In America, our focus on profit has basically created an adversarial relationship between all of the major components of the system – hospitals, clinics, insurance companies, doctors and patients. They look at one another with suspicion and distrust because money and not quality care is the chief, if unstated, motivation. Hired guns are brought in by insurance companies to sniff out ways to get out of paying claims, or, once the claim has been paid, how to get it back. There is good reason for us to distrust these companies. Their concern is definitely not the patient, but their corporate profit margin. This breeds a situation which is dangerous to our national well-being. And, I'm not even talking about the huge and growing number of totally uninsured. The people Moore interviewed from Great Britain, France and Canada were thrilled with the availability of affordable universal health care. This is the challenge that we must take on. The longer we wait, more of our citizens will fall through the cracks and conclude that their government does not care about them. They will be right.
While this isn't what I'd call a fun movie, it is definitely worth seeing and discussing. Sicko effectively contrasts what others elsewhere take for granted with our situation here at home. How exactly Congress and the White House can disentangle themselves from the sticky tentacles of the pharmaceutical and insurance companies is the $64,000 question. I guarantee that it will not happen without a lot of noise from their constituencies. That means you. Unless you have a very large and secure trust fund, none of us are exempt from this nationwide crisis of epic proportions. The sooner all of us realize that the problem is much deeper even than the many millions of uninsured, we will stand up and demand change. This system does is not working – for anyone. We are all at risk. If you don't believe me, I dare you to get sick and see what happens. Sicko has laid the groundwork in this debate. Now, it's up to us. Thank you, Michael Moore!Next Page 1 | 2
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which since 2005 existed for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. Our goal: to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Because the problems with electronic (computerized) voting systems include a lack of (more...)
