Who could ask for anything better? I'd like to see a few of the bigger progressive groups hold SICKO watching parties once the DVD hits the streets. What better topic to organize around then health care? Health care has an impact on everyone.

If you want to call someone a thieving pig fucker, you'd better be prepared to produce the pig." -- HST

This story really doesn't surprise me at all. There is a growing animosity in Texas among people who have been voting Republican for several years but really don't know much about the two parties (I call them "default Republicans"). They are now waking up to what the Texas Republican party stands for. Unfortunately, the party "brands" are preventing what would probably be a healthy shift. If we could just fire a marketing campaign to rebrand the parties ...

In my opinion the problem is not rebranding or any sort of marketing, it is the leadership of the parties and their lack of responsiveness to the needs of the majority of the people.

"SICKOMANIA" is far from over. This movie-Moore's best effort yet-will continue to enlist wide bipartisan appeal and will generate more health reform activism.It will force even more specifics on the health care reform issue out of all of our presidential candidates real soon.

Moore himself is coming across on the talk show circuit as more intellectually sober and dead serious about the impact this movie could have on our nation.

Health care reform will indeed be the domestic issue that elects our next president

SICKO is one of the final nails in the coffin of our current almost completely corrupt and certainly immoral system rendering us an embarrassment among civilized nations.

We have truly hit bottom and Moore's release of SICKO's timing is excellent in leveraging that reality.

Be Well,

Dr. Rick Lippin
http://medicalcrises.blogspot.com

Eeyore, I agree that the real test is persuading people who don't already agree with you. But, another goal is to get the huge number of people who already agree with you to do something about it, rather than just be a couch potato watching American Idle (no mispelling). That is what I am watching to see happen. I wish I had a plan in mind, but the ball game starts in a few minutes....

Hoppy in Sacramento

Wow, pretty cynical even for an alienated leftie. If they're "easily manipulated" (and they are) then why don't YOU start manipulating them? Sure the health care system is a cash machine. But at least that biggest of industries is health care and not arms manufacturing (anymore). It'll always be a "cash machine." The point is, what will the cash be buying, and where is the cash directed? How to eliminate the 30 to 50% of every health care dollar that goes to administrative costs?

How do you propose that matters be changed? A violent reaction?

Good comment.

The idea that universal health care is a liberating force is absolutely the key. There are many that realize this, unfortunately they are within the reactionary forces striving to keep uhc unrealized in the U.S. It was a little shocking how absurd they're willing to become this time around, claiming now that uhc represents a terrorist threat to the homeland. TPM 

The idea of whether innovation in health care relies on a private, profit-motivated system is questionable though. Just to consider one aspect we could look at the plethora of drugs developed that essentially treat conditions that could also be addressed by diet, exercise and stress relief while many other,  very deadly conditions cannot be addressed by pharmaceuticals held behind an iron wall of concerns about profit essentially because the victims that need these drugs are generally too poor to pay for them. A second critique would address the adherence to a mythology of profit being the sole motivation for relieving suffering, a mythology that fails to take into account the history of medicine and academic research.

It needs to be stated,as well, that in order to obtain the best medical care money could buy, a wealthy patient would be well advised to shun any system similar to what we have now, as the costs inherent in this system have little to do with actual care. It may be that the best medical care that money could buy could be achieved under uhc.  

Re: To take a step back, people first need to realize that universal healthcare is a relatively new phenomenon.

This is not entirely true. Even in antiquity some cities made provisions for public doctors who would treat the poor at public expense. And in the Middle Ages some Italian cities created HMO-like entities to provide healthcare on a capitated basis to their citizens. Of course, "citizens" was the key word in both examples; slaves and foreign residents were usually excluded from such arrangements.

I agree that the movie "SICKO" has great awakening and organizing potential and urge grassroots groups and individuals to sieze this opportunity. I thank Michael Moore for making it and for releasing it now. We need to urge people to find out the presidential candidates' positions on health care and health insurance industry reform - and to contact their own Congress members about this issue. We, the people, not just the lobbyists, have to keep this issue front and center in Washington.

Having worked in the health care field for many years, I, personally favor a universal, single-payer health insurance system as the most efficient, lowest cost and most fair system. To my knowledge, Dennis Kucinich and, I believe, John Edwards are the only two candidates who have proposed such plans. While, in an ideal world, it would be nice to have a system that also allows for private insurance for those who can afford it, I believe that it would undermine the single-payer system in a way similar to how Bush's proposed private health care accounts would have undermined social security.

