When I watched Michael Moore's Sicko, I got an inkling of how much I personally had bought into the U.S. model of healthcare and thought of it as a free market commodity rather than something we really should provide to everyone universally. The specific point that opened my eyes was the bit where the ex-pat American moving to France lied on his health history questionnaire (about having diabetes, IIRC). His pre-existing condition came up during an interview with a nurse or some such. To the French nurse, it made no sense to conceal a pre-existing condition on a health history. Health care providers need to know about it to give appropriate treatment. But to many of us in the U.S. it makes perfect sense to lie about a pre-existing condition so that you can hope to have it covered. That's just the way we've been conditioned (by the system as it is) into thinking.
Speaking of Sicko, when I first saw it, I was inclined to be skeptical of the stories about rescission and post claim underwriting. I thought that since Moore was making a persuasive documentary, that he was simply cherry picking a few extremely exceptional stories that weren't at all typical of the industry. (And I frankly didn't believe that there were actually people hired to do this post-claim underwriting when people got a serious diagnosis that would require very expensive treatment.)
I've tried to discuss
Sicko more than once. It's impossible, because the threads just get spammed by people insulting Moore and bleating about his documentary technique. I even started a thread specifically to discuss the content of the film without referring to Moore, but it was no good and the mods told me that I couldn't report posts slagging off Moore as off-topic or have them removed.
It's quite extraordinary the sheer hate the man evokes. I wouldn't say he's 100% correct in his take on all the cases he cites, but you can only figure this out by examining the actual cases. One major gripe was his use of "emotional" music - why wasn't he more matter-of-fact? However, the anti-universal-healthcare propaganda I've seen has used exactly the same trick to gain the viewer's sympathy.
The trip to Cuba was vilified in the most extraordinary terms, even though it seemed to be about as legit as you'd expect given that it must have been set up in advance. The unbiassed reports of healthcare in Cuba suggest the segment wasn't far off-beam.
I and others have gone through a number of anti-universal-healthcare films practically frame by frame, analysing the examples and the arguments, to see how valid they were. The most notable one was the John Stossel film posted by Dan Stanley. The intellectual dishonesty in that film was staggering. But it could be exposed for itself, without vilifying Stossel. How "well at least he's not a fat slob" becomes support for his position against Moore's, I simply cannot imagine.
I don't know how the USA is going to get over this hurdle until "people" stop seeing healthcare as a consumer commodity which every consumer should pay for individually, or go without. I recall several posters wading into threads like this in the past insisting that the only people who favour universal healthcare are those who have expensive healthcare needs and want them met "for the price of free".
I'm tired of listening to people insisting that proponents want to steal "the fruits of my labours" "at the point of a gun" to pay for someone else's child's medical care, when I need that money to pay for my own child's medical care! People who say, what right do you have to insist that I pay for your healthcare?
The cultural chasm is just unbelievable. The sheer hatred for any form of "compulsory sharing", even when the benefits to all are quite unarguable, is extraordinary. The idea that I might be offering to pay for your healthcare doesn't seem to have dawned on any of them. The idea that the community might be offering to take responsibility for your child's healthcare, and the other guy's child's as well to make sure all children are treated and nobody has to starve or go bankrupt doesn't seem to penetrate. Or if it does, it's teh evil communism.
I hear similar sorts of rhetoric in Britain, but it's all directed against welfare scroungers. That attitude doesn't vary between the countries. The difference seems to be that while in Britain the disapproval of the welfare scrounger is confined to the social security system, and you'll never hear anyone grudging someone who is sick the medical care they need, no matter how feckless, in the USA the attitude extends to medical coverage.
I was also shocked, in
Sicko, by the attitude of the man who went to France. I thought he knew why he was going, and understood what "universal healthcare" meant. That he would get what he needed, as of right. But he didn't seem to get it. Even there, he assumed he had to hide the fact that he was entering the country with diabetes, for fear someone would say diabetes treatment wasn't "covered" for him.
This mindset seems like a terrible handicap to me. It fosters hatred of the less fortunate fellow-citizens, and a judgmental attitude that if anyone does get free care they should be "deserving". I don't know what it takes to change that mindset to one where it's agreed that in a civilised society nobody should be without affordable medical treatment.
I'm just glad I'm in the spectators' gallery.
Rolfe.
