Controversial Michael Moore Flick 'Sicko' Will Compare U.S. Health Care with Cuba's

lamazeteacher · Sep 30, 2007

I'm in Northern California and get Oprah's daily show in the afternoon, and after the 11 P.M. news. If you have Direct TV service that charges for local programs, you can refuse to pay the extra charge and they'll leave it off for 6 months, but you have to reinstate them then. It's a pain, but no pain, no gain.

It's amazing that her activism improves/saves so many lives. She's earned her money, but uses it to better the lives of others. Her schools for girls in Africa are incredible, the neighborhoods she built in Louisiana are incredible. Please give her the credit she is due.

HM2VikingRN, RN · Sep 30, 2007

In no place does this proposal indicate decreased patient freedom of choice. If anything single payer advances choice.

Four principles shape our vision of reform.
Access to comprehensive health care is a human right. It is the responsibility of society, through its government, to assure this right. Coverage should not be tied to employment. Private insurance firms' past record disqualifies them from a central role in managing health care.
The right to choose and change one's physician is fundamental to patient autonomy. Patients should be free to seek care from any licensed health care professional.
Pursuit of corporate profit and personal fortune have no place in caregiving and they create enormous waste. The U.S. already spends enough to provide comprehensive health care to all Americans with no increase in total costs. However, the vast health care resources now squandered on bureaucracy (mostly due to efforts to divert costs to other payers or onto patients themselves), profits, marketing, and useless or even harmful medical interventions must be shifted to needed care.
In a democracy, the public should set overall health policies. Personal medical decisions must be made by patients with their caregivers, not by corporate or government bureaucrats.
Source:
http://www.pnhp.org/publications/proposal_of_the_physicians_working_group_for_singlepayer_national_health_insurance.php

HM2VikingRN, RN · Sep 30, 2007

senator grassley gets it:

senator charles e. grassley, an iowa republican who helped write the bill, said he would reach out to house republicans and urge them to override the veto.

“this bill is not socialized medicine,” mr. grassley said. “screaming ‘socialized medicine’ is like shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater. it is intended to cause hysteria that diverts people from reading the bill, looking at the facts.”

source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/29/washington/29health.html?ref=policy

ariansas · Sep 30, 2007

If we had taken the stance France did, we wouldn't be in the mess we are in today. Good for them, they stood up for what they believed in. We listened to King George.

HM2VikingRN, RN · Oct 1, 2007

The french have it right in several areas for their health care financing system.

Emphasis on primary prevention

Pay for care for chronic illness (eg DM, HTN etc) without copays

Evidenced base prescription reimbursement.

etc.

spydercadet · Oct 10, 2007

Wasn't it the French that let over 10,000 older people die from heat stroke because they were on vacation that month??? Yep, I want to be just like them.

How much history about the French does everyone have? After they killed everyone who they saw as the aristocracy or those they believed had money during their revolution, they then went on to kill anyone not labeled a "good citizen" and all it would take is an accusation by your neighbor and that was it, off with your head.

Kinda' like the track were on here, you are say you are good citizens and you care but those rascally republicans, they aren't good citizens and they don't care. So they killed a lot of people, are we going there? If you just listen to the hostility in Michael Moore's voice, I think he may be in favor of it. He has so far stooped to lying in his "documentaries" but it's OK, because it's for a greater good. And thus comes, 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions.'

Ah, but the French, lets get back to them, because they are just a great role model for the world. Fast forward just a little bit to that whole WW II thing and how wonderful the French were, or rather weren't. They actually supported Hitler and were all for killing the Jews and sending them off to concentration camps. That was up until Hitler invaded France then they started to like us and decided that maybe Hitler was really a bad guy.

Anyone care to keep going with the French example? OK, remember just a very short while ago, when they had riots going on for months? Remember why? It wouldn't be because they segregate the society, is it? You know, those "Muslims" can't let "them" be part of the 'real French' culture. And these are the people we want to be like? And, these are the people we are worried won't like us? Really? Honest?

