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

[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

[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.

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: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.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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

[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

[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.

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.

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

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: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.

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