reveals in this film as untrue. I know people in Canada and the UK. I lived in Japan. All have socialized medicine in a sense. I can tell you it is 100% true that health care in Japan is cheap, easy, and effective. From what I've heard from Canadians and Brits, their health care system is vastly better than how it is portrayed in the US.

In the film, Moore interviews people in the hospitals and clinics. In France, it turns out no one in a large table of expatriated Americans had to wait more than an hour. The same was true for Canadians.

There are definitely some over-the-top, sensationalist things in Sicko that I feel Moore should have left out. He has a tendency to make films that are very persuasive, and then fuck it all up by including some inflammatory stuff. In Sicko, he does an extremely good job of exposing how horrible the US health care system really is, and how inferior it is to systems in Canada, France, and the UK. I can definitely say from personal experience that it is inferior to that of Japan. My girlfriend, a med student, has had to do extensive research about health care policy in the US, and she's reported back to me how horribly screwed up our system is because of the health insurance companies.

The entire film, Moore was very on-point and convincing in his criticisms without being so inflammatory that it would turn a typical right-winger such as my uncle off of his film (contrast this with the ludicrously radical 9/11 and Columbine). I believe the first hour to hour-and-a-half could possibly convince some conservatives of the desirability of the French or Canadian system. But then he brings his Canadian relatives on. Guess what? They're afraid to go to the US because the health care system is so bad. That, I believe, is the moment at which he ruins any credibility he could have had with his opponents. If Sicko was a legitimate documentary, those scenes wouldn't have been there. I also think the Cuban scenes were counterproductive because he goes on about how great Cuba is, while at the very beginning of the movie, he reveals a chart that shows Cuba is ranked below the US in health care.

I'm a believer in universal health care from personal experience. The first hour-and-a-half of Sicko is great, and isn't propaganda in the bad sense (lie and doublespeak) so much as honestly-done research which happens to also be persuasive (good propaganda). Then Moore let me down.

The film was still good, and I am still waiting to hear a good argument against this: we have socialized the fire department. Why can't we socialize another facet of society that saves lives?

Whatever, it's 3am and I need to go to bed. I need to get up early to play with my Mac, write for a Crooksandliars.com, hang out with my Hollywood friends, go to a seminar on stopping global warming, and I need to go polish my Honda Insight. /sarcasm

Re:Not Evil

[jorghis]

Forget Moore's general idiocy for one moment and concentrate on the health insurance industry. Everything he is saying about the american health insurance industry is true. They do give bonuses to their employees for finding excuses to deny patients operations they desperately need. They do everything they can to weasel out of their obligations when other people's lives are on the line.

The insurance companies deny payments for life saving operations to their clients because they know they can get away with it. This is evil. This is not closed source kind of evil. This is not copyrighting music kind of evil. This is killing honest hardworking americans who are paying them kind of evil. I think the term 'blood money' is totally appropriate.

Re:Not Evil

[Da Fokka]

And I suppose if you obediently believe every line that Moore has to tell you about the matter is the whole and honest extent of the truth, then there is no possibility that anything could counter it.

The point is, it's hard to dispute Moore's facts. Of course he presents those facts in a biased way. But he's making an argument, you can't blame him for that. The core facts he uses to make his case are true (http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/06/28/sicko.fact.c heck/index.html?eref=rss_topstories).

Re:Not Evil

[kklein]

Health care in Japan is definitely cheap, but I don't know where you found easy or effective.

The list:

• No appointments--just schedule the whole day off if you need to go to the doctor, because it just might take that long.
• 5-minute check, a prescription, and a request to come back in a week for another check. Another request that week, too.
• Ridiculously low-grade, old-fashioned, ineffective medicines with more side effects than actual effects. Oh, and you have to take 5 of them at a time. They make sure you come back by giving you only a few days of medicine.
• Bad attitudes. Worse among the older doctors. "How DARE you ask a question about your health?"
• Medieval facilities. I kid you not, I got my stomach scoped in a room with boxes piled up on one side of it with sheets thrown over them. The beds in the hospital my wife stayed at looked like they were from the 50s and the paint was all falling off.
• Ridiculously long hospital stays. My wife was in the hospital FOR THREE MONTHS for pleurisy. I checked with my doctor in the US--that's usually a couple days in the US, and then sent home for rest. She got so depressed I was seriously worried she would kill herself. I ultimately "checked her out" myself.
• Regular insurance only covers a small portion of the hospital stay. The rest is up to you or the "hospital insurance" you buy. Even in the latter case, you have to pay the bill first and wait months to find out how much the insurance will reimburse you.
• Basically no general practitioners. In the US, if you bang your knee in a bike accident, you go to the doctor. If you have the flu, you go to the doctor. If you have a mild case of seasonal eczema, you go to the doctor. Here, you go to the Yellow Pages and hope whoever you find is worth a crap and has a parking lot.
• Expensive and weak over-the-counter meds means you go to the doctor EVERY TIME YOU GET SICK. --That or you sweat bullets as you smuggle DayQuil through customs on your way back from a trip home.
• Very questionable competence. I actually did bang the hell out of my knee in a scooter accident a few months ago. I spent hundreds of dollars and days in waiting rooms trying to find someone who could tell me why my knee felt like it was on fire every time I bent it past 90 degrees. Everybody said it was fine. One guy told me to wear a brace. Finally, I had my officemate send my description of the injury and sensation to her doctor sister. Response one hour later: Deep-tissue bruise; get the brace off; that's making it worse. Took the brace off and it cleared up right away.
• The worst cross-contamination record in the developed world (read that somewhere--but I believe it).
• No recourse for malpractice. My friend's kid has incredibly disfiguring scars down his whole leg, which reduce mobility, because a boiling tea kettle spilled on him when he was a toddler (I think he pulled it down when Mom looked away, if I remember correctly). The doctor they took him to PEELED THE SKIN OFF. It grossly disfigured him, but there was nothing they could do. Very hard to sue in Japan.

Oh, and the medicine here is in no way socialized--health insurance is largely privatized, but your employer is required to put you on it. You only get on the public one if you have no job, and the benefits are lower and the co-pay higher. Price is lower because everyone has insurance, but without the profit motive, there's no reason to provide better service. Right now, getting the person back in the office a million times is incentivized, because it's the only way you could make any money. But in the US, getting someone well ASAP is incentivized for private practitioners, because that wins new patients.

Seriously, if you had some good experiences, I'm happy for you, but you ought to come back and have a sit among people who have seen both ways and hear the horror stories. I am always worried that I'll get really sick here. If you have dece

Re:Not Evil

[vertinox]

And I suppose if you obediently believe every line that Moore has to tell you about the matter is the whole and honest extent of the truth, then there is no possibility that anything could counter it.

That's the problem with these things. When the truth gets a bad spokesperson, people discount it.

I for one would had to see Moore do a documentary on the Holocaust or the Sudanese Genocide. People would actually give the genocide deniers a legitimate platform in which to put forth a counter view just because Moore happened to be on the side of those telling the truth.

Re:Not Evil

[Anspen]

While I'm sure the Canadian healthcare system is all of those things, it requires tremendous Faith in the US government to implement such a system so light on bureaucracy that it can actually be effective. I for one lack that kind of faith and I think the real root of the problem is that most people in the US feel that way as well.

The fun part is that the US government already runs a highly successful single payer health care system: the Veterans Health Administration.

Re:Not Evil

[arivanov]

Sulphur and wear? This is the first time I hear this one. Would you mind posting a couple of references?

Re:Not Evil

[Afecks]

moore is a sensationalist idiot

many people who are sick and dieing cling to unproven treatments which aren't covered by the funds for very good reasons Just watch the movie before being prejudicial. You have no clue what you are talking about. It's not just about the "Rainmaker" cases where they kill someone that needed a bone marrow transplant (not experimental at all) which they do show one case of. It's also not about the millions of Americans that have absolutely no health insurance even though that should be enough to upset anyone. No, what's really wrong with the system is how every single step of the way, the medical companies are fighting with you. From the ambulance ride to the IV drugs to the overpriced prescriptions, they are looking for some way to stick it to you. The fact alone that they make more money by giving less medical care is completely flawed and ultimately a case of "letting the wolves guard the chicken coop".

Re:Not Evil

[jorghis]

OK, I will bite. What does he say about the american health insurance companies that is untrue? Im not talking about the cuba trip, or his fascination with socialism in general, just want to know what you think is untrue about the health insurance companies. I am not defending him as a filmmaker, I know a lot of what he says is horribly misleading. But he really cant help but be correct when he talks about the health insurance industry because there are serious problems there. So what is he saying about the health insurance companies that is untrue?

Re:Not Evil

[ScrewMaster]

It's "fox guarding the henhouse" but I take your point.

The primary problem with any indirect services setup (indeed, any system where people make regular payments into the kitty and expect a payout in time of need) is that you've divorced the cost of said services from the ability of people to pay for them. Like any socialist state, that can work, as long as you can trust your foxes.

Whenever people pay for goods or services directly, out of their own pockets, there's a limit on how much can be charged. At a certain point, either people stop buying from you (if what you're selling isn't a necessity) or someone else comes in, undercuts you, and takes your business: in other words, there's a negative feedback loop established between consumers and providers. Much of modern business practice revolves around finding the sweet spot, the price point where you've balanced off the sales price and the number of customers willing to pay that price to maximize profit. It's a tricky proposition.

WIth the health insurance system, there is no direct connection between what the consumer pays for health care, and what the health care providers charge the insurance company. The feedback loop is open, which is great because it means that you get to set your own sweet spot and who cares what the patient can pay! What's even worse, though, is that the same people that sit on the boards of hospitals also sit on the boards of insurance companies and pharmaceutical outfits, so we don't even benefit from an adversarial relationship between those three. How much people can pay (and how much suppliers can charge) have no intrinsic relationship to each other anymore. Whether or not the insurance company even bothers to pay for a given individual's needs has no relationship to how much that person paid into that company. "I've been paying you guys for thirty years! Can't you help me?" "We don't cover that." Tough.

Normal economic incentives and controls simply don't apply in the insurance business, the people running the show don't really care if you live or die, and providing health care is, at best, a secondary objective.

Re:Not Evil

[FLEB]

Besides, how come most slashdotters are against digital rights management but have nothing against analog rights (such as healthcare) management.

Because most Slashdotters have a more intimate knowledge and relationship of the issues involved, can pinpoint the detrimental effects, and can speak to the issue with assured clarity.

Of course

[Xonstantine]

because, as we all know, Michael Moore is always about the greater good.

Cuba has a great medical system...as long as you are one of the elites.

The United States has an even better medical system...as long as you can pay for it. And your changes of being able to pay for it in the United States are better than your chances of being one of the elite in Cuba.

Re:Of course

[WilliamSChips]

Do you realize that healthcare is the largest cause of debt in the United States? That's fucked up.

That fact alone is more persuasive than the entire Michael Moore film. Michael Moore's real talent lies not in persuasion but in playing with the people in power as if they were kitty toys. The reactions they cause would be hilarious were it not for the fact that these were the guys running the nation--example, during the 2000 elections when MM got Alan Keyes to mosh in a pit with his friends from Rage Against the Machine Gary Bauer's quote pretty much outdoes anything I could actually say about it:

Alan, a couple of weeks ago, you criticized my good friend John McCain because he expressed some support of or interest in a controversial music group [McCain had claimed to be a fan of Nine Inch Nails]. In view of that I was a little surprised this week to see you fall in to a mosh pit while a band called "The Machine Rages On," or "Rage Against the Machine" played [Bauer is either genuinely ignorant or trying to distance himself from actually knowing the name of such an evil bandboth seem plausible]. That band is anti-family. It's pro-cop killer, and it's pro-terrorist. He then goes on to falsely claim it's what the kids at Columbine listened to.

Re:Of course

[uolamer]

The US medical system is great if you can pay for it. I really do not know much about Cuba besides what i would consider a 'one sided view' presented in SiCKO. But I have been to many EU countries and Canada. Medication sure is cheaper, on top of general universal health care. Downside from what I have seen is waiting lists depending on the country. In New Zealand I knew someone on a waiting list for a few years to get their tonsils removed, but if it would have ever became a serious issue they would have done it right then and just like in the US they could have just paid to have it done then. From what I saw New Zealand was struggling a bit economically. Canada seemed better, as well did Britain, I have never been to France, Germany, or the other EU countries.

The Medicare Part D plan here in the US seemed not help, possibly made things worse. My grandmother has to spend $500 to $1000 a month on medication, that is quite hard on most people of her age. One of my dads good friends went bankrupt paying his late wifes medical bills, then later committed suicide. Talk about 'if you can afford it' if you ever get diagnosed with something expensive enough to ruin most people.

Google seems to slowly get more creepy and evil. They are no there yet, but I personally do not like Yahoo/Google/etc catering to the Chinese government, screwing with search results, etc.

Re:Of course

[asuffield]

The United States has an even better medical system...as long as you can pay for it. And your changes of being able to pay for it in the United States are better than your chances of being one of the elite in Cuba.

Amusingly enough, that's not entirely true. One of Moore's major points was that in the US, even if you have health insurance, they still won't pay for anything if they can find any excuse not to - and they put a lot of effort into finding excuses not to.