As a Republican, and I even work in the inner city. But of course, you must know how superior I feel, after all that's how us Republicans are, aren't we? I use to be an "open minded Democrat" like you guys, but then I realized I still had to hate, I had to hate all those who called themselves Conservative, and if they went to Church, every week no less, well then they truly deserved my disdain.

As an evil republican I now am actually happy, and very comfortable with to each his own and allow all people find their own happiness and their own beat to their own drum. Unlike the stereotypes that people feel very comfortable labeling us with, you are wrong. Watch the next liberal speaker give a talk, they won't be interrupted, no one will throw a pie in their face, no one will scream them down so they can't talk and no one will try to assault them in the middle of their speech. However, all of these things have happened to conservative speakers, and all in the name of the "open minded left." It has been the local RNC chapters that have been vandalized and local RNC workers who have been assaulted. During the last Presidential election all we heard about was how unfair the election was. Yet it was supposedly unfair and rigged in predominately Democratic districts. But what I heard very little about was the thirty vans whose tires were slashed on the day of the election. They were set to "get out the vote" all set to pick up people and help them get to their voting place, but they were supported by the RNC, so we didn't hear anything. I am not cold and evil and I do care. I have given excellent care to all mu patients and have never known who their payer was, I never cared. I never worked at a hospital where a patient was escorted to the door during their illness because they didn't have insurance or couldn't pay. In fact, all the places I have worked have had social workers on to help people access all available services. I have had patients that have had nothing, who lived on the street, because in our wonderful liberal thinking we don't institutionalize people anymore, so now we have the homeless, and have hooked them up with religious services, homeless shelters.

So, contrary to popular opinion here, as a self righteous, I am better than everyone else, and of course I'm right and the whole world is wrong, conservative - but it really sounds more like the other side, we do care. We just don't think a bureaucracy is the way to care about people and the more you build that bureaucratic wall the more distance will exist between people until we are no longer aware that there are people in need.

lamazeteacher · Oct 10, 2007

I'm so sorry that you're using the past, to blame those alive today, who weren't around in the French Resistance, helping evacuate Jews to safety, before the Nazis occupied France, and while they were there.

The heat strokes suffered by elderly French citizens recently, was due to lack of communication regarding their lonely lives. Since most French families are large, it seemed that they would have relatives take care of their needs. Look into the system in place now, to rectify what happened that summer.

There is a memorial plaque in Paris commemorating the holocaust, which states, "Forgive, but never forget". History is important, but carrying grudges for past mistakes isn't sane.

Have you heard about the Danish King who, when ordered by the German occupation to make all Jews wear yellow stars, wore one himself, and all his people did that as well, demonstrating solidarity and support for their fellow citizens. That spirit stopped the invasion there!

As a Jewess, and a Registered Nurse in the early '60s, I felt privileged to be able to assuage a former German Luftwaffe officers's pain from cancer of the spine. He insisted upon standing each time I entered his bedroom to give him an injection of Demerol that his doctor ordered, in the middle of the night . (In those days, family weren't trusted or trained in that skill.) He wanted to show me respect and appreciation, while demonstrating extreme stoicism, despite my pleas that he stop it.

There are many explanations for that, some not favorable, but it was his "thing", a result of the severe society of sadists and masochists he witnessed. I didn't judge the act, or the person, but empathized with his need for pain relief, which I could provide as quickly as possible when called.

Unless we are for each other, no matter what our origins, what have we?

Every system, country, organization has problems, but to blame the descendants of people who weren't "part of the solution" earlier, is to promote genocide through belief that "the twig is not bent far from the tree". That's what prejudice is.

Calling those who believe that their political party is the only way to attain utopia, is an exercise in futility.

pickledpepperRN · Oct 10, 2007

sarchasm :.

(sär'kăz'əm)

1. (n.) The abyss between the creator of witticisms and the intended recipient who does not find the humor in it.

Origins: The combination of sarcasm and chasm. While originally coined as a "sniglet" by comedian, Rich Hall, this term has become so widely used in American language almost as to be common place here in the States.

