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

not much respect for mm..hates americans as much as rosie

the truth sometimes hurt and all he is doing is revealing pertinent infor. that is usually kept secret. we need to know these things. healthcare companies are in business for profit and could care less. i am sure the care in healthcare is derived from the word caring, something i most certainly do not associate with that business.

Although MM is not credible to speak of this subject, he is however, a celebrity/journalist and has the resources/right to make such documentaries and report it. The point of this documentary is to inform the public of this health desparitie (corrupt in the insurance business, congress and etc). On top of that, politicians are governed by three important principles; votes, funding, and publicity. Therefore, if this topic becomes important to the people, they're more likely to vote for the candidates in their best interest. So, we have raised this issue in nursing school, and guess what, none of us made a documentary about it because were not journalist. Therefore, I cheer for MM for his effort to make this documentary because you are not likely to hear such issues on the news (publicity) or from who ever pays congress (funding). And for those that believe MM is bashing this great nation, remember that this great nation is shaped by revolutionist who find the current policies/trends peccable.

Maxs

Here! Here!

Specializes in Accepted...Master's Entry Program, 2008!.
the truth sometimes hurt and all he is doing is revealing pertinent infor. that is usually kept secret. we need to know these things. healthcare companies are in business for profit and could care less. i am sure the care in healthcare is derived from the word caring, something i most certainly do not associate with that business.

the problem with this idea is that he is actually not revealing pertinent info. he hacks and slashes at the actual truth until it fits his agenda. it is in no way a documentary. i still go back to my original post and say that this is not going to reveal anything to the general us populace, it's just going to start a war about how mm is lying/not lying/ blah, blah, blah. he is the absolute wrong person to deliver any sort of message to anyone.

if you look at it strictly as entertainment or an opinion piece, that's another story.

Of course it is an opinion piece. That means there is a point of view.

After the weekend of June 29th -July 1st I will post a disagreement with Moores opinion of one scenario in the movie.

Unless someone else posts it first.

Then I'll just agree.

Ken Burns jazz documentary point of view was that Louis Armstrong was the greatest innovator and personality in the history of the genre.

Specializes in Accepted...Master's Entry Program, 2008!.

But then where does that leave the viewers? Look at THIS country's healthcare, and look and THAT country's healthcare. But it's biased so one could not possibly make any sort of decision based on the information from the movie. It's incomplete.

I've got plenty of disagreements but I cannot post them as it could ruin the movie for someone else. All I'm saying is that he edits in such a way that it really doesn't do anything regarding the future of heathcare or policies, etc.

Specializes in Me Surge.

I got the SICKO mailer from the California Nurses Association, and I'm in Mississippi!

how un-american of you to hold up france, of all places as an example to us. don't you know we are in a war against the terrorists? i bet you don't even have a ribbon magnet on your suv! you probably are aiding and abetting illegal aliens too! you are the reason taco bell had to pay an extra penny per bushel to those illegal aliens and forego giving their ceo an extra million dollars last year!

shame on you!

what???? i hope this was a joke......

Post #192.

Doctors & Nurses are making mint, what other job can you get a two year degree and walk out of school making $30/hr?

Well here in Australia, we have a public system, universal coverage.

And we make mint too.

Western Australian and Victoria operate under the same medicare system.

In Victoria I make 25 an hour.

In W.A. I've seen 50 an hour (outside of the capital, Perth) offered.

Under the same public system, this is because Victoria doesn't have a nurse shortage compared to W.A.

What this shows us is that nurses wages are not determined by wether we work in a single payer or multi-payer system. Hospitals need nurses regardless. What sets the wage of the nurses, is how hard it is for a hospital to find them.

In WA it's quite hard to get one, so the money goes up.

In Victoria, not so hard, so the money is not so high.

Therefore the "Oh No! you will all starve and get paid peanuts" arguments is a furphy IMHO.

Levin

It's a common lament among health-policy wonks that the world's best health-care system resides in a country Americans are particularly loath to learn from. Yet France's system is hard to beat. Where Canada's system has a high floor and a low ceiling, France's has a high floor and no ceiling. The government provides basic insurance for all citizens, albeit with relatively robust co-pays, and then encourages the population to also purchase supplementary insurance -- which 86 percent do, most of them through employers, with the poor being subsidized by the state. This allows for as high a level of care as an individual is willing to pay for, and may help explain why waiting lines are nearly unknown in France.