You know all those pages and pages of terms and conditions that came with your policy, that you didn't really study carefully? As soon as you want any money, they're going to go over every line with a fine-tooth comb, and if you forgot to dot an 'i' or cross a 't', they won't pay.

The only way to get reliable access to the medical system in the US is if you are so wealthy that you can pay your own medical bills, without relying on an insurance company. That's something in the region of the top 1% of the population. The rest are screwed (this means YOU).

Re:Of course

[arthurpaliden]

Except of course for the 45 Million Americans who cannot afford it and have no insurance.

What Cuba has is an excellent 'low tech proactive health care system for every one' as opposed to the United States which does not. It has high tech medicine availible for those who can pay. In Cuba I can go to a doctor as soon as I feel unwell. I will then be treated usually preventing my illness, say pneumonia, from getting worse. I know the visit to the doctor is 'free' as opposed to in the United States where I only go to the Emergency room when I am nearly dead because I cannot afford to go to a doctor at the beginning of the illness and then the state has to pick up the entire cost on my hospital stay.

Re:Of course

[mangastudent]

And you believe the Cuban statistics???

Don't you remember the Soviet census guy who was sent to the Gulag (or executed) when Stalin's various purges (plus the Ukraine terror famine) started to make a big dent in the total Soviet population?

Nothing they published after that could be believed. The nomenklatura in Cuba have no need of published honest statistics, and it is the nature of such regimes that internal supposedly honest statistics are often faked by underlings who don't want to get the chop for not making something impossible happen when ordered from on high.

Re:Of course

[pudge]

There are lots of problems with the US medical system. Lack of government involvment, however, really isn't one of them. There are a couple of no-brainers that would greatly improve things, however like: 1) let individuals buy insurance from out of state companies and 2) let individuals deduct insurance and other medical expenses from their end of year taxes (rather than, at best, the not-very-good Medical Savings Plan). And while we're at it, let's reform the patent system for drugs. Maybe if the taxpayers pay for it, don't give a patent, or give it for shorter terms, and certainly don't EXTEND the patent beyond the original terms (even if the taxpayers didn't pay for it, because then the taxpayers pay for it).

Re:Of course

[Prof.Phreak]

20-somethings who choose to have $150 a month extra partying money

That's assuming you're employed with insurance. Ever priced self-employed insurance? It's -way- more than $150 a month. A friend of mine pays $1500 a month. It just about approaches his mortgage, and in a few years (due to inflation), it will surpass it. Isn't that a bit ridiculous?

Re:Of course

[Cocoshimmy]

I beg to differ. Healthcare CAN be much cheaper and is cheaper in every other country on earth. It is cheaper for every single country that provides universal healthcare (see WHO report and here). There are several measures that confirm this: the percentage of GDP spent on healthcare in the US is higher than everywhere else, the total amount spent per capita is higher than anywhere else, government expenditure per capita in the US is higher than anywhere else with the exception of one Iceland and Norway. Despite this, only 85% of the US population (at best) are covered by some form of healthcare (for many this is some crappy HMO or other crappy insurance which doesn't cover much).

So I don't think you can make the argument that in other countries its simply cheaper because it's subsidized by everybody. It's cheaper because its run under a more efficient and more effective system. The total amount of money going into the system (from individuals, corporations and government) is less, and you are getting significantly more (healthcare coverage for everyone). In fact, if the US could implement a system similar to that of Germany's, Canada's or the UK's, it would probably SAVE you money and provide you with better care.

Hmmm

[Captain Murdock]

I'm not really sure what that blog post entails. Does it mean Google is going to purposely tamper with it's search formulas to make sure that health care companies don't get "Google Bombed"? Or specifically censor anti-health care, Michael Moore related content?

It's one thing to keep health care searches relevant, but it's quite another to accept money to censor content.

Re:Hmmm

[mr_luc]

No, no and no. It says nothing about censorship, tailoring of google's 'search formulas', or google bomb insurance. ;)

As surprising as this may be, it's just a straight-up plug for the utility of their text search ads.

Is it evil? Well, now. That's quite a question.

Sure, HMO's are evil. Sure, censorship is evil. But it would also be evil for google to refuse to sell ads to the health insurance industry.

This is not, as people have stated, a sign of google moving to protect its interests and maximize profits in a way that puts people after corporations. Offering these services, in order to let health insurance companies respond to a particularly strident and vocal political opponent, by selling them context ads, is hardly evil.

Far from it. I'd rather have text ads than know about the truly evil PR crap that is, and will continue to be, spewed across our television screens if the HMO's really feel threatened, like they did in the mid-90's.

Moore isn't Neutral

[feyhunde]

His Documentaries are not anywhere near neutral. He's the founding father of the new stream of Documentaries that don't let the subject speak for itself but ram home opinions. I think it hurts the causes as much as it helps.

Not everything he says is lies, nor is it truth. He has a political point to make and he wants to make it more sexy so he'll get more attention.

As such there are points to be contained and rebutted. Roger met with Moore in Roger and Me, but Moore didn't show it. GM had years of bad press from that despite Moore being less than truthful. No wonder others have opinions on this. There are some in the Healthcare that think its fine, there's lots that think it's broke, but think it can be fixed without using Socialism as a cure due to the problems of socialized medicine in a nation that doesn't have vast oil reserves.

Re:Moore isn't Neutral

[dsanfte]

Health Care is expensive, in part, because it's chronically understaffed due to professional-school elitism by the AMA and the Nurse's unions.

Re:Moore isn't Neutral

[Volante3192]

Is it too hard to believe that maybe, just maybe, he wants to spur debate on the health care issue in the US? I doubt the majority of people in the US would say they're happy with their coverage.

Whether or not you agree with him is irrelivant: the point is to open debate. Bring the issue into the open rather than let it fester like sores that don't get treated.

And as far as documentaries being neutral, I really wish people would get over that fallacy. Unless you're Ken Burns making a documentary on something happening over a century ago, the film ends up taking a side. Would you consider Battle for Brazil a 'neutral' piece? It doesn't exactly place Sid Sheinberg in a very favorable light.

I'll admit Moore uses more non-documentary techniques, and they seem to fall more under Op/Ed pieces, but strictly speaking, a documentary is a documentation of fact. Whether or not those facts picked are the mainstream or the outlying data points, or if they have a heavy emotional impact, it still makes them fact. Facts on the fringe are still facts.

And I think there's enough questions about that Roger and Me incident to not have it carved in stone yet...but it sounds like you've already made your mind up. That, I think, is Moore's biggest problem...he's too polarizing. The films he makes are great for opening conversation; but people seem to have already made up their mind before...

Re:Moore isn't Neutral

[AusIV]

His Documentaries are not anywhere near neutral. He's the founding father of the new stream of Documentaries that don't let the subject speak for itself but ram home opinions. I think it hurts the causes as much as it helps.

Michael Moore in a nutshell. All he does is polarize subjects. I watched part of Fahrenheit 9/11 some months after it came out, and while people who wanted to believe what he said could take it as gospel, it was clearly biased and misleading to anyone of a neutral or opposing views on the subject. I suspect Farenheit 9/11 raised as much support for the Bush administration as it did opposition. If Moore had been less one sided with his documentary, he might have swayed a few neutral people to his side - as it were, he only managed to push them away.

I'll be honest - I don't know much about the state of health care in the United States. If I ever decide I ought to learn about the subject, I'm not going to go to Michael Moore's "documentary" for my "facts". Anyone who refers to it for facts made up their mind ahead of time. Quite likely, Moore's film will rally opposition to his cause, and it may even lead to a strong opposition of socialized medicine.

Re:Moore isn't Neutral

[jollyreaper]

Health Care is expensive, in part, because it's chronically understaffed due to professional-school elitism by the AMA and the Nurse's unions. Wrong. They are chronically understaffed because so many institutions have become for-profit. The overhead of dealing with medical billing is insane and every clerk hired means one less nurse.

You think H1B visas are bad? Try going into a local hospital. We're importing a lot of our medical workers from overseas now. My mom is an RN and she tells me that she wouldn't want anyone she knows going into an American hospital. Her fellow nurses stand vigil when family members go in. A fellow nurse had to stand guard over her heart attack husband lest one of the unskilled new nurses kill the man with her incompetence. The dumb bitch dropped an IV needle on the floor and picked it up as if she were going to use it on him. One of the new stunts hospitals are attempting is replacing RN's with cut-rate staff with less training than CNA's, a gaggle of McJobbers with each one doing a small portion of the RN's overall job. Do they know what they're doing? Hell, no. But the hospital figures the wage savings will be far greater than the cost of wrongful death suits. I haven't even gone into the chaos that comes from immigrant medical workers who can't speak the fucking language. I have no problem with foreign people and foreign ways but if lives are on the line, communications had better be standardized! If the hospital is in Cuba, we can speak Spanish. But if the hospital is in the States, we'd better be speaking English and there better not be an accent thick enough to club someone with. Poor communication kills. And let's not even get into the Medicare fraud perpetrated by for-profit home health agencies, going into fucking hospices to give physical therapy to terminal cases. Look! The patient is going to be dead inside a month, there's no need for --oooh, did I see money?

There are some things far too important in life for dollars to be the deciding factor. Health care should NEVER be a for-profit enterprise. Anyone who says different needs his insurance revoked right before he's kicked down a flight of stairs. See how you like it now, asshole.

Re:Moore isn't Neutral

[amabbi]

Health Care is expensive, in part, because it's chronically understaffed due to professional-school elitism by the AMA and the Nurse's unions.

[disclaimer: I am a med student and a member of the medical student section of the AMA.]

I hear this reasoning time and time again, and I'm convinced this is an urban legend. The AMA has no jurisdiction over the number of slots available in US med schools; at best, the AMA has influence over the number of residency slots available (since they do act to certify certain specialty and subspecialty boards). In fact, the counter to the fallacy promoted by the parent post is that there are more residency slots available per year than US med school graduates.

If you want to find fault, blame the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC), which certifies med schools and would be the body most responsible for the number of med student positions in the US. It is not affiliated with the AMA.

Re:Moore isn't Neutral

[timmarhy]

nurses unions are elitest? my mother has been a nurse for 25 years and from what i've seen they are far from elitest. doctors yes, but anyone with a brain and drive can become a doctor. the problem with staffing issues is pay and fear of being sued by white trash who's prodecures go wrong.

Re:Moore isn't Neutral

[Xofer D]

Health care should NEVER be a for-profit enterprise.

Why the fuck not?

Although I'd object to the rather extremist language of the grandparent, free markets are terrible regulators for healthcare. To put it a little simplistically, compare these cases:

You need a car to get to a job. How much are you willing to pay for the car? I'd pay enough that I'd soon make a good return on that job compared to some job I could get to without the car.

You need a treatment or you'll die. How much are you willing to pay to stay alive? I'd pay everything that I have, because it does me no good when I'm dead. This doesn't depend on how much I have. In fact, I'd be willing to pay money I don't even have yet. This is why so many people go into debt to stay alive in the USA.

Since the value of your own life is essentially boundless, markets don't regulate health care well.

Re:Moore isn't Neutral

[damiam]

No offense, but you're an idiot if you can't see that health care is a special case. All of the markets you mention involve a normal exchange of money for goods/services. Companies have incentives to provide me with good food, housing, phone service, and entertainment, because if they don't, I won't buy their product. (energy and other utilities are another special case due to the required infrastructure, which is why they're generally provided by a heavily regulated government-granted monopoly, no free market). Health care doesn't work that way. In health care, there are two entities trying to profit - the hospitals and the insurers. When you get sick, the insurer already has your money; why would they pay if they can get out of it? If you have a heart attack, you'll go to the nearest hospital, and they'll bill you the same whether the care was great or terrible. Since neither insurers nor hospitals can be comparison shopped in most circumstances, why would they have an incentive to provide good care?

Also, most people understand food pretty well. We buy it all the time; it's fairly obvious what we need and what we're buying. Almost no one understands health care, and health care decisions are far more crucial than what food to buy. Do you really want the people making decisions for you at the most vulnerable point in your life to be motivated by how much money they can make off of you, rather than what would be best for you? With the exception of elective stuff like plastic surgery, health care just doesn't operate in a free market, and allowing a profit motive is just asking to be exploited.

Re:Moore isn't Neutral

[casings]

That's like asking, "what if they don't pay you enough to afford groceries or rent?". You'll find that there are probably similar answers to all these questions, and they usually involve some part of society (these days, the government) extending a helping hand to the impoverished for the necessities of life. It doesn't involve having the government nationalize the farms, for instance. Farms are already subsidized by the government...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidie s

However, no this is a capitalist marketplace and things like foods and housing are leisures where many aren't necessary for survival: for instance one needn't shop at Whole Foods to survive when they can grow their own food... Also housing is based on property, and one doesn't necessarily have to be housed at all.

The problem is when you apply this logic to health care, which at its core means without it, you cannot survive. It is the responsibility of the government to ensure they provide equal opportunities for survival for anyone because everyone has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. To deny anyone medical care because of money is to deny the right of life.

Medical care isn't a leisure, and shouldn't be expected to be paid like one...

And don't confuse this with me saying that there is something wrong with private insurance, there is something wrong with free public insurance.

