Michael Moore's "Sicko"

[Undesired Walrus]

What documentary doesn't present a point of view?

A good documentary.

A good documentary shows what is happening in this world, not making it into your own personal view and ignoring the sides that dont fit with your story. That's called fiction.

I suspect you just disagree with Moore on the issues, but since he's so successful and his movies are so popular, the easiest route is to try and discredit him personally.

Uh huh. The old 'You Bush humping War lover' eh? Guess what, I don't think Bush is a bad person, I think he is a decent man. I do however, believe he made a horrific mistake in the War on Terror. One the world will pay for in decades to come.

I don't know why someone shouldn't be allowed to have a gun in their house, but I also think pulling a gun on another person with a gun rather then handing over the cash, is dumb. And messy.

I am neither a conservative, nor a liberal. I am a socialist libertarian.

But in your polarised, junior-school view of the world, inspired by Moore, this political consensus doesn't compute huh?

 

[Lonewulf]

Yes. Burns included no people who think sports are unimportant and detrimental to society. He did not discuss steroids. He did not include the European POV that soccer is the best sport. He only allowed people who agreed with him that baseball is a great game to appear.

Propaganda at its worst.

Ah, okay. So Ken Burns made a videotape of one convention, then spliced in material from another convention, using dishonesty, just like Michael Moore?

Great, you just gave reasons for me to avoid his documentaries! Thanks!

 

[Undesired Walrus]

What exactly do you mean?

If you mean "people should have everything they want just handed to them without effort"

Exactly. That is exactly the impression I get from watching Moore's movies. I dont see how nobody else can see this..

 

[D'rok]

My apologies. I misread your tone as sarcasm and didn't read your location at all.





Us damn ego-centric US'ians.

No prob. I frequently let my Canucklehead earnestness get the better of me.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Be sure to let the police, firemen, and nearest military person you see know that you think they are incapable of serving the public. I'm sure they will be glad to know they are wasting their time.

WTF? The police, firemen, and military persons I know all serve the public (aka me) very well.

 

[D'rok]

I am neither a conservative, nor a liberal. I am a socialist libertarian.

What in the wide world of sports is that? That strikes me as an irreconcilable contradiction in terms. That's like saying I'm a statist anarchist.

 

[Upchurch]

WTF? The police, firemen, and military persons I know all serve the public (aka me) very well.

Yeah, I was fighting (what I thought was) sarcasm with sarcasm. All the above are examples of socialized services provided by the government that do a very good job.

 

[Segnosaur]

While I do not have any official statistics on denials in front of me, in the movie, one of the insurance company employees interviewed said that she was told to aim for a 10% denial rate. At the end of the year, whoever had denied the most claims got a cash bonus.

So what you're saying is that if you're in the U.S., you're 90% assured to get your claims covered, and in the end you will probably get service faster (and possibly better) than what we get in Canada.

Of course, of the 10% of the claims that get denied, I'd be curious to see just what the denials were for. After all, I think its reasonable to assume that some claims are denied for valid reasons (e.g. preexisting conditions). Focusing on some of the 'bad' claim rejections may give a false impression that ALL rejected claims were rejected for invalid reasons.

Yes and no. I work for a government bureaucracy, and it is very hard for us to change because we are really just there to perform the duties assigned to us by the legislature. Our managers simply do not have the authority to enact sweeping changes to our mandate. If the legislature decides to change us however, things happen fairly quickly.

Remember, not all 'change' is good.

So, now we have 3 possibilities:
- The government bureaucracy wants to change in response to the needs of the population, but can't
- The bureaucracy is changed by the legislature, but changes are 'bad' making the system worse
- The bureaucracy is changed, and the change is good.
Of the 3 possibilities, 2 of them are bad.

Actually it dictates that they will spend money going after the most profitable diseases. A fortune was spent on advertising for Viagra, how many people would have died without it?

Yes, viagra isn't a 'necessity'. However, it DOES lead to an improvement in quality of life. Is that not also something worth considering? Or are 'life saving' medications the only ones worth considering? (Note: from what I understand, viagra was discovered almost by accident, during research into heart medications, which is something worth doing work on, is it not?)

