Slashdot Mirror
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."
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).
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.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
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.
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.)
... 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."
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'.
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>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
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.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
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).
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.
A-Bomb
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.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
[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.
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
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
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.
0 7.marmorsul.html
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/2000/00
Canada's Burning!
Media myths about universal health coverage
By Theodore Marmor & Kip Sullivan
...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.
(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":
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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?
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
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.
The Signal/Noise ratio can be improved in two ways. Remaining silent is the OTHER way.
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.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
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!!... 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.
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.
Put identity in the browser.
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.
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