There are some things which should be free to citizens, education, police, speech, and health care. I am not making a case for welfare. I am making a case for basic human rights which a democratic government of the people should provide for the people.

Re:Moore isn't Neutral

[sacrilicious]

Why the fuck [shouldn't health care be for-profit?

Because none of the following are present in healthcare, and all are required for a functioning free market:

• elasticity of demand
• elasticity of supply (aka low barriers to market entry)
• consumers informed sufficiently to make intelligent choices

Free markets are great when these are the case. Health care misses all by quite a lot. NOTE TO SELF-TAUGHT ECONOMICS WANNABES: Free markets are not the right solution for everything.

Re:Moore isn't Neutral

[Colin Smith]

Do you really want the people making decisions for you at the most vulnerable point in your life to be motivated by how much money they can make off of you, rather than what would be best for you? This doesn't change in a fully socialised health care system:

http://news.netdoctor.co.uk/news_detail.php?id=180 52027
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3196134.stm

http://www.nice.org.uk/

Etc, there's several more examples. In a socialised system, instead of making money off you, the care depends on how much you're going to cost the budget. Exactly the same thing as commercial healthcare.

Re:Moore isn't Neutral

[Skald]

You need a treatment or you'll die. How much are you willing to pay to stay alive? I'd pay everything that I have, because it does me no good when I'm dead. This doesn't depend on how much I have. In fact, I'd be willing to pay money I don't even have yet. This is why so many people go into debt to stay alive in the USA.

Assuming that there's only one person able to save my life, sure. Of course, that's not much of a market.

That one person is going to make a lot of money... so much that other people are going to want to be able to do what he does. Once there are a suitable number of people willing to save my life, I have choices, and the price will drop. We won't stay alive without food, either... and most of us would have difficulty doing so without housing. Markets are about supply and demand.

This glosses over a lot of important details, but so does the point being addressed. Possibly a good argument can be made that markets don't regulate health care well... but this isn't it. This argument doesn't address the most obvious free market predictions.

By the way, if there really is only one person who has the cure for your disease... be thankful he's there, and that you do have the choice to give him everything you have in return for saving you. You can still decide not to.

Re:Moore isn't Neutral

[whoop]

I work in this evil health care system. I treat people with kidney failure. I treat everyone from homeless to wealthy people. They get their medication, treatments, and kidney transplants whether it be from their own insurance or state money and charities.

A coworker's mother with no insurance was diagnosed with uteran cancer. She was given a list of charities, free clinics, etc to contact. She did, had a hysterectomy, and is recovering without a penny spent.

In 2006, my wife racked up $600,000 in a hospital stay. The insurance settled with the hospital (as they do) for about $200,000. I pay $250 a month for it through my mediocre job. I would have to work 66 years for them to break even for that one stay. At no time did they say, "Alright, we've paid enough, you're out of the hospital on your own."

There are plenty of counter-examples to Michael Moore's movies. I've seen more people die from a fear of needles (voluntarily refusing treatment) than from lack of insurance/money.

Depends on what your definition of "evil" is

[jollyreaper]

And with the right lawyers, you can get very creative with the defining.

I enjoy the conservative reaction to Michael Moore. They hate him so much that they discount anything he says automatically. He could tell a conservative his hair is on fire and that conservative would use his final breath denying it as just another liberal plot.

I like Michael Moore. Most of the time he's on my side of a given issue. The only problem I have is that he can sometimes get a little sloppy when he's being cute and this gives critics a means of attacking the messenger directly and the message by proxy. I thought there were some weaknesses like that in Bowling for Columbine that undercut a good message. I was very pleased with Fahrenheit because he took himself out of the picture for the most part, critics could no longer direct their ire at Michael Moore the director. There were so many clips where administration officials could only be taken at their own recorded word, there's just not any way to spin what was said. Critics were left with saying "Michael Moore is a fat fuck, therefore what he said is wrong."

With SiCKO, it really doesn't matter if you are left or right, conservative or liberal, dem or rep. Health care is a problem for all of us. This system is fucking broken. To all the conservatives fuming at Michael Moore for saying nice things about France's health care system, shouldn't the US be able to outdo France? Shouldn't we be able to beat them at health care if we're the greatest nation in the universe?

What it boils down to, there's enough money and wealth in this country to pay for everything, it's just concentrated in the wrong hands. How many fucking billionaires do we need? How many Enrons do we have to see before we start seriously taking the business-criminal class to task? I'm not just talking about a few show trials that accomplish nothing, I mean serious reform. Because the mess that is health care is just another symptom of the greed disease that is killing us.

Re:Depends on what your definition of "evil" is

[feyhunde]

The only way you can really do this is crippling tax rates on the super rich, which only work for so long and has a side benefit of killing the industrial drive that creates them. Or you gut the military spending.

I'm not just talking Iraq with the military spending either. No new jet planes, aircraft carriers etc. Some might argue for this, some might argue against it, some might try and find some other place to get the money. But in truth the US choose national security over national healthcare. I've got my own issues with national Healthcare. (Imagine having a nationwide version of the DoD system or the VA). I don't feel our government is able to give that care even with the money.

Honestly, our best bet is bulk buying plans, requiring private insurance for anything approaching a full time job, and trying to make insurance rates stop climbing, both for doctors and patients. Hell, make it much more of a tax write of for every patient a doctor or hospital sees for free. Make it enough and doctors will find it to be their wild. This along with more incentives for new doctors and nurses might help us with out going big government.

Re:Depends on what your definition of "evil" is

[jollyreaper]

The only way you can really do this is crippling tax rates on the super rich, which only work for so long and has a side benefit of killing the industrial drive that creates them. Or you gut the military spending. Yeah, military spending would be a nice place to start. We spend more on warfare than the rest of the world combined and we're still getting our asses handed to us by irregulars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We spend like crazy but we sure don't get much bang for the gigabuck. And according to that CNN poll, "The United States spends more than 15 percent of its GDP on health care -- no other nation even comes close to that number. France spends about 11 percent, and Canadians spend 10 percent." Those countries seem to have better health care for a lower expenditure. Hmm, I wonder how that can be? Oh, right: it's not a for-profit system.

I'm not just talking Iraq with the military spending either. No new jet planes, aircraft carriers etc. Some might argue for this, some might argue against it, some might try and find some other place to get the money. But in truth the US choose national security over national healthcare. I've got my own issues with national Healthcare. (Imagine having a nationwide version of the DoD system or the VA). I don't feel our government is able to give that care even with the money. I'd argue that most of that DoD money is wasted anyway. I'm all for a strong defense but what we're talking about here is military-industrial complex corporate welfare. The metaphor I use to describe government spending, it's like trying to use a lawn sprinkler to fill a dixie cup. Sure, you'll fill it eventually, but it'll take fifty gallons to fill up an 6 ounce cup. Military spending is out of control and needs a serious revamping.

Honestly, our best bet is bulk buying plans, requiring private insurance for anything approaching a full time job, and trying to make insurance rates stop climbing, both for doctors and patients. Hell, make it much more of a tax write of for every patient a doctor or hospital sees for free. Make it enough and doctors will find it to be their wild. This along with more incentives for new doctors and nurses might help us with out going big government. Oh, dear. Are you a free marketer?

Re:Depends on what your definition of "evil" is

[IgnoramusMaximus]

The only way you can really do this is crippling tax rates on the super rich, which only work for so long and has a side benefit of killing the industrial drive that creates them.

This, of course, is one of those oft repeated, and completely, utterly, false canards, which the accolytes of the All-Powerful Deity of the Free Market Mammon are so fond of breathlessly repeating.

If it were true, the only motivation for progress, since beginning of time, would be massive piles of gold coins. That would mean Aristotle, Socrates and Plato were in it for the money, right? How about Copernicus? They made him the King of Poland, no? Or, say, Da Vinci, who surely ended up owning most of Venice, right? Perheaps this is to old for ya, lets try something modern: Albert Einstein. Given their relative contributions to humankind, that dude certainly died with a fortune which makes Bill Gates look like a pauper, no?

How about industry then? A typical Japanese CEO makes about 10 times the average salary of a worker in his corporation. A CEO of a US corporation is now past 500 times that of an average employee in his operation. Are you trying to tell me that Japanese CEOs lack any motivation to produce quality products and therefore their companies are 50 times less competetive?

I could go on like this for hours.

The point is that the phenomenon of people taking seriously (particularly in the USA) the laughable assertion of unquestionable equivalency between drive to innovation, increase of productivity and unrestricted, boundless, avarice is a very recent one.

This is a testimony to the success of the propaganda of the greed-mongers, in their unceasing efforts to destroy any reasoning ability in people's brains and to obfuscate pretty much all of the recorded history which directly contradicts their inane greed-centered world-view.

Re:Depends on what your definition of "evil" is

[nido]

The only way you can really do this is crippling tax rates on the super rich, One thing that gets glossed over in SiCKO is how much profiteering there is in the U.S. healthcare system. For example, when my Grandmother was in the final months of her conventional treatment for Multiple Myeloma (sp?), her doctor perscribed Thalidomide. Cost for a one month supply (30 pills, iirc) was $2309.99. Cost in Brazil: $0.09/pill. Thalidomide's patent has long-since expired, but the U.S. distribution company has patented a method that's supposed to keep the pill away from pregnant women (Thalidomide was banned because it causes birth defects).

Just one example - there are countless others.

Moore's propaganda

[flar2]

Why are we so quick to label Michael Moore's films as propaganda? It seems like a quick and easy way to dismiss him without actually dealing with what he says. I've seen SiCKO and can't understand why any average American would want to dismiss Moore so quickly. ~~ooooh scary socialism~~

Doesn't need to be "fair" or "balanced"

[RealGrouchy]

Pardon the slightly offtopic rant, but there is an article on the AP wire entitled "Moore's 'Sicko' gives accused little say" by Kevin Freking and Linda A. Johnson. (You can find it yourself if you want to, but I'm not about to send them traffic.)

To boil it down to a soundbite (in appropriate MM style), is this quote: "The industry -- doctors, drug makers, hospitals, insurers -- is charged with greed and putting personal interests above patients'. ... But one aspect missing from the film is the defense. Do not expect to hear anyone speak well of the care they received in the U.S."

It disgusts me that the mass media like to skirt around issues by claiming things aren't "fair and balanced". If I can't afford to feed my family, what good does it do me to know that my neighbour just had filet mignon for the fifth day in a row?

The issue is not whether the US healthcare system is incapable of producing good results, nor whether the most vulnerable in the country are taken care of. The issue is that there are large parts of the US population that is unserved or underserved by the current health system. They are un(der)served because they are not so poor as to fall under medicare, but they are not so rich as to be able to afford proper health care themselves.

It should not be beyond the capacity of a wealthy, civilized country to ensure that its entire populace--particularly its hard-working middle class--is kept healthy.

(And no, I'm not arguing that Canada has a perfect system, either)

- RG>

Re:Doesn't need to be "fair" or "balanced"

[canuck57]

(And no, I'm not arguing that Canada has a perfect system, either)

Then we agree. Both systems are foobar just that there are not that many "objective" people that can admit it. I have lived 10 years in the US, and about near triple that in in Canadian system and can honestly say they BOTH have serious problems. I am going to get the revenge of the mod down but what the heck...

Canada's claim to fame is that it is "perceived" to be universal. And it is sort of if you overlook the regional approvals that go on. Often based on age and are you paying taxes. Case in point, I had a career/lifestyle threatening condition, as did my mother, about the same time. I wait 30 days, she waits 1 year and 4 months. Tehy occured about the same time, same issue, same doctors, just that I am working any paying taxes. The difference, I could say disability insurance if they didn't fix it, my mother is already on CPP/retirement (Social Security for the US readers).

Next Canadian point, my father in law has been waiting 4 months to see a specialist about dizziness due to what is suspected to be an inner ear issue. There are also numerous cases where hospitals out west ran out of the ability to deliver babies so they went to Montana (lucky kids, hope they get their dual citizenship).

So for Canada you have a backlogged, often rationed and "tax" expensive system and no options as there is only one service provider and they know it.

In the US, subscription is option so coverage is not universal. It's biggest weakness. While I don't agree with government doing it, the US should have a law that says if you work you or your employer must pay and subscribe including your dependents. Also the nickel and dime paper work, a service charge to could Kleenex used? Come now? Hasn't the autocracy costs been added up? But never had to wait in line...

The best thing would be for Canada and the US to sit down together and figure out what is best of both systems and how to eliminate the was and BS in both. But I suspect such insight in our politicians isn't there.

Re:Doesn't need to be "fair" or "balanced"

[mikers]

Thats right!

Sicko should have to be fair and balanced the way that "Fox News" is "Fair and Balanced" (apologies to all non-neo-cons, emphasis on double quotes)

Re:Doesn't need to be "fair" or "balanced"

[Billly Gates]

I have not had healthcare for years for financial reasons and America still has the best health care system in the world.

I admit I am becoming quite conservative over the last few years and would formally agreed with you.

The problem I see is as of right now if the cost of health care keeps going up by the time 2020 comes along 100% of all taxes will just pay for medicare/medicaid!

