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

Nurses Activism

Published

Health care advances in Cuba

According to the Associated Press as cited in the Post article, "Cuba has made recent advancements in biotechnology and exports its treatments to 40 countries around the world, raking in an estimated $100 million a year. ... In 2004, the U.S. government granted an exception to its economic embargo against Cuba and allowed a California drug company to test three cancer vaccines developed in Havana."

http://alternet.org/envirohealth/50911/?page=1

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070716/hayes/2

I asked Moore if the movie was intended as an argument for social democracy. His eyes lit up. "That's correct," he said. "You know, it works for the fire department, why can't it work for healthcare? They're both life-and-death issues, and we agree that profit should have no interest at all in how we run our fire department."

It's a message at once subversive and nonthreatening. Look at Canada, Moore argues in the film, or England or--gasp--France, where Moore even spends one scene reveling in the bourgeois comforts of a "typical" French couple as a means of rebutting arguments about the country's onerous tax burden. Or look at the United States: We "socialize" a lot of things here in America, Moore notes, as clips roll by of police officers and schoolteachers and public libraries. Why not this most crucial and important service?

That's the argument in a nutshell. "It's a simple thought," Moore told me, "but I think people get it when you put it like that." Oprah sure did. During Moore's recent appearance on her show, she was careful not to seem to be endorsing anything too radical, and Moore obliged by saying that healthcare wasn't a "partisan issue" and he was looking to reach across the aisle. Then Oprah turned to the audience and said she finally "got it" when in the film Moore points out that we don't charge for the services of firemen or think profit should have anything to do with firefighting. Then she told her audience to go out and see the film.

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Specializes in Med-Surg, Trauma, Ortho, Neuro, Cardiac.

A firendly note from your moderator. (Yes you are being watched! Remember there is no free speech here at Allnurses. LOL)

I think you guys are going a great job here with the debate. We're allowing a little more leeway in this thread, like we do in Current Events, that we might not allow in other forums.

Please however, try not to get to personal with each other. Please allow each other to have an opinion, respect that opinion.

We all are intelligent adults here and have arrived at our opinions about UHC and MM with intelligent thought and life experiences. I know we each feel we are right and the others are wrong, but we still have to try to present out debates respectfully without belittling and sarcasm.

Finally, always remember I am right. j/k

Carry on. Thanks for listening.

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Specializes in Trauma,ER,CCU/OHU/Nsg Ed/Nsg Research.

Here is MM speaking about the premise of the film in a briefing on SB 840 before senator Keuhl of California. No matter what you think of him, he makes an impassioned and strong argument for his case.

Personally, I can't wait to see the movie.

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Specializes in Cardiac Care, ICU.
So what you're saying is that there is currently a population that wants/needs services that can't get them and if they had health care coverage they would overwhelm the system?

Please note, that I'm not a proponent that government take over all aspects of health care.......just provide coverage for all, i.e. pay for it. Health care should remain in private hands. So if there's a profit to be made in healthcare, I'd like to think we'd be able to eventualy handle the demand.

Yes and no (uh-oh, I sound like a politician). When you create an entitlement syst. like UHC people expect to be treated regardless. In a private insurance based syst. most people know they have care if they need it but there is usually some cost involved (co-pay) so alot of people don't go to the MD for things like a cold of simple flu minor aches and pains etc. However, when people know they don't have to pay, I think you'll see an increase of people sitting in a doc's office demanding antibiotics for colds. I may be wrong but think to the last time you went to an MD for cold/flu symptoms and then check out the EDs on Fri/Sat night and see how many uninsured are there for these or other minor symp. that can be treated at home w/otc meds.

Mabey after a while people would learn not to overwhelm MDs w/ stubbed toes and bee stings but mabey not (ER does seem to see the same folks again and again).

So yes there are folks who don't have coverage and get there minor health prob.s taken care of at the ED but no that is not what will overwhelm health care. It will be the indiscriminate use of services by a large number of people.

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Yes and no (uh-oh, I sound like a politician). When you create an entitlement syst. like UHC people expect to be treated regardless. In a private insurance based syst. most people know they have care if they need it but there is usually some cost involved (co-pay) so alot of people don't go to the MD for things like a cold of simple flu minor aches and pains etc. However, when people know they don't have to pay, I think you'll see an increase of people sitting in a doc's office demanding antibiotics for colds. I may be wrong but think to the last time you went to an MD for cold/flu symptoms and then check out the EDs on Fri/Sat night and see how many uninsured are there for these or other minor symp. that can be treated at home w/otc meds.