Example: Either you find this definition funny, or there is a sarchasm between us.

http://www.unwords.com/unword/sarchasm.html

spydercadet · Oct 10, 2007

Spacenurse,

That is actually a pretty funny come back, and I am the first to admit my sarcastic tongue has done more to get me into a world of hurt than it has to get me out of it. But what fun I have trying to get myself up and out of the holes I have dug. Trust me on the size of the holes my mouth has been able to create! They are usually so big that once I get myself into it, I can no longer see the light of day. But the good news about digging yourself in so deep, is that you get to build a lot of upper body strength!!! All that digging yourself in deeper and deeper, basically because I'm too stupid to stop digging and then after I finally do wise up and stop digging then I have to start climbing out and that is where I have the opportunity to build all that upper body strength.

Please forgive me for the stupid political sarcasm, and I am throwing myself on the mercy of the court. I do hold to what I say and I do believe in my political views, I just have a tendency to not share those ideas in a more respectful manner. I grew up in one of those great big Irish Catholic families with a small but significant difference from everyone else's family in the neighborhood, we were expected to discuss the pro's and con's of the Vietnam war by the age of 6 at the dinner table. It made for some very interesting dinners, and I learned a lot of differing points of view. I got to listen to older family members and then from their friends. After awhile, when I went to work, I really got to hear all kinds of points of view. I learned more about history and world affairs this way than I ever did in any classroom.

And just as a heads up, I wasn't born a "rich" kid, quite the opposite, we didn't have much of anything, I can remember one Christmas my Dad made our presents. So my political views weren't born out of a life of comfort but rather out of a life that is aware that when you "give" people free stuff, they don't appreciate it and usually abuse what they're given. Hence my desire to not use bureaucratic government programs to care for people. Let's get back to people caring for people, in the early 1900's the hospitals and care offered to all people was done so by religious based organizations and offered their services to all, not only the insured or those who could pay. The more we pushed for insurance and for what they pay for, the more disconnected we have become. Just a thought.

Thanks everyone, have a great day and make the most of what God has given us!

allnurses Guide · Oct 10, 2007

Spydercadet . . I enjoyed your "sarcasm". Probably because I grew up in the 60's and 70's where it was just a given that you were a liberal Democrat . .. and I was.

Until I grew up and started living in the real world.

I too think government is the wrong place to look for solutions to health care access and poverty . . .

steph

bigreddog1934 · Oct 10, 2007

I agree with Chatsdale. I have no respect for anyone who puts this great country down!

this is interesting, then i think you should count jefferson within those you have no respect for.

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ...And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

if jefferson said this today he would be in guantanamo bay.

spydercadet · Oct 10, 2007

We have to stop with Bush has taken away everyone's liberty's, really. Why doesn't anyone remember Bill Clinton taking away liberties. Those where OK, I guess. Remember, it was his Justice Department who ordered the Federal Government to go to a families home and "get them" because they wouldn't co=operated with the FBI. What did the family get for not cooperating? The man's wife and 5 month old baby were shot standing in the doorway of their home. The 9 y/o boy, he was killed first, by a shot to the back by Bill Clinton's justice Department. No Gitmo for them, no stories either. Oh, lets see what else. Anyone remember Waco? Like them or not, there were many different ways to have gotten David Koresh besides ordering in tanks to blow up everyone who won't come out. But keep Gitmo on your mind, because that's really taking away your civil liberties. And little Élan from Cuba, don't worry, a whole bunch of men dressed in swat uniforms with fully automatic weapons breaking into your house and traumatizing a child is fully within the governments rights and has nothing to do with civil liberties.

I am amazed that if people say something often enough it must be true, no facts needed. What do think our founding fathers would really think about all of this.

Bush didn't lie, really. If you believe this then you have to believe that he was able to get Bill AND Hilliary Clinton to lie for him, along with England, France, Germany, Russia and China. Because, while we all have national ADD, these governments agreed with Bush they just didn't want to go to war. The money train would stop if they did.