Universal health care will break our government and cause it to bankrupt. Also the public sector is quite bad and I have seen Canadian health care first hand. 5 hours waiting to get your teeth clean?? The bean counters and greedy admins are worse in the public sector where they are not accountable. Universal health care would magnify the problem.

America is not alone in the issue of declining health care. We need to bust these small pharmaceutical companies up which hold all the patents and charging obscene rates. Europe too is having skyrocketing Intellectual property rights for standard procedures and drugs owned by a few and the tax payers are being screwed over.

This isn't Google doing PR

[e-scetic]

Isn't it propaganda to frame Michael Moore's documentaries as mere propaganda, and isn't doing so also an attempt to dismiss the films as irrelevant? Especially in the absence of any counter-arguments or proper criticisms of the films? Ok, Moore is propaganda, yup, I believe you, well just because you said so... Way to counter propaganda with ideology.

A truly honest person would have to admit his films are not completely devoid of facts or statistics. And that sometimes the facts *are* one-sided, there isn't always balance in the world. And by the way, America isn't the perfect Disneyesque world, all rosy and wunnerful and perfect.

As for Lauren Turner, she's doing what sales and marketing types do, targeting her message by identifying with the fears and needs of her specific audience. She's trying to sell ads. Ads are only a small part of a proper PR campaign and I doubt Google is getting into the PR business.

Critical thinking

[Bombula]

It's disappointing that so many slashdotters - intelligent and educated people that they tend to be - are reactionary blowhards who obviously haven't even seen the film, and that these same people are so unable to stomach criticism.

Newsflash folks: criticism is the basis of both science and democracy. The ability to be self-critical is what makes science and democracy different from religion and theocracy. You can't criticize Jesus. That means you can't learn, you can't grow, and you can't improve. Hurray!

People who scream 'Michael Moore hates America' are pathologically incapable of thinking critically or handling criticism, even when it is constructive criticism that is desperately needed. Accept Sicko for what it is: a searing and accurate indictment of our disgraceful healthcare system. Unless you are wealthy, our healthcare system is a catastrophic failure. It is complete and utter crap compared to the systems in other developed countries, and it is an embarrassment to our country.

If you care about our country and have a functioning brain, you'll get over the knee-jerk reactionary denial and accept this unpleasant truth, and then go out and help make a change.

Re:Critical thinking

[Solandri]

People who scream 'Michael Moore hates America' are pathologically incapable of thinking critically or handling criticism, even when it is constructive criticism that is desperately needed. Accept Sicko for what it is: a searing and accurate indictment of our disgraceful healthcare system. Unless you are wealthy, our healthcare system is a catastrophic failure. It is complete and utter crap compared to the systems in other developed countries, and it is an embarrassment to our country.

This appears to be the implicit and unsubstantiated assumption put forth by everyone defending the movie. That the U.S. health care system as a matter of course, sucks.

A couple years ago, a minimum wage employee at my previous workplace severed his thumb on a power saw. He was taken to the local hospital, which determined that they couldn't help him. He was then airlifted to Loma Linda Medical Center. They examined him, and called one of the top finger reattachment surgeons in the country from Houston. He flew in, and our employee was in surgery for 5 hours.

Unfortunately, they weren't able to reattach the thumb. But they put him on a 3-month rehabilitation program including weekly therapy sessions to teach him how to function without the thumb, and psychiatric sessions to help him cope with the loss.

This was in California, where companies are required to have worker's comp insurance. So the entire thing was covered by worker's comp. It was later discovered that he was an illegal alien, but that didn't change anything with respect to the insurance and coverage.

Meanwhile, the company controller had recently moved from Canada. He was absolutely floored by the above sequence of events. His brother (in Canada) had been diagnosed with RSI and was scheduled to be seen by a specialist who would decide if it could be treated with therapy or would need surgery. The time between the diagnosis and the scheduled appointment was 13 months. The pain was making it impossible for his brother to continue to work, so he hopped across the border to the U.S. and paid to have a doctor look at it there. Contrast this to a minimum wage illegal immigrant getting airlifted, getting one of the top surgeons in the country flown in to treat him, and 5 hours of surgery, all in less than 12 hours.

I completely agree the U.S. health care system has a lot of problems, mostly centered around an emphasis on treatment rather than prevention. But if you're so blinded by your love of socialized medicine that you can't see the good aspects of our system, you really have no business saying who is or isn't capable of critical thought. The U.S. health care system is not a catastrophic failure, nor is it utter crap, nor is it an embarrassment. It is suboptimal, and moderately wasteful, with many aspects that could definitely be improved. But it is also one of the best (aside from cost) health care systems in the world.

Re:Critical thinking

[ThEATrE]

What good aspects, exactly? The company the employee worked for didn't want to get sued, so they provided him with health care.

It's frustrating sometimes to interact with someone who's so blind.

Re:Critical thinking

[lysse]

What would the story have been if he'd severed his thumb on his own time? Or developed lung cancer?

Re:Critical thinking

[Tarwn]

Then he likely would have been relating a different anecdote. The entire point of his anecdotal story was that the issue is not black and white, that in order to truly think critically about this issue you need to consider positives as well as negatives. The point of providing an anecdotal story with a good outcome was only to point out that good things can happen and perhaps should be included in any critical thinking that is done on the issue. That the issue, like so many, is gray rather than black and white.
However even this point was considered by several people to be in support of one side or another, which is why the whole conversation about critical thought is so amusing. Think critically, but assume everything is black and white and that anyone who disagrees must be arguing the opposite "side".

Re:google doesn't do evil by protecting evil

[casings]

So by your logic all of those tobacco, alcohol, firearm lobbies are just doing their part and not actually evil. Trying to spin coverage of a practices pretty universal unethical practices is unethical. If you believe the healthcare companies practice is ethical and you feel like you need to defend it, thats great and you are entitled to your opinion, but the majority of the western world disagrees with you, more importantly the majority of ethical intellectuals disagrees with you.

Protect an unethical corporation/system all you would like. Just don't claim to be doing "good".

Google went a long way with their don't be evil slogan, but now that they are public, it is my opinion that it is time to put it to rest, because it just ain't true no more.

So, the debate is over then?

[steveha]

Ray Bradbury said it best: the remedy to speech you don't like is more speech. (As opposed to censoring the speech you don't like.)

A Google person is offering to help health care organizations tell their side of the story, and this is "evil"? If you think this is "evil" then I guess you think there is no room for debate here.

Personally, I think health care issues are not so cut-and-dried as that. For a look at the other side of the story, consider this editorial from MTV:

'Sicko': Heavily Doctored, By Kurt Loder

steveha

Re:google doesn't do evil by protecting evil

[nido]

I hate bloodthirsty health professionals ... The healthcare professionals aren't the bad guys - they're just doing the best they know how for their clients (patients). What most don't realize is how their medical education has been coopted by pharmaceutical companies. In the early 1900's, the Carnegie foundation financed the Flexner Report, which was used to start shutting down about 1/2 of the country's medical schools. Closures fell disproportionately on for-profit schools, because the curiculum at schools which operated on grants could be influenced easier. I have a 1965 book which talked about a coming doctor shortage, which is an obvious consequence of closing so many of the country's medical schools... 100 Years of Medical Robbery is a good piece on the medical scam, as is the followup, "Real Medical Freedom".

Insurance Companies are Evil.
Pharmaceutical Companies are Evil.
Medical Professionals do the best they can in a system which is rigged against them.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Not really evil, just a bit unwise.

[mattva01]

To me it just seems like Google is reminding the HMO's of a way to use Google services for damage control. As long as they would grant the same right to Micheal Moore I'm fine with it. Now if they gave a discount to the companies, then that would be evil.

Sicko is BS

[forlornhope]

I'd just like point out this link: http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1563758/st ory.jhtml

From MTV no less. But its worth a read. In short, you can't mandate access to a scarce resource without rationing. The best course of action (IMHO) is to reduce the cost of healthcare. And no, I'm not talking about making health insurance charge less by some law, I'm talking about reducing the real costs. The cost of malpractice insurance is one area that creates a big impact on the final cost of health care. Also moving more of the development of new drugs into public institutions and making sure that the results aren't privatized. Even patent reform could help in this area.

There are underlying realities in the health care industry that can not be changed. You can't increase the number of EFFECTIVE doctors and you can't make them work for peanuts. You can drive down the costs of education, equipment and drugs through the use of public funding though.

Re:Sicko is BS

[Abcd1234]

In short, you can't mandate access to a scarce resource without rationing.

Absolutely. And how does the US handle that rationing right now? Money. Call me a socialist, but I'd rather the rationing be based on, you know, who needs the resource more. Honestly, who gives a damn if someone is forced to wait 6 months for knee surgery, when the alternative is a blue collar worker being denied a heart transplant?

Re:Sicko is BS

[cdrguru]

The principal problem in the US is the way that "health" in general is dealt with.

Please do not take this as disagreement with the US attitude towards health. In general it is what I consider to be "right" and most other countries to be "wrong". Dead wrong, as you will see.

In most other countries, from what I have read and seen in quite a bit of travel, it is assumed that you will at some point in your life get sick and die. This is viewed as a natural event that cannot be altered, stopped or even delayed. You are born, you live and then you die. Period. Immutable.

In the US things are a bit different. It is assumed that when you get sick that you can be cured. Period. Again, immutable. The exception is that in some cases, after spending unbelievable amounts of money, you might die because the "cure" fails. Everyone is sad because of this "failure". Dying is not assumed to be something that is going to happen and that life should be allowed to "run its course" but, barring failure, something that can be put off indefinately.

Do you understand the difference? This difference makes it almost pointless to compare European medical systems with those in the US. It makes for US-culture people standing around in non-US hospitals wondering how "this dying" can possibly be tolerated and "why isn't someone doing something about this terrible situation?" Where as the non-US person is wondering what all the fuss is about.

The question is would the US population ever accept the attitude that prevails elsewhere? I doubt it. Until people get their heads around this basic difference in attitudes, comparisons are pointless. Spending in the US is going to be significantly more than anywhere else based on this attitude difference. And, as long as this attitude prevails in the US there is no way to change it.

Re:Sicko is BS

[Abcd1234]

So, who should get treatment first? Two patients, exactly the same disease, in exactly the same stage. One is a famous surgeon and the other is a mentally ill homeless person. Who should be treated first? What if you can treat only one? What now?

Well, in the current US situation, the answer is "whoever has more money". You're telling me that's the best possible solution?

In the end better health care is one of the motivators to be successful

Well, given the GDP of the EU, which is primarily composed of nations with socialized healthcare, not to mention the success of nations such as Canada and Japan, I'd say your argument has little basis in fact. As for France, it's problems are myriad, and only a simple mind would point the finger at "socialism", as if that was the single, root cause.

And as a counterpoint, individuals with poor health end up being a drag on society, as their illnesses reduce their productivity, and increase the chance they may be forced to avail themselves of what little social safety net is available in the US, creating costs borne by everyone in society.

But, you go on living with the delusion that "socialism is evil" and "the free market is perfect". Meanwhile, I'll be content knowing that, if I found myself in a car accident and in need of emergency surgery, the resulting costs wouldn't drive me into bankruptcy.

Re:Sicko is BS

[maop]

So, who should get treatment first? Two patients, exactly the same disease, in exactly the same stage. One is a famous surgeon and the other is a mentally ill homeless person. Who should be treated first? What if you can treat only one? What now?
When you have two things with the same priority FIFO comes to the rescue.

Re:Sicko is BS

[jbssm]

Err man ... but the life expectancy in Europe is higher than in the USA ... if we don't care about dying and we don't spend as much money as Americans trying to get a cure how do you explain that?

Your health system is fucked because most of the money people put in to it goes to make insurance companies richer not actually to take care of people.

I see lots of greedy non-human people in this forum saying that they don't have to pay for other people problems ... guess they are so stupid that they don't realise that they are paying insurance and instead of paying to help other people they are paying to get insurance companies richer ... well, what can we say ... Americans.

Bottom line is, medical treatment costs in Europe and much lower than in USA and people live longer AND we don't let children dye without treatment just because their parents cannot afford it. We are more humane and more efficient!

The US system is probably worse than you think...

[WIAKywbfatw]

That's a valid criticism, as long as you're comparing the US medical system to just that of Cuba.

Now compare the US model to that of its western, developed world counterparts. All of a sudden, the US model doesn't look so great, does it?

The US medical system is flawed. Yes, you have access to some of the greatest medical care in the world, but that is true if and only if you're able to pay for it. If you're not covered and you can't afford it then you might as well not exist.

Approximately 41-44 million Americans have no health coverage. That's about 15 percent of the population. Approximately 18,000 Americans die every year because they couldn't afford simple screening and preventive care for chronic diseases. Note, that's not because they couldn't afford an expensive treatment, it's because they didn't know that they had a serious illness until it was too late to do something about it.

To put that in context, six times as many Americans die every year that need not have died because of this one reason alone than died as a result of the attacks of September 11th, 2001. (Where's the "War on Illness"?) And that's the thousands more that wouldn't die if they had access to basic medicine and treatments that people in, say, Canada and Europe would take for granted.