For an insurance system to work, it must be based on sound actuarial science and principles. This essentially means that all payers in the system must pay into the same huge pool so that the costs and risks are distributed as widely as possible across the entire population, thus spreading out and lowering the cost for each subscriber. If you have private insurers siphoning-off into their own separate pools the wealthier and generally healthier (often younger people of working age) as is the case now with employer-sponsored health plans, the system as a whole breaks down, as ours has. The people left in the 'no longer universal' public system, will have to shoulder much higher rates because so many of the younger, working, healthier, wealthier people will not be included in the pool to help lower and defray the costs and spread the risks and costs sufficiently across the entire population. Therefore, I think such a "two-tiered" system is fundamentally flawed and will not work.

The other reason that I think it is a bad idea to allow for-profit health insurance companies to control our health care system is that for-profit corporations are required by law to yield the maximum profit for their shareholders. As Michael Moore illustrates so well in the film, the way that companies/HMOs do this is by denying life-saving care. This is immoral and totally unacceptable when we are talking about providing basic medical care to people and making decision about life and death. The profit motive is incompatible with these much higher prioities, values and ideals -- or should be, anyway.

We really have to ask ourselves what we are about as a people. What are our core values as they relate to health care? Do we really believe in profits over people, at any cost, even when it comes to something as vital and live-sustaining as the practice of medicine and provision of health care?? I hope not. I know I do not. Raised in a medical family, with a doctor father and nurse mother, I know how important compassion, the barter-system and pro-bono work is when ministering to people in this unique arena. People are not widgets. There was a very good reason why hospitals used to be non-profit, run by charities, orders of religious nuns/nurses, etc. I'm not suggesting that we go back to that system, although it was a lot more humane than our current 'for-profit at any cost' system. However, we must find a way to remove the profit motive as THE primary criteria for medical decision-making and provision of live-giving health care.

As a final thought: I know it seems wildly naive to suggest that the powerful health insurance and health care/pharmacuetical lobby will allow us to restrict, much less eliminate, private health insurance and adopt a universal, single-payer health insurance system. Surely, those industries with heavily vested interests will fight it tooth and nail with everything they have -- and that is a LOT. However, I would suggest to employers in all other industries that it would be in their best interest, too, financial and otherwise, to join in the fight for universal, single-payer health insurance. Empolyee health care costs are the fastest growing costs for businesses of all sizes. Many small businesses cannot even afford to offer it to their employees, anymore. Health care costs have been crippling many American buisinesses for years by putting them at an unfair, competitive disadvantage vis a vis businesses in other western industrialized societies which do not have to cover this huge expense because their governments have taken that burden off of their shoulders. Bonus: Perhaps they might not even feel like they have to continue outsourcing American workers at a break-neck pace if we can solve this fundamental problem!

With our energy and determination and the help of business allies who want to do right by their employees and for themselves, I believe we can do it together. I would look to the great work that Environmental Defense has done in enlisting major corporate players in the fight against Global Warming with the US Climate Action Partnership (US CAP). Like Global Warming, to win this fight, we need to reach out to everyone who has a stake in this problem. Working together, we have a fighting chance.

One of my more treasured, if obscure, book is entitled Modern Office and General Practice, perhaps privately printed, and dated 1934. I cherish it because the author, as far as I can tell, did not recommend a single treatment that, by modern standards, did any good. Many were actively dangerous; he seemed to think dilute hydrochloric acid was a panacea, including by injection. It was probably just as well that intravenous access was extremely rare at the time.

My father was a cardiac cripple by his mid- to late thirties, and was dead at 42, in 1965. At the time, no one was even sure that smoking was bad, and, by and large, there were very few cardiac drugs besides digitalis, rauwolfia, and mercurial diuretics.

With the same genetics, but with modern treatment, I've been able to prevent, or at least minimize, cardiac damage that significantly limited my activity. Now, I've had access to research-level evaluation (including invasive), PTCA/CABG and pacemaker, and a very sophisticated drug mix.

While I was able to game the system such that my care was largely insured or available through no-cost clinical trials, I'm sure the list price broke six figures. Some of the managed care discounts were dramatic: had I paid list for my pacemaker, it would have cost $24,000. Including my copayment, the hospital received a total reimbursement of $1,800. I'd probably be dead without it.
--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

The American public needs to start 'manipulating' their own government to work in their interests. When voters demand a lower overhead, universal system for payment for health care, it can be done. It will never be done by the Republican Party.

I guess I'm half of that Texan-left populace. I was so left-leaning, I fell over. There are probably a plurality of Dems here, but these guys have been gerrymandering and monopolizing the media for decades. Just remember they took over our country first.

Re: Today, those of us who live in high cost of living areas of the country have to pay for Medicare supplemental insurance or Medicare has little value for us.

This is true for everyone everywhere on Medicare. By design Medicare pays only a major percent of the total bill.The rest must be paid out of pocket or by a Medigap insurance policy.