I just got back from seeing ‘Sicko’ at the Providence Place Mall. It was a matinee, the theater was about a third full. Some of the audience looked like they had been through the system, and there was giggling at strategic points in the film, like when the President was talking. He got some laughs when he was telling a woman that she was ‘American’ for working three jobs.
When the movie ended there was applause, and most of the people stayed in their seats watching the credits. The contrast between a system where health care is a public good, and one, like ours, where it is a profit-making venture was damning. One of the most affecting scenes was a security cam video of a woman dumped from a cab in front of a homeless shelter, barefoot and wearing a hospital jonny. For about a minute she wandered along the street looking totally disoriented until a shelter volunteer came to help her. It was one of the most disturbing things I had seen since the pictures of people in wheelchairs stranded on the highway after hurricane Katrina.
Insurance companies don’t like this movie, but nurses love it. Canadian nurses, too.
And film critic Roger Ebert’s review is so good I will just quote from it here–
“I saw the movie almost a year to the day after a carotid artery burst after surgery and I came within a breath of death. I spent the next nine months in Northwestern Memorial Hospital, the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, and the Pritikin Longevity Center, and still require the daily care of a nurse. I mention this to indicate I am pretty deeply involved in the health care system. In each and every case, without exception, I have been cared for by doctors who are kind, patient, painstaking and expert, and by nurses who are skilled, wise and tireless. My insurance has covered a small fortune in claims. My wife and I have also paid large sums from our own savings.
So I have only one complaint, and it is this: Every American should be as fortunate as I have been. As Moore makes clear in his film, some 50 million Americans have no insurance and no way to get it.”
This movie will put a tear in your eye. So for laughs I’ll mention that the closing credits include a website, hook-a-canuck.com for Americans who are considering marrying Canadians so they can get health care. And you can follow this link to meet some hot, single, insured folks who have good teeth and all their vaccinations.
Recurring Nightmare 
I just returned from seeing M. Moore’s Sicko in Arlington, Virginia. The film depicted a health care system that is not merely broken, but mortally wounded.
We can accomplish Campaign Finance Reform, Tort Reform, Tax Reform, and Universal Health Care in a single stroke: Congress should nationalize the health care system (similar to the way Truman nationalized the Steel industry during the Korean War, but here, permanently); compensate shareholders of the HMOs affected; raise taxes to pay for the nationalization and compensation (taxpayers will use money formerly employed to pay health insurance premiums to pay for the higher taxes), require any member of Congress who accepted campaign contributions from an HMO previously, currently, or in the future convicted of knowingly denying claims that were authorized by contract to return those contributions to the U.S. Treasury (now the repository for health care funds); … and finally, write a narrow exception to the Tort Claims Act that would allow people truly injured by negligent doctors (now you would have to sue the U.S. Government) to recover a reasonable amount of money under the circumstances (greatly reducing the runaway tort awards for medical malpractice).
I would also challenge the scientific community to forcefully make the U.S. infant mortality rate and overall life-expectancy rate (compared with our Anglo Commonwealth and E.U. counterparts) a central topic of the upcoming presidential election.
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These are all good ideas, particularly getting people aware of the statistics on infant mortality and overall life-expectancy. Another statistic people should be aware of is that Americans spend a great deal of time waiting for medical care. Last week’s Business Week has an article with the statistical breakdown. I’d get you the link now, but I’m chiming in from a dial-up.
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