Health insurance in the US isn't about providing patients with the best possible care. Instead, like all businesses it's about providing the maximum possible profit to shareholders, as required by law. As much as 30 percent of US private health insurance premiums is eaten up by overheads and profits. Medicare, the state solution, has overheads that amount to just one percent, and no shareholders to take a pound of flesh.

If the private sector solution is so efficient then why does it suck so much money out of the system?

15.4 percent of the US GDP is spent on healthcare. Healthcare expenses is the number one reason for personal bankrupcy in the US. Compared to their counterparts, Americans pay through the teeth for healthcare, yet the US is ranked only 37th (based on general health of the population, access, patient satisfaction and how the care's paid for) by the World Health Organisation.

By comparison, Canada spends less than 10 percent of it's GDP on healthcare, yet is ranked in the top ten. In actual terms, Canadians spend half as much per capita as Americans do (Canada's GDP/capita is a lot lower than it's southern neighbour's) yet get better overall care. Life expectancy in Canada is three years greater, both for men and for women, there are fewer infant mortalities, etc.

Don't get me wrong, there are things to be admired about the US. But, generally, healthcare provision is not one of them and neither is it likely to be for a very long time unless someone is brave enough to do something about it.

Yes, the US system might be better than Cuba's but, to be honest, that's of little consolation to the millions of Americans who literally can't afford to be sick.

Here's the facts on Canadian health care

[nbauman]

Here's a comparison of Canadian vs. U.S. health care from a peer-reviewed medical journal, by Gordon Guyatt, who is one of the world's top experts on comparing health care systems. The article points out that the U.S. health care system costs about twice as much per capita for the same or worse results.

http://www.openmedicine.ca/article/view/8/1

Open Medicine, Vol 1, No 1 (2007)

A systematic review of studies comparing health outcomes in Canada and the United States

Gordon H. Guyatt, P.J. Devereaux, Joel Lexchin, Samuel B. Stone, Armine Yalnizyan, David Himmelstein, Steffie Woolhandler, Qi Zhou, Laurie J. Goldsmith, Deborah J. Cook, Ted Haines, Christina Lacchetti, John N. Lavis, Terrence Sullivan, Ed Mills, Shelley Kraus, Neera Bhatnagar

ABSTRACT

Background: Differences in medical care in the United States compared with Canada, including greater reliance on private funding and for-profit delivery, as well as markedly higher expenditures, may result in different health outcomes.

Objectives: To systematically review studies comparing health outcomes in the United States and Canada among patients treated for similar underlying medical conditions.

Methods: We identified studies comparing health outcomes of patients in Canada and the United States by searching multiple bibliographic databases and resources. We masked study results before determining study eligibility. We abstracted study characteristics, including methodological quality and generalizability.

Results: We identified 38 studies comparing populations of patients in Canada and the United States. Studies addressed diverse problems, including cancer, coronary artery disease, chronic medical illnesses and surgical procedures. Of 10 studies that included extensive statistical adjustment and enrolled broad populations, 5 favoured Canada, 2 favoured the United States, and 3 showed equivalent or mixed results. Of 28 studies that failed one of these criteria, 9 favoured Canada, 3 favoured the United States, and 16 showed equivalent or mixed results. Overall, results for mortality favoured Canada (relative risk 0.95, 95% confidence interval 0.92-0.98, p = 0.002) but were very heterogeneous, and we failed to find convincing explanations for this heterogeneity. The only condition in which results consistently favoured one country was end-stage renal disease, in which Canadian patients fared better.

Interpretation: Available studies suggest that health outcomes may be superior in patients cared for in Canada versus the United States, but differences are not consistent.

Further reading on the Canada vs. U.S. comparison is:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2000/000 7.marmorsul.html
Canada's Burning!
Media myths about universal health coverage
By Theodore Marmor & Kip Sullivan

Re:Here's the facts on Canadian health care

[pudge]

Here's a comparison of Canadian vs. U.S. health care from a peer-reviewed medical journal, by Gordon Guyatt, who is one of the world's top experts on comparing health care systems. The article points out that the U.S. health care system costs about twice as much per capita for the same or worse results. Well, it depends on what you mean. If you mean Canada has the same or better results for everybody, no, it does not. Indeed, for many people, it has significantly worse results, especially those in the upper and upper middle class, and that's the point: no one is willing to have their freedom taken away, and their taxes increased, in order to be significantly worse off, even if it benefits others. There's better solutions out there that don't harm a lot of people for the sake of improving the care of a lot of other people.

Which is, incidentally, why only one Democrat is for single-payer care, because the rest of them know it's a non-starter, and they want to win (whereas Kucinich knows he can't win).

Re:Here's the facts on Canadian health care

[Pig Hogger]

Well, it depends on what you mean. If you mean Canada has the same or better results for everybody, no, it does not. Indeed, for many people, it has significantly worse results, especially those in the upper and upper middle class, and that's the point: no one is willing to have their freedom taken away, and their taxes increased, in order to be significantly worse off, even if it benefits others. There's better solutions out there that don't harm a lot of people for the sake of improving the care of a lot of other people.

Canadians have decided long ago that it is not right for a rich man to have better service when it means that everyone else will have worse.

Everyone has the same service; this guarantees that the rich will not gut the service.

This is called "social justice", something sorely lacking in the US.

Ever wondered why the crime rate is so low in Canada? It's not because guns are outlawed. No, it's simply because welfare helps ensure that someone that hit the bottom of the barrel will not have to turn to crime in order to survive.

Paying slightly more taxes than in the US is a very cheap price to pay to insure that I do not risk being mugged each time I walk home late at night.

And everyone is glad to pay those few extra tax dollars.

The "freedom" those measures take away would only benefit the top 0.01% of the population anyways.

Re:Here's the facts on Canadian health care

[TapeCutter]

We also have humane and effective universal health cover in Australia and you can take out private insurance if you want a private room for mum and baby, silicone implants, ect. The idea that "world class" health care could bankrupt any family is a bipartisan "evil" in this country.

Re:Here's the facts on Canadian health care

[nbowman]

Yes, if only we could segregate those people of different ethnicities, we would be safe. there are far more pieces of the equation that actually have something to do with the crime rate than some tenuous at best link to ethnicity.

Re:Here's the facts on Canadian health care

[catchblue22]

The American health care system is hugely inefficient, in part because it devotes huge resources to deciding who to cover and who to deny coverage. Spending large amounts of money to figure out who is likely to get sick makes sense to improve the bottom line of individual companies, but overall it lowers the quality of care for patients by reducing available resources.

I live in Canada. I have quite a bit of experience with our health care system, having an elderly family member with cancer. I can only describe his care as excellent. I spent days in the hospital, and I got to observe in detail what went on there, and I cannot think of anything that could have significantly been improved.

That said, the quality of care has been declining recently. However, this is primarily due to cutbacks instituted by neoconservative leaning governments. They are deliberately starving the public health care system with the eventual goal of creating a parallel private system. The reasons they are doing this are largely ideological, in that they believe the private sector can do no wrong. It also seems likely to me that our government has been bought and paid for by private health care interests.

That said, our system is still quite good. Someone else I know is currently going through cancer treatment, and there isn't much I can see wrong with her care. Because her treatment was urgent, she didn't have to wait very long for her chemotherapy. But what is perhaps more important is that the treatment was received without fear of bankruptcy. We don't fear losing our coverage here. We don't wonder whether or not our claim will go through. We simply show up to the doctor or hospital and receive our care.

With the release of Sicko, be prepared to be deluged by propaganda against public health care. There is just too much money to be lost by the private health care industry for them to give up in this battle. Although Michael Moore tends towards bombast and exaggeration, his basic thesis is correct. The American health care system is deeply flawed, and other countries do a far better job of caring for their citizens.

Re:Here's the facts on Canadian health care

[pudge]

Well, it depends on what you mean. If you mean Canada has the same or better results for everybody, no, it does not. Indeed, for many people, it has significantly worse results, especially those in the upper and upper middle class, and that's the point: no one is willing to have their freedom taken away, and their taxes increased, in order to be significantly worse off, even if it benefits others. There's better solutions out there that don't harm a lot of people for the sake of improving the care of a lot of other people. Canadians have decided long ago that it is not right for a rich man to have better service when it means that everyone else will have worse. Nothing I said implied that's how it should be. I said the proper solution would be one that improves the care of those with poor care, without significantly adversely affecting the care of anyone else.

Everyone has the same service Yep, and it's a damned shame.

This is called "social justice", something sorely lacking in the US. Riiiiiiight. It is "justice" to take away someone's liberty and force them to have a reduced standard of health care. That makes perfect sense!

The "freedom" those measures take away would only benefit the top 0.01% of the population anyways. Not remotely. It's actually closer to about 30 percent, if not more.

Re:Here's the facts on Canadian health care

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to try reading the book The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy which compares Japan, Canada, and the USA. The conclusion of the book is that cultural issues are more important than laws. Canada isn't safer than the USA because of its gun laws; they have fewer people stabbed, fewere people beaten to death with hands and fists, just less violence. If it's not the laws, could it be... the culture? The ethnic composition? Read the damn book and find out.

Re:Here's the facts on Canadian health care

[madcow_bg]

Nothing I said implied that's how it should be. I said the proper solution would be one that improves the care of those with poor care, without significantly adversely affecting the care of anyone else. So what?! Having universal medical coverage does not rule out private healthcare. You can always pay for a better doctor. Anyway, did it occur to you that people with shitty health also have less money, and even better, are not insured because no company wants them? Tell me how is that fare?

Everyone has the same service Yep, and it's a damned shame. I see, just because you turned well, you want others to suffer? It is your f*ckin health, for christ's sake! It affects your basic human right to live!!! There is something wrong with your country, if you let even 1/3 of the stuff on that movie happen to real people. And I know it is so, because I have friends there.

This is called "social justice", something sorely lacking in the US. Riiiiiiight. It is "justice" to take away someone's liberty and force them to have a reduced standard of health care. That makes perfect sense! Who's liberty is taken when you pay taxes? Like the ones for public schools, libraries, roads? Why don't everyone just pave their own damned piece of road, and let everyone else suffer the consequences!

The "freedom" those measures take away would only benefit the top 0.01% of the population anyways. Not remotely. It's actually closer to about 30 percent, if not more.
Really? So, having 200$ less to pay for taxes is really, really worth it if you screw the 70% of the country, the poor ones. Well, good for you.

Re:Here's the facts on Canadian health care

[tourvil]

First of all, let's just note the fact that federalized health care is blatantly unconstitutional. No, I won't explain that in detail, because I am tired of explaining about enumerated rights and the Tenth Amendment.

I agree, and what I don't understand is why the issue of universal/socialized health care is rarely suggested at the state level. Clearly there is some significant portion of Americans who are interested in seeing universal health care, or there wouldn't be a discussion. So why don't some of the states try it? But all discussion I've seen has been for or against implementing federal health care.

I watched Sicko, and if nothing else, it did get me thinking more about the issue of health care. I don't quite buy Moore's argument that we need federal health care, but I do believe it's a worthy debate to have at the state level. In the movie, he tries to sell us the idea of socialized health care by pointing to the other socialized services we enjoy: firefighters, education, police departments, etc. All of these serve the public good (in theory, if not always in practice), but these services are largely managed at the state or local levels. I think there could be room for health care in that list. At the very least, I believe it's a worthy enough issue to be on the table for debate.

Re:Here's the facts on Canadian health care

[shark swooner]

Do you have any way to statistically describe these "many people" or are you just basing this on the premise that you could eventually find some individuals if you searched long enough?

Because you have things like infant mortality rate (worse in US), life expectancy (worse in US) but you might be able to find "many people" that died young in Canada! The difference is we can quantitatively describe infant mortality and life expectancy and compare them for different jurisdictions quantitatively, whereas "many people" having "significantly worse results" are specious weasel words with no objective, and therefore any, meaning.

Re:Here's the facts on Canadian health care

[Mr. Flibble]

Canadians have decided long ago that it is not right for a rich man to have better service when it means that everyone else will have worse.

Everyone has the same service; this guarantees that the rich will not gut the service.

As a Canadian, who has this same service, I have a problem with it.

The problem is that there are waiting lists for many health care services. What it amounts to is that if say, my mother is sick, and put on a waiting list - yet a private clinic has the space, I am FORBIDDEN from paying to help my mother. What this amounts to, is that someone who works hard all their life to aquire money is forbidden from using it to help their family. Do I think universal healthcare is a good idea and a right? Yes. Do I believe that it should be forced so that those who have the means and the funds to help their family should be denied that right? No.

This is why many Canadians who can afford it go to the states for certain procedures. The waiting lists can get in the way. While it is true that most procedures that are considered threat to life are generally fast, not all are. A friend of mine has been on a waiting list for gall bladder surgery for six months. With the money to pay, the only option is to go to the US for the operation as you can't jump the line here. You just have to sit and suffer. Is that fair to someone who has worked hard to aquire their money and status? Is that a fair picture of freedom to say "oh, you may be able to afford it, but we won't let you buy it."?

So, I believe that universal healthcare is a right - but if you have the funds to get faster or better service than the basic care, that should be available to you. To "level" the playing field, you make the lines longer... If my friend gets surgery in the US - then she gets what she needs - and there is one *LESS* person in the waiting line for gall bladder surgery in Canada - meaning someone here gets moved up the list. I see that as a good thing for both people.