Mabey after a while people would learn not to overwhelm MDs w/ stubbed toes and bee stings but mabey not (ER does seem to see the same folks again and again).

So yes there are folks who don't have coverage and get there minor health prob.s taken care of at the ED but no that is not what will overwhelm health care. It will be the indiscriminate use of services by a large number of people.

Maybe.

But more importantly, this will encourage PREVENTION. How many people do not go see their practitioner or health care provider because they *think* they can muddle through and don't want to pay out of pocket...yet later they develop more serious problems.

Problems which might have been taken care of faster and cheaper in the first place??

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Specializes in Med-Surg, Trauma, Ortho, Neuro, Cardiac.
Yes and no (uh-oh, I sound like a politician). When you create an entitlement syst. like UHC people expect to be treated regardless. In a private insurance based syst. most people know they have care if they need it but there is usually some cost involved (co-pay) so alot of people don't go to the MD for things like a cold of simple flu minor aches and pains etc. However, when people know they don't have to pay, I think you'll see an increase of people sitting in a doc's office demanding antibiotics for colds. I may be wrong but think to the last time you went to an MD for cold/flu symptoms and then check out the EDs on Fri/Sat night and see how many uninsured are there for these or other minor symp. that can be treated at home w/otc meds.

Mabey after a while people would learn not to overwhelm MDs w/ stubbed toes and bee stings but mabey not (ER does seem to see the same folks again and again).

So yes there are folks who don't have coverage and get there minor health prob.s taken care of at the ED but no that is not what will overwhelm health care. It will be the indiscriminate use of services by a large number of people.

Thanks for clarifying. That probably would be a problem.

UHC isn't perfect and certainly isn't going to without problems, major problems. I wish that we would rise to the occassion and try to find solutions. :)

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Specializes in Cardiac Care, ICU.
Maybe.

But more importantly, this will encourage PREVENTION. How many people do not go see their practitioner or health care provider because they *think* they can muddle through and don't want to pay out of pocket...yet later they develop more serious problems.

Problems which might have been taken care of faster and cheaper in the first place??

I definitely agree we need to do more towards prevention no matter what syst. we have. It will be hard to stomach paying huge amounts of taxes for health care for people who wan't quit smoking after being dx'd w/ heart disease or diabetics who won't watch their diets, etc.

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I definitely agree we need to do more towards prevention no matter what syst. we have. It will be hard to stomach paying huge amounts of taxes for health care for people who wan't quit smoking after being dx'd w/ heart disease or diabetics who won't watch their diets, etc.

We already pay for these issues through cost shifting via higher premiums for the uninsured.....

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The film is more radical, and more troubling, than he'd even imagined. Moore's movie is only superficially about health care. It uses the subject -- and also sick days, and vacations, and child care, and maternal support policies -- as a way to critique unthinking American exceptionalism, to challenge the tautology that states that the way we do things is the best way to do things because … it's the way we do things. The particulars of the account all add up to the larger question: Is the America we live in the America we think we live in, and the America we want to live in?

http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=why_michael_moore_is_good_for_your_health

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Specializes in Cardiac Care, ICU.
Thanks for clarifying. That probably would be a problem.

UHC isn't perfect and certainly isn't going to without problems, major problems. I wish that we would rise to the occassion and try to find solutions. :)

No argument from me there. If we could just get it out of the political realm and put it in the hands of medical professionals ( and not just MDs).

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Specializes in Cardiac Care, ICU.
We already pay for these issues through cost shifting via higher premiums for the uninsured.....

It is a lot harder to cost shift these days w/ insurance co.'s setting limits aon how much they will pay for a test/proceedure (you can bill for $300 for a stress echo but BC/BS will pay $160 or so - period) but they definitely do get us w/ the higher premiums. Mine has gone up every year for the last four or five years. Makes me want to scream when I see hosp. pt.s pushing their IV poles out to the "butt hut".

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Specializes in Trauma,ER,CCU/OHU/Nsg Ed/Nsg Research.
It is a lot harder to cost shift these days w/ insurance co.'s setting limits aon how much they will pay for a test/proceedure (you can bill for $300 for a stress echo but BC/BS will pay $160 or so - period) but they definitely do get us w/ the higher premiums. Mine has gone up every year for the last four or five years. Makes me want to scream when I see hosp. pt.s pushing their IV poles out to the "butt hut".

You know what makes me want to scream? When my premiums go up every year, and I see what the top execs at these insurance companies are raking in.

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/12/Health_care_equipment_services_Rank_1.html

It's not just the smokers that are causing your premiums to skyrocket.

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