France's system is further prized for its high level of choice and responsiveness -- attributes that led the World Health Organization to rank it the finest in the world (America's system came in at No. 37, between Costa Rica and Slovenia). The French can see any doctor or specialist they want, at any time they want, as many times as they want, no referrals or permissions needed. The French hospital system is similarly open. About 65 percent of the nation's hospital beds are public, but individuals can seek care at any hospital they want, public or private, and receive the same reimbursement rate no matter its status. Given all this, the French utilize more care than Americans do, averaging six physician visits a year to our 2.8, and they spend more time in the hospital as well. Yet they still manage to spend half per capita than we do, largely due to lower prices and a focus on preventive care.

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

there is a government run healthcare institution already. the va. anyone read anything about how that's going lately?

[the] vha's complete adoption of electronic health records and performance measures have resulted in high-quality, low-cost health care with high patient satisfaction. a recent rand study found that vha outperforms all other sectors of american health care across the spectrum of 294 measures of quality in disease prevention and treatment. for six straight years, vha has led private-sector health care in the independent american customer satisfaction index.

indeed, the vha's lead in care quality isn't disputed. a new england journal of medicine study from 2003 compared the vha with fee-for-service medicare on 11 measures of quality. the vha came out "significantly better" on every single one. the annals of internal medicine pitted the vha against an array of managed-care systems to see which offered the best treatment for diabetics. the vha triumphed in all seven of the tested metrics. the national committee for quality assurance, meanwhile, ranks health plans on 17 different care metrics, from hypertension treatment to adherence to evidence-based treatments. as phillip longman, the author of best care anywhere, a book chronicling the vha's remarkable transformation, explains: "winning ncqa's seal of approval is the gold standard in the health-care industry. and who do you suppose is the highest ranking health care system? johns hopkins? mayo clinic? massachusetts general? nope. in every single category, the veterans health care system outperforms the highest-rated non-vha hospitals."

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

the va sounds like a good model...

Post #192.

Well here in Australia, we have a public system, universal coverage.

And we make mint too.

Western Australian and Victoria operate under the same medicare system.

In Victoria I make 25 an hour.

In W.A. I've seen 50 an hour (outside of the capital, Perth) offered.

Under the same public system, this is because Victoria doesn't have a nurse shortage compared to W.A.

What this shows us is that nurses wages are not determined by wether we work in a single payer or multi-payer system. Hospitals need nurses regardless. What sets the wage of the nurses, is how hard it is for a hospital to find them.

In WA it's quite hard to get one, so the money goes up.

In Victoria, not so hard, so the money is not so high.

Therefore the "Oh No! you will all starve and get paid peanuts" arguments is a furphy IMHO.

Levin

WELL PUT

Look, when I want to make a point stick in the political gap, I generally do not use Rush Limbaugh as my source, even if I think it's a credible source. It doesn't matter what I think; it matters what the person I'm trying to convince thinks.

No matter how bad you want it to be so, MM is not a credible source.

~faith,

Timothy.

MM apparently is out of favor with many of the people who have responded in this thread -- and if they wish to claim that MM is not a credible source -- that is their perogative.

However, I will say that I prefer to approach this with an open mind. I have not seen the movie yet. I'm willing to digest the message. The message can be spun by the messenger; but facts can be checked.

Would you simply dismiss as jingoism the fact that a child died from complications of a rotten tooth because MM told you that? MM didn't tell me that -- I read it in either the Chicago Tribune or the NY Times a few months ago. If the boy had had early preventative care -- he would be alive today.

The trailer I've seen of Sicko consists of interviews of precisely such people who have had bad experiences with their health insurance coverage. Are they automatically lying bastards because they appeared on his film?

Cut me a freaking break

Reminds me of a documentary I saw a few years back on the making of the Graceland album by Paul Simon. An African American music fan was quoted as saying that it was a real shame that it had been Paul Simon who went to Africa and "discovered" Ladysmith Black Mambazo ... that it would have been so much better if Stevie Wonder had done that instead.

I'm not here to defend MM. He simply is the person who had the idea, the gumption, the werewithall, to bring to light this issue. If Rush Limbaugh had produced the movie and had been responsible for the exact same trailers and movie -- I would be applauding Rush Limbaugh!

This coming from a person who believes RL is a blowhard hipocrite drug addict.

Oh yeah, and my other post in this thread was sarcasm.

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