Re:Here's the facts on Canadian health care

[Weedlekin]

"We also have humane and effective universal health cover in Australia and you can take out private insurance if you want a private room for mum and baby, silicone implants, ect."

That's the way it also works in a lot of European countries (but not of course all of them). Everyone pays for the state system from taxes (so rich people who never use it are paying far more than the poorer ones who do), but there are is also private healthcare funded by those who choose to buy insurance or pay for a one-off item such as "vanity" cosmetic surgery. There are two main advantage to a choice-based environment: (1) the state can concentrate its resources on those who actually need them; and (2) there is secondary set of medical services (beds, doctors, nurses, advanced equipment such as MRI) that the state can pay to use when required, but are entirely maintained at someone else's expense when the state doesn't need them.

(state system funded by everyone) + (private sector paid for by those who want to use it) > (state sector only) OR (private healthcare only)

Re:Here's the facts on Canadian health care

[jinxidoru]

Well, it depends on what you mean. If you mean Canada has the same or better results for everybody, no, it does not. Indeed, for many people, it has significantly worse results, especially those in the upper and upper middle class, and that's the point: no one is willing to have their freedom taken away, and their taxes increased, in order to be significantly worse off, even if it benefits others. There's better solutions out there that don't harm a lot of people for the sake of improving the care of a lot of other people.


Not true. I am one of those people who would receive worse care in Canada and I am totally for it. The fact is that the worse care is not bad care. The worse care is still quite good. In other words, true, I won't be able to move myself to the front of the kidney transplant list, or cut to the front of the line for a bipass surgery. No, I'll get it just as soon as everyone else. That certainly sounds fair to me, that just because I have been lucky enough to have money does not entitle me to live while others not as fortunate die. Seriously, our health care system is sick.

Your comment also fails to bring attention to the social benefits of socialized medicine. In the same way that public schools not only improve the life of one receiving an education, they also benefit society at large, public health-car provides benefits to society at large as well. One that was mentioned previously was crime (though I'm not necessarily convinced, it does have a ring of truth). There's also the benefit of fewer sick days because sickness is dealt with better. The list is quite large.

One other thing. I find it odd that the republicans (read: Christian Right) are the ones who are generally opposed to socialized medicine. Wasn't it Christ who taught the perfect example of self-less sacrifice for the betterment of society. All the while, us godless democrats are the ones calling for just that type of sacrifice. What's the deal with that?

I think the biggest reason...

[Kjella]

...that universal healthcare works so much better than individual insurance is that it's really hard to determine treatment quality for an individual - each case is unique with its own development, own medical history and quite often we just don't understand why some patients recover so well or poor, or in extreme cases live and die. Often there's some religious or emotional answer given instead. If you got stuck in an operation queue for a month, did it kill you or did it make no difference? It's quite impossible to say. That means that in the US model, an insurance company is out to give you as little and cheap treatment as they can get away with, without being provable malpractise.

On an aggregate level though, it's easy to see what kind of healthcare we provide. We can make up statistics which show how we're doing for the people overall, and we can make socialeconomic considerations on whether to improve them. In short, we can say "If we could cut waiting lines by X%, recovery rates would improve by Y% and we'd recover Z% because people are shorter on sick leave. The US can make those statistics, but not govern by them. You instead go by rules like "If we replace this with inferior treatment, our costs will be cut by X% while our malpractise/wrongful death costs will increase by Y% (where X > Y). The best hospital case is the one you dropped like a hot potato, refused to insure and so left in a ditch. Here the best case is to pick them up, get them to change their lifestyle so they won't burden our system later. Basicly, the more likely you are to need help the less likely you'll get it.

Some of the arguments I hear are quite ridiculous, like if healthcare was free then people would abuse it. Look, you don't go doing extreme sports and go through all the trauma, pain and lengthy recovery just because it's free. The average guy would rather not have to deal with doctors and nurses and hospitals any more than they need to. Nobody asks for a mentally or physically son or daughter so they can have their life upended, no matter if we donate money for equipment and accessibility tools like guide dogs, hearing aids, wheelchairs, ramps and whatnot. Some people just got a big "fuck you" in the lottery of life, which society should work to undo.

Yes, some people are probably going to end up in healthcare because of their own lifestyle and/or stupidity. But it's not certain the guy who died of a stroke in his 50s is more of a burden than the 90yo slowly dying, in fact I've read some material to the contrary. Elderly people are notoriously expensive to treat, they're frail and often have complex health issues which makes them hard to treat with high risk of causing new issues and are slow to recover. Nursing homes for elderly which have trouble getting out of bed, clothing themselves, feeding themselves, going to the toilet, personal hygiene etc. quickly drain much more resources that younger people who usually either recover or die. In fact, that's likely to be the biggest problem with an aging population here in Europe, but it sure doesn't get easier the American way.

Absolutely staggered...

[salparadyse]

...at the level of hard hearted, sneering ignorance in some of the posts on this subject. Let me make a guess here - a reasonable proportion/most of the responders are Americans who can afford Medical Insurance.
Rarely have I heard such sneering disdain for the poor and for documentary makers. Michael Moore makes films that try to show you what has happened to your country and mostly all you can seem to do is sneer at him.
The attitude of "pay or fuck off and die in the gutter" is not acceptable in a civilised human being. What, do you think it's cool to be mega-wealthy and then refuse help to someone who's in need? What has happened to your humanity?
And some hopeless retard actually said "socialism is a bad idea". What, and the fucked up, society wrecking, planet consuming filth called capitalism is better?
Socialism is your only hope, its just that those who make the most money from this retarded capitalism thing have a vested interest in promoting socialism as a stupid evil that would spoil everything because it would spoil everything - for them. And you've fallen for it. Well duh! is, I think, the correct response at this juncture.

As for Google...
After China are you really that surprised? It's surely more a case of, if they go mega evil slowly enough most of you will still be trumpeting the fact that "hey, but they use Linux" when the google-bot delivers the evidence against you in the google-court.

Re:Absolutely staggered...

[lysse]

Socialism is your only hope

I have to say, I think you just lost your audience.

Re:Micheal?

[genaldar]

The playingfield still isn't level. Health insurance companies have more money than God, they don't need google's help to remind us sheep that "we need them".

scanning the comments on moore below

[circletimessquare]

i am struck by the attacks on moore's neutrality

(smacks forehead)

that the idea that michael moore ever could be neutral in any way, or that such a yardstick should ever be used in criticizing him, is to me, naive beyond ridiculous. folks, if you have passion for any topic in this world, sticking to neutral facts won't get you one iota of interest. it will get you obscurity. in other words, NOBODY is neutral on ideological topics. the right, the left, the middle, any other ideological position you can think of: if you want to judge michael moore, judge him on his ability to elicit interest in a subject matter. his neutrality? HA! am i supposed to laugh that you honestly think this is a valid subject matter?

everyone attacking moore is of course not neutral either. so why all the talk of neutrality? it's patently ridiculous. i was in fact just reading another story in the new york times, an interview with the great werner herzog on his filmmaking, and i think everyone here needs to consider these words when considering michael moore and "neutrality":

Q. There have been some accusations that you've taken liberties with facts in some of your documentaries and in "Rescue Dawn," particularly from the family of Eugene DeBruin. What is your reaction to those accusations?

A. If we are paying attention about facts, we end up as accountants. If you find out that yes, here or there, a fact has been modified or has been imagined, it will be a triumph of the accountants to tell me so. But we are into illumination for the sake of a deeper truth, for an ecstasy of truth, for something we can experience once in a while in great literature and great cinema. I'm imagining and staging and using my fantasies. Only that will illuminate us. Otherwise, if you're purely after facts, please buy yourself the phone directory of Manhattan. It has four million times correct facts. But it doesn't illuminate.

folks: every single word you read, every conversation you hear, anywhere, is biased. everyone is trying to sell you a bill of goods, all the time. furthermore, you yourself are not neutral, and never were. no media ever will be neutral. no media ever was neutral. you go through life with a bullshit meter, or you don't go through life at all

having realized that, we judge moore in a different light: his ability to engage and persuade. on this level, moore is unmitigated success, and an object of jealousy and hate for those on the right of issues. who cares? they have their own successes in the field of persuasion that liberals in turn hate and are jealous of

facts are overrated folks. as werner herzog says, you can cling to them if you wish, but that only makes you an unimportant obscure accountant. persuasion is what matters. because human belief is not about cold hard static facts, it is about your passion for how things SHOULD BE, not how THEY ARE. there are no facts to be had about how things should be. in which case, clinging to the need for "facts" in subject matter like healthcare is at best missing the point, and at worse, naive and stupid

everything you read and hear is full of smears, propaganda, lies, errors, partisanship, etc. a random cacophony of background noise. your average person's healthy critically minded bullshit meter can weed the useful from the unuseful. your bullshit meter should be on red alert all the time: those with an agenda aren't random riff raff, they are dug deep into every media outlet existing, that has ever existed, and will ever exist. some of you need to accept that

some of you lament the increasing bias you see in the media landscape today. ha! you are honestly going to tell me there was some place and some time in the past when things weren't biased? are you trying to tell me you suffer from historical myopia, romantic nostalgia or something? NEVER EXISTED FRIEND. AND NEVER WILL

do you want to blindly trust the m

I don't have health Insurance

[Newer Guy]

I don't have health insurance. My COBRA ran out in January. I was paying amlost SEVENTEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS A MONTH for Blus Cross that paid 80% of IN NETWORK stuff-and even THAT had a yearly deductible applied to it. My son caught Lyme Disease last summer, and the co pays and deductibles for that ONE incident cost me almost $6000.00! Doing consulting last year, I grossed about $52,000. Take away $1668.00 (monthly COBRA) * 12 months and then add $6000.00 to that. What do you get? TWENTY SIX THOUSAND DOLLARS! HALF of my pre-tax income went DIRECTLY to health insurance. Actually, it was closer to THIRTY TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS, because my wife has Asthma and takes medication for depression, and my 17 year old daughter fell on ice and fractured her tailbone. And some of you here have the NERVE to tell me this is okay??? I have an average sized family with four children on the health insurance. Health care costs were the SINGLE BIGGEST EXPENSE I paid last year! MORE then housing, MORE then food, MORE then ANYTHING...IN fact, MORE then EVERYTHING ELSE PUT TOGETHER!!!

But this is okay for most of you, RIGHT? After all, YOU have company health insurance, and you're single..RIGHT? Well, so did I, until one day when I was LAID OFF!

Don't you DARE say that the health care system in the USA is fair or equitable! It isn't...and I'm LIVING PROOF OF IT!!

Re:I don't have health Insurance

[jovius]

The anonymous responses to your post are simply disgusting. If that's the attitude of some of the americans to people like you it's no wonder things are not that well over there... Wasn't the US about freedom to pursue happiness ? When did you people forgot to be nice and supportive to each other in order to reach your ideals ? I can see that the amount of money is the meter of your happiness, not how you use it... I wish you well and hope everything turns out ok for you.

Re:I don't have health Insurance

[mattkime]

>>and you wonder why health care was the single biggest expense of your year?

Did you miss the part where he said he was INSURED???

If he has INSURANCE, why should his medical bills be pushing him toward poverty?

>>It seems you could...You could...You could...You could...You could

In hindsight, there are always a million way to avoid the unfortunate. Insurance should INSURE you against the unexpected. Thats why we pay for it.

It will be very interesting to see....

[Simulant]

... where Lauren Turner is working next month. My affinity towards things Google hinges on it.

Google might want to consider changing their motto to "We pander to anyone that can pay". It's slightly less misleading.

Anyone know if they have a defense industry advertising blog? I'd love to see that one.

Re:Mod Parent Up!

[Daengbo]

It seems that Moore plays loose with the facts by omitting known relevant information, staging scenes, and disingenuously splicing together video in order to make something appear to be when it is not. He does this in all of his films. The issues Moore raises need to be discussed, but should be done so truthfully and without the propaganda.

Re:The US system is probably worse than you think.

[optikSmoke]

I have been doing a lot of reading up on health care statistics lately, and I recognize most of those mentioned in the above post. The most astonishing fact I've stumbled upon is that the U.S. *government* spends more on health care per capita than most other nations (including Canada). Then, you add on that the States also spend more (much much more) per person than other nations on private funding, and you can understand why the system costs more.

I think the whole "public healthcare raises taxes" argument is lost right there -- if the States had a system anywhere close to the efficiency of other industrialized nations', they could theoretically be spending just as much at the government level and chuck most of the private health costs. Of course, that's probably unrealistic in that it would likely be politically difficult to build a system like that out of the one in place now.

Anyway, since I can't recall all of the sources of the statistics I've read, I did a bit of googling for you. Right off the top, the OECD (http://www.oecd.org/) is an excellent source that often pops up in such discussions. They have an entire section on Health statistics of member nations.

And here's spending info courtesy of the WHO: http://www.who.int/whosis/database/core/core_selec t_process.cfm?countries=all&indicators=nha
This includes per capita government spending on health care, which happens to show that Canadian governement spending (for example) is less than U.S. Government spending, per capita.

And a bit of a comparison of average life expectency and spending on health care (note the disparity when it comes to the U.S.): http://ucatlas.ucsc.edu/spend.php.

Anyway, what tends to bother me the most about these debates on Slashdot is that it often comes down to people with data to back them up versus people who blindly believe that the American system MUST cost less. I mean, it isn't government-run, right?

That position is undeniably false, and I really wish we could at least get past that part of the debate so that something meaningful can come from these discussions. Of course, faith in the free market, just like any other faith, doesn't require facts to be believed.

Re:Mod Parent Down!

[Instine]

Thread 19704559 - critisisms: "It seems that Moore plays loose with the facts by omitting known relevant information" It is impossible to include "all known information" in a film or viable length. The "staging scenes" critisism could be seen as ill founded as he admits to such scenes being his contrivance to the most part, and could then be assumed by most thinking viewers to be a common device of his film direction. " He does this in all of his films." - Needs sitation or evidence. For example, for the film in question.

Re:Mod Parent Up!

[xerxesVII]

How did you get that backwards b?

The American Health Care System....

[FrankN]

... has served me fairly well. My only problem, so far, was when coverage for a particular medication was denied by my insurance because their book said it wasn't indicated for my particular diagnosis. Never mind the fact that my rheumatologist could direct their attention to some studies that indicated it might help me. The book said no, and that was that. I could not afford the $500 a month bill, so we are trying another drug instead. I hope it will work.

Which brings me to something that bothers me about the debate on heath care. Strangers wanting to 'give' me anything, in this case health care, raises a red flag. I'd love to ask the people advocating the idea this: why do you want to pay my medical bills? There's no such thing as a free lunch, someone, some where, will be pay the cost. What do I / We have to give up?

If universal health care looks like it is going to happen in the United States, keep this in mind: The people that will be making the rules, congress, are the same people that change their minds more often than they change their underwear, and they do it by commitee. The past is littered with examples of this almost since the founding of our country.

Are these the people we want in charge of our health? No matter what kind of a private / public system they create in the beginning, I guarantee you this: the congress, the president, the supreme court, and the federal bureaucracy, will eventually be completely in charge.

The insurance companies already hinder decisions made by doctors because some book says so, what would make us think that the government will be different?

Frank

Re:Percentage of GDP is unreasonable

[mvdwege]

According to my friends working in "Big Pharma," basically the prices they sell overseas, including Canada are "profitable" on a per-unit basis, because drug duplication costs are close to zero but the research is high.

I respectfully suggest you go over to the SEC site and download and read the yearly statements of the Big Pharma companies. You'd be surprised how they actually spend their money, as opposed to what they tell the public via their PR firms. And yes, the low-level drones in such companies do belong to the public, they get fed the same bullshit.

In fact, I have Pfizer's 10-K in front of me now, and they are in the midst of a reorganisation cutting staff in their PGRD division and closing down entire R&D centers (and in the meantime expressing concern that attrition is so high in the R&D group. I wonder why that is?)

And to close down the much-ballyhooed cost of getting approval: according to the 10-K, that takes 800 million dollars, and may take 10-15 years, so that cost can be amortised. Meanwhile, an approved patented medicine (a 20-year monopoly, remember?), may bring in 2 billion annually.

You are being lied to. The facts are out there, look them up.

Mart

What's more disappointing...

[Animaether]

...is that only the top thread has a dozen or so messages about the actual issue in the story. The rest is warring among tribes of Pro-Moore vs Pro-HMO, Pro-U.S. vs Pro-EverybodyElse, Pro-Documetary vs Pro-OpinionPiece, etc.

Google must be smiling.

Re:Mod Parent Down!

[sumdumass]

I don't know if this is evidence, but I saw him in an interview promoting his book on PBS this last weekend. He goes on about how all the hospitals in the UK give people money when they leave to make sure they have a way home and food in their stomach. This interviewer asked if that was true, then why in the guardian was there a story about a 70 some year old woman treated and released and was found in the parking lot because she had no way home and no one to call for a ride. He said people fall through the cracks. He asked Moore about why, if the healthcare is so good in france, why then are they always protesting and stuff. And then more said it was becuase of the protests that it is so good. And then the interviewer asked if it is so good, why are we seeing them protest about the same stuff? and moore moved on to talking about canada avoiding the question.

Then moore said he went to Canada and went to a hospital emergency room and saw nothing different then in America. He said there wasn't any waiting like everyone says. And the interviewer asked a few questions then Moore finally admitted that there is generally a 4 to 6 week waiting priod to see specialist and then to ge treatments authorized.

So, at least from an interview promoting the movie, it seems like everything is contrived in the same sense the GP was claiming. This move is "Moore of the same" (pardon the pun). Or at least all indecations seem that way.

Ignorance

[Mark_MF-WN]

Healthcare is much, much cheaper than you seem believe. 30% of the costs of healthcare go to running the beauracracies of the insurance companies. In a socialized system only 3% of the money goes towards running the beauracracy. Then you have the drugs, for which 70% of the cost goes to marketing. You'd know that, if you weren't so ignorant and stupid.

Try not being a GOP puppet. Thinking for yourself isn't nearly as hard as you might imagine.

This is my favourite though:

and people have such a sense of entitlement to all this work, and they're outraged that they can't have it on the cheap. Fancy that.

People feel they are entitled to NOT DIE. Fancy that!

Goddam fucking idiot....

Re:Ignorance

[FooAtWFU]

Try not being a DNC puppet. Thinking for yourself isn't nearly as hard as you'd imagine. (I'm many things. A GOP puppet, however, is not one of them. A modicum of respect and avoidance of ad hominem attacks from your future posts would be greatly appreciated, thank you oh-so-kindly, sir!)

So pharmaceutical companies charge well in excess of manufacturing and research costs. This covers the marketing. Why, then, are they wasting all this money on marketing? I know! So they can make more money. Why? Because that's the point. they're out to make money. Private investors are not going to pay billions for research if they don't think they're going to get a return on their investment. That's why people are investing their money: not for the good of humanity or a noble cause like that, but for profit. There is incidental good to humanity, mind you, in the form of new knowledge which will make it into the public domain in 20ish years. But if you take away all the marketing, you take away a good chunk of the profits, and then suddenly biotech isn't so hot anymore, and people will put their money elsewhere. There's no incidental good of humanity served.

Yes, the Government and various philanthropists and such can fund research and develop drugs without all this money-making hooplah. But if you take it away, there are drugs which are not going to be researched and which will simply will not exist. Your choice is this: live in a world where you pay lots of money for fancy drugs (and cover the marketing and the investors) which save your life (or just make it better) but put you in debt, or live in a world where you don't even have the option of going into debt to save your life because nobody researched that particular drug. You don't get a cheap Get-Out-Of-Illness-Free card. Sure, a nationalized system might make things better in the short run by yanking a bunch of already-researched drugs into a more affordable state, but that's not a sustainable solution.

People feel they are entitled to NOT DIE. Fancy that! People must have a fundamental disconnect with Reality. If there's one thing you can be certain about in life, it's death.

Re:Micheal?

[Wolfger]

I suppose a lot of folks who would be disappointed or even outraged by this news are also proponents of other progressive social causes such as net neutrality.

I think you're supposing incorrectly. People who support network neutrality are generally smart people, and net neutrality is an important issue that affects our future. People upset that an advertising company (Google) is trying to sell ads are not intelligent, this is not an important issue, and it means squat to anybody's future. Who the hell decided this "news" was Slashdot worthy? Trying to earn money by doing your job is not evil. Google is not censoring anything, and not trying to "contain" the damage to the health care industry. Repair, maybe, but not contain.

People will pay anything...

[blitz487]

...for the illusion of 'free' health care.

A lot of people believe that the US health care system is free market. It is not. 50% of all health care dollars are spent by the government. The government runs 5 socialized health care systems: medicare, medicaid, military hospitals, VA hospitals, and the indian hospitals. The rest is heavily regulated from top to bottom. It might be only 10% free market. Most of the problems with it are attributable to government interference.

Remember our wounded soldiers the government abandoned at Walter Reed Hospital? Look forward to plenty of that with the government running your health care.

Come On..

[wdr1]

Oh Lord... Listen people, free speech cuts both way. It not only allows you to say what /you/ believe, but it also allows others to say what /they/ believe.

There's no love lost for insurance companies from me, but I'd much rather they too have free speech, even if it means "spinning" things their way, than to start censoring anyone who disagree with Michael Moore.

-Bill

I don't see a problem

[nanosquid]

Google is offering to sell ads. That's their business. I don't see a problem with that. Of course, health care companies can use that to get their message out, just like right wing politicians, open source nerds, on-line pharmacies, and herbal viagra salesmen can use it to get their message out.

Google were evil if they tried to pick and choose who can use them to advertise.

Now, it was perhaps in bad taste for Google to advertise specifically to the health care industry, but that's still this side of evil, in particular since Sicko really is not completely accurate.

Competition, Market

[curious.corn]

Hi, I'm italian and i could bring examples of extremely poor public healthcare but I won't as I think it's mostly due to a cultural incapacity to get a good job correctly done without trying to cut corners and screw anyone whenever possible. We also have a kind of mixed system where doctors can, or used to until very recently, exercise their practice both in public and private structures so that, inevitably, the public service is treated as a hunting ground where to pick up patients for expensive private clinics. Also, slackers and nepotism plague the public institutions where barons, who often own the most prestigious clinics, sit on the top chairs with the sole purpose of driving and keeping everything firmly into the ground just for the sake of exercising their feudal power.

But this is not the contribution I wanted to make. I have a question: is all out competition, wide open free market always the solution? Will the fight for corporate survival always bring the best product on the market and the leanest execution? Hmm, I guess no. I don't want to take on good 'ol Microsoft we all hate, just let me mention another industry: mobile telephony. Do you americans already have a pervasive, standardized cellular network or are you just starting to after years of quarreling standards and vendor lock-ins. We, the EU, have had this GSM given from the beginning of the digital cellular rollout and today enjoy continental roaming and dirt cheap terminals since a decade. Sure, some of you will argue that GSM is so much worse than some other patented, exclusively licensed protocol you can only use with one operator (and good luck if you travel to a city where the incumbent went with the competing protocol) but I'm happy to travel anywhere on the continent and be sure that either by voice or SMS, there an infrastructure that'll work for me.

My point is sometimes fragmentation, darwinism, de- or lack of regulation, don't work at all and actually break the toy for everybody. Public safety, health care, unemployment subsidies are all systems that do work after all, will have their own set of gripes and pockets of inefficiency but still manage to make a better life for those that contribute and make use of it. Take me for example: I was hospitalized and had an appendix removed within 12 hr and all I had to pay for was a 15 EUR ticket (although I did risk getting mis-diagnosed... but that's more because of what I mentioned in the first paragraph...)

Re:Mod Parent Down!

[OohAhh]

I can't speak for the others, but I know of how my mother was treated when she needed hospital treatment here in the UK. If the patient can't easily arrange transport to or from hospital then that can be provided free. This can be by volunteer drivers, ambulance, or even taxis. As for food I think it's true that hospitals like to make sure their inpatients have eaten before going home, but that may only be normal meal times. So it really comes down to how the discharge is time in relation to meal times. I'd be surprised if any hospital actually gave a patient money, but it's not impossible. As for the 70 year old mentioned it's possible she had said she'd already got transport arranged, but either she hadn't or someone didn't turn up. As to the exact reason that's anyone's guess and obviously it should have been made sure that she was alright. Unfortunately no system is going to be perfect and some times it will fall short of ideal.

Re:Pfft

[hey!]

You kids and your newfangled evil. Back in my day, evil had Moxie.

Quite Evil - from a physician

[NIckGorton]

Pharma and the insurance industry are evil. Moreover in the case of the health insurance industry they serve no purpose. Previously insurers would assume risk and in doing so merit some financial reward. With the advent of capitation and risk selection, they don't even do that anymore. They are leeches, that in the words of Sicko: Flat Suck.

And I can also assure you that the denials of care that Moore described were not the exceptions, but the rule. I have a patient (whose details are a bit obscured in this story) who has a number of serious medical problems. He has a history of a bleeding ulcer and recently began to have symptoms that were the same as he'd had when he had the ulcer. So I prescribed a Proton Pump Inhibitor (the one that was the preferred drug on that insurer's formulary.) They denied it saying that he had reached the limit of the number of medicines he was allowed to have. In order to have the ulcer medicine he would have to go off of one of his diabetes, blood pressure, or asthma medicines or pay for one of them out of pocket.

And sorry, but the cries of 'socialized medicine' being worse than what we have are for shit. If everyone has the same insurance, then every doctor and hospital would take it. I transfer patients every day from the ER to other hospitals when mine is perfectly able to provide them treatment and the patients want to stay at my facility. But their insurer says they won't pay for them to stay to have their appendix removed at the community hospital in their town, but demands they be transfered to a facility 40 miles away that is 'in network.' Of course they can choose to stay if they want (and we would treat them as required by the EMTALA law.) However their insurer gives them the ultimatum: be sent to another hospital they don't want or be faced with the $30,000 bill for their surgery and recovery in the hospital they do want. So the claims of not being able to 'choose your doctor or hospital' are not what you'd have in a single payer system, but are what you get every day if you are insured under an HMO, PPO, or other device used by the insurance industry to deny you care.

And that is what its like for those with insurance. For those without it can mean death or permanent disability. I see people in the ER every day who have delayed or avoided care because of uninsurance who experience severe consequences because of it. Perforated appendicitis because of a delay due to worries about costs. A child admitted to the hospital with a kidney infection that could have been easily treated with oral antibiotics days before but wasn't because of lack of access. Renal failure in a person with diabetes left untreated. People with bent forearms because while they were appropriately treated and splinted in the ER, they were unable to see an orthopedist for subsequent definitive treatment because of lack of insurance. That is stuff you expect to see in the developing countries, not the richest country in the world. Of course it is easy to see the villain in that scenario as the evil orthopedist who would not see him for free. (And I will admit ortho is one of the worst offenders for unwillingness to provide uncompensated care.) However why should one group of professionals (health care providers) be expected to shoulder the cost of health care for 15-20% of the US population simply because the country refuses to? I don't mind paying taxes to support health care for all in the US, but I do take issue with the tax being exclusively applied to doctors and nurses and PTs and RTs etc, while an attorney or programmer or businessman who makes as much or more than I do pays nothing.

The saddest part is that we already spend in GNP well more than enough to cover every man, woman, and child in the US with a health care system that the world would envy. We pay about 15% of our GNP for health care, while most developed nations spend around 7-8%. If we took all of the money that goes to 'profits an administration' (about 30%) in the for profit health insurance industry, as well as negotiating for drug prices that were on par with what the rest of the developed world we would have enough to pay for everyone.

So I think Moore is right: Its sicko.

Nick

Re:Quite Evil - from a physician

[NIckGorton]

That would be a tax to cover a percentage of the population: those who are over 65 who have worked (or their spouse worked) ~10 years while paying that tax, many of the disabled, and those who have end stage renal disease (ESRD) who need dialysis. That would not be what I spoke of in the quote you used which is health care for all.

Though to be honest paying that tax pisses me off a bit precisely because of one specific wastefulness: Medicare Renal (for those with ESRD.) Diabetes affects about 20 million Americans (mostly type-2). If you have diabetes and no insurance, you are most often unable to treat your diabetes. Untreated diabetes results in many complications, but a common one is kidney damage resulting in ESRD.

So instead of paying $1000/year to treat a type 2 diabetic with a pill costing $1/day, we wait till he has developed severe and inevitable complications of that untreated diabetes. Then once the horse is out of the barn, we decide to treat him at the cost of $30,000-40,000 per year plus often a kidney transplant (about $100,000 of yours and my taxpayer dollars). So in addition to costing much more, this squanders a scarce resource (kidneys for transplant) into a group whose ESRD could have been easily an inexpensively treated. An ounce of prevention is not only worth a pound of cure, its a shitload less expensive as well

Its like refusing to pay to put oil in your car till the engine seizes and then buying a new engine. That is, fucktarded.

Nick

Re:Mod Parent Up!

[yada21]

Rush Limbaugh & Michael Moore are the same person. If you want proof here it is, I've never seen them together - have you?

Evil? Says who?

[Lunarsight]

I work for an HMO, and I certainly don't feel evil. I think HMOs have to make tough decisions, balancing the health needs of their members with the need to keep costs down. If HMOs skimp too much on the healthcare, then they're seen as insensitive, penny-pinching slimeballs. Ironically enough, if HMOs let the healthcare costs get out of control, it translates into higher premium costs for their members, and HMOs often are considered 'evil' for that as well. So, sometimes - HMOs can't win.

Free speech is EEEEVIL!

[crmartin]

Idiot. What's "evil" about offering rebuttal google ads so heath care companies can answer Moore?

You want evil, go look up what Castro does to dissidents.

not closed source kind of evil

[symbolset]

This is the closed source kind of evil.

I don't like Michael Moore's work, but somebody had to point at the elephant in the living room here.

The AMA set itself up as a gatekeeper to the medical profession and medicine. A legal system embedded in our culture keeps the information and materials required to treat injuries and illness out of the hands of the public. This was purportedly (and logically) done to improve the quality of care in general, since a great deal of medical treatment was once done by unlicensed quacks who did more harm than good. The problem is that this occult (hidden) cabal has evolved into a self-serving priesthood of medicine that limits availability of care in order to drive its value up. A necessary part of this equation is that a large number of people have to suffer from the deprivation of care in order to maximize the value equation. Even the kindest, most generous doctors must participate in the system in order to get into the profession in the first place and to remain in it. If they want to donate their time and expertise to the poor they can only do it if they go abroad.

Add that the medical profession has been victimized by another unaccountable secret cabal of insurance providers set up as gatekeepers to the doctors, and you get a system that's horribly broken. If a doctor wants to treat the indigent for free, for cash or for reduced rates, he can't because the insurance companies would terminate his ability to be compensated through insurance and he would go bankrupt in short order. The proponents of the status quo are horrifically wealthy and intend to stay in that condition. I heard somewhere that medicine accounts for a ridiculous percentage of our GNP, and it's growing at a terrifying rate.

Throw in a third layer of gatekeepers, the lawyers that sue out of business every doctor that doesn't have absurd amounts of insurance coverage and you have a system that can't be fixed. I have often wondered if the lawyers were in collusion with the insurers to keep this broken system in place.

This is not some academic theoretical discussion for me. For nearly 20 years I lived without coverage. Through great care, the avoidance of treatment I really needed and the good fortune to be close enough to cross the Mexican border one day I really needed care, the American healthcare system only bankrupted me once in that period. I can't imagine what poverty I would be living in if I were chronically ill, less fortunate or less careful.

So don't be confused. This is very much the "closed source" kind of evil. If it were possible for a kind and generous soul to study medicine and get accepted by the medical community and devote their life to the general practice of medicine for the good of their community, there would be a clinics everywhere that took cash at reasonable rates because that quality of person is abundant still and they could make a decent living at it. I'm not saying it would be a route to country club membership, but not everyone who wants to be a healer cares about that.

Re:not closed source kind of evil

[MillionthMonkey]

The AMA set itself up as a gatekeeper to the medical profession and medicine.

The AMA, and doctors in general, are a real part of the problem. We would have more doctors if we didn't do so much hazing of medical students. We don't let anyone into medical school, and then we make them waste hellish years of their lives studying shit like anatomy that most doctors never use, or staying awake for 30 hour days during their residencies. By the time they emerge from the hazing process they are fatigued and bitter and they support further hazing of doctors because they had to do it and now they are going to enjoy the benefits of being in an exclusive club damn it. So doctors become a scarce resource. Really it isn't that hard to be a doctor, and in my experience most of these guys aren't that good anyway. Talk about a self-worshipping profession.

Re:not closed source kind of evil

[AK Marc]

The AMA set itself up as a gatekeeper to the medical profession and medicine.

I agreee that the AMA is evil and acts in a manner that results in deaths for its own profit/control. However, we also have a screwed up belief system. We are supposed to "fight" for life. So much so that suicide is illegal, terminating your own life support is hard, and helping someone with their own suicide gets you thrown in jail. If you have inoperable cancer, rather than $50,000 worth of treatment to give you 12 crappy months of life, there should be more suggestions of "giving up" and taking 3 good months and 3 bad months. There is such a focus on extending life and no attention to quality of life or value of life. Yes, I said it, life has a dollar value. Our medical costs are high because we set that value high. Extraordinary measures are taken all the time to save people. And no, I'm not talking about bone marrow transplants. I'm talking the people that have inoperable cancers. I'm talking about my 70+ year old aunt that had a kidney transplant last Saturday. She's over 70. She'll never work another day in her life. She's living off saved money and government money. It's not that I want to see my aunt or anyone else die, but everyone will die. Spending trillions to add a year or two to a bunch of old people's lives is what's driving up the cost. We either have to accept that as the driving factor of costs, or address the care needs of the elderly differently. I know that a big portion of the costs for the elderly are medicines that are overpriced in the US. But what it comes down to as the largest costs for the system are the life-extending things done on 55+ seniors.

We either have to let people die or accept high costs. Given what I've seen, we are willing to live with costs much higher than the rest of the world in order to provide care to old people.

Initiation rites are part of the occult sciences

[symbolset]

In law it's called "passing the bar". The idea is to rate-limit admission of new practitioners of the arts through processes that are arbitrary and unknowable by the applicants. It's part of the veil of mystery that vests the practitioners with supposed special powers.

In short, I agree with you. What this system needs is some light.

Re:I have an easy fix.

[JedaFlain]

How did this get modded interesting? There are multiple broken systems that comprise the US healthcare system as a whole. Overpriced medication, high-cost surgery, high-cost malpractice insurance and, lastly, profit-maximizing, bureaucratic insurance companies. If you form a low-cost insurance company, you are attempting to fix one of these facets. However, your company will go under rather quickly due to the fact that the charges to your insured will be the same.

The numbers being given by other posters are that insurance companies eat about 30% in bureaucratic overhead, and that health insurance costs about $1,500 a month for a normal family that isn't on a large group plan (corporate, medicare, etc.). Say you are able to lower your overhead down to 2%. You can lower that monthly payment to $1,170. That $1,170 is the bloat from the rest of the system. It's around what you'd have to charge to keep your company afloat. Less than that, and you'd need to be subsidized by some other source.

Now I may be building my own straw man here, because those monthly numbers aren't going to be the same for everyone. But, even if you cut that number down to $500/month, that's still out of the reach of a lot of families. Which is why so many go without insurance in the US. This is also why someone hasn't just come out with some cheap, national health care company as you suggest. Because it wouldn't survive.

Too many issues in here for a quick soundbite

[dfenstrate]

Well, I can see the conversation is being dominated by the pro socialized/single-payer/government funded healthcare crowd, but I'll try anyway.

First, let's be clear that what everyone is talking about isn't 'insurance' for the most part, but 'maintanence.' Health 'insurance' is the only sort of insurance where the insurer is expected to pay for day-to-day stuff.

You don't call up your auto insurance people when your car develops a squeal or it starts pulling to the right. You live with it, or you take it to the mechanic and pay them yourself.

You don't call your homeowner's insurance when your toilet is clogged up, you call a plumber, and you pay him yourself.

Yet for care that requires much more expertise and training than either of those two problems, we expect the normal situation to be we present ourselves at the doctor's office and somebody else pays the bill.

People are prepared to pay for maintanence in other areas of their life and typically budget for it or find someway to pay it.

The best comparison in the US is HSA (Health Savings accounts) + catastrophic insurance. The idea is you're able to pay so much per year for health care (usually $5000), and then more traditional insurance takes over above that. This way is much, much cheaper than what's normally considered 'health insurance.'

You're going to pay for health insurance in any case, weather by taxes, or buying products, or income you might have been otherwise paid, etc. The HSA way cuts out the most middlemen for every day care.

Incidentally most health care facilities offer substantial cash discounts. You handing over a check is much, much cheaper to them than filling out all kinds of paperwork for medicare or the insurance company. (Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital gives a 20-30% cash discount, for example)

Yes, some insurance companies will try to f*ck you anyway once they have to start paying. Do some research and sign up with the company least likely to screw you.

Any other way causes a seperation between the cost of a service and the decision to use it. Because of what's considered 'normal' nowadays, people don't even consider that consuming health care services might result in cutting somewhere else in their life. Get that lump checked out? You might have to go without cable this month. See a doctor for that persistant, nagging three week old cough? No eating out for you for a while.

Those kinds of equations don't enter into anyone's head, but those are rational questions. Do you value watching the sapranos this month over nipping that problem in the bud? Do you want pizza hut a few times this month more than you want to get rid of that cough?

Are you folks really going to tell me that someone shouldn't have to make a decision between the countless luxuries we enjoy in this day and age, and their health?

Are you going to tell me that not only is healthcare a 'RIGHT', but everything they would have to give up to pay for healthcare themselves is also a 'RIGHT'?

This is the discussion we're having for everybody above the poverty level.

There's so much more wrapped up in this issue, but I'll leave it at that for now.

Another Googler's opinion

[raph]

That post is but one Googler's opinion. Here is another. Clearly, there is much in that original post with which I disagree, and neither of us is representing official Google policy.

The health insurance system in this country needs changing. If anyone tries to convince you otherwise, look at them as an arm of an organized, effective, and massively funded propaganda campaign. And if they're an unwitting arm, that just means they're not smart enough to tap in to their share of the obscene overhead that the insurance industry rakes in.

Overall, I think Google is going to do a lot more good than evil in terms of contributing to the debate on healthcare reform. If I thought this, or anything else they were doing, was really evil, I would not be working there.

'earning' income doing job may | may not be evil

[p'g,fr4g.r]

yep, the income is irrelevant. the act is what may or may not be evil. http://www.google.com/search?q=+just+to+%22pay+the +mortgage%22+author+Christopher+Buckley+nazis

Re:Mod Parent Down!

[Captain Splendid]

Yes, because your taxes ONLY go to lazy assholes.

I understand your frustration, but you need better points.

I'd also counter it by saying that any system that prioritizes the needs of corporations over those of its citizens is in DEEP fucking trouble.