-If a company does not want to accept the prize and feels they could make more money with the patent system, fine.

Ok then, you're not necessarily suggesting replacing the drug patent system, just providing another mechanism for funding research (basically, an ad-on). That's different than a system where the ONLY way to fund research is through a drug prize.

Still have problems with the system... if a drug costs less to develop than what the prize is worth (and ultimately what the company would charge consumers) then you'd basically be increasing drug profits for no reason at all (and passing the cost on to the taxpayer).

I do think the government has a place in fostering research, but rather than offering 'prize' money, I think a better use of their resources would be to fund basic research (stuff that doesn't have immediate benefits, but may benefit in the future.)

 

[D'rok]

So what you're saying is that if you're in the U.S., you're 90% assured to get your claims covered, and in the end you will probably get service faster (and possibly better) than what we get in Canada.

Quibble:

You need to change this to:
"So what you're saying is that if you're in the U.S., and if you have insurance, you're 90% assured to get your claims covered, and in the end you will probably get service faster (and possibly better) than what we get in Canada."

 

[Undesired Walrus]

What in the wide world of sports is that? That strikes me as an irreconcilable contradiction in terms. That's like saying I'm a statist anarchist.

Yea, I get that a lot. Don't worry, it is a recognised ideology. Chomsky is one.

 

[Unabogie]

A good documentary.

A good documentary shows what is happening in this world, not making it into your own personal view and ignoring the sides that dont fit with your story.

That's called fiction.

Name one. I watch a lot of documentaries. And none of them are without a point of view. All of them edit the footage they shoot to create a narrative. A documentarian might shoot hundred of hours of footage and leave out 99% of what they shoot. They make choices. There is no such thing as a non-biased documentary.

 

[Ranillon]

Exactly. That is exactly the impression I get from watching Moore's movies. I dont see how nobody else can see this..

I don't get this impression at all. Moore's arguments are humanitarian -- there are some basic services and rights that everyone is entitled to. One may be not to be screwed over by losing your job just so that CEOs can win big. Another is that we should all have dependable healthcare. You can argue as to how reasonable these are or how much we should treat them as privilages rather than rights, but no where do I see Moore arguing for real socialism or a "get something for nothing" society.

In fact, I don't see that he per se has anything against our "system" as such, just that it isn't being applied as he believes it should be.

 

[D'rok]

Yea, I get that a lot. Don't worry, it is a recognised ideology. Chomsky is one.

I'll give you credit....it takes some cojones to criticize Michael Moore's politics and then follow that up by associating yourself with Noam "one-trick-pony" Chomsky. So it's not dishonest polemics that you object to; it's dishonest polemics that you disagree with that you object to?

Not that there's anything wrong with objecting to something that you disagree with. And maybe I'm reading too much into your inclusion of Chomsky's name. If so, I apologize in advance.

 

[Random]

So what you're saying is that if you're in the U.S., you're 90% assured to get your claims covered, and in the end you will probably get service faster (and possibly better) than what we get in Canada.

Of course, of the 10% of the claims that get denied, I'd be curious to see just what the denials were for. After all, I think its reasonable to assume that some claims are denied for valid reasons (e.g. preexisting conditions). Focusing on some of the 'bad' claim rejections may give a false impression that ALL rejected claims were rejected for invalid reasons.

But it leads to an adversarial system, where your insurance company is looking for a reason to deny coverage, care or payment. Maybe they can find one, maybe not. Heck, if you need surgery that is expensive enough, it might be worth their while to delay payment even though they know they will eventually lose a court case, just to keep that money in the bank earning interest. Would not surprise me in the least to find out the big insurance companies have professional claims delayers whose sole purpose is to keep their money in the bank as long as possible.

Can you imagine going into a Canadian hospital and dealing with a doctor who is looking for a reason not to treat you? A doctor who might get a cash bonus if you don't get treatment? Maybe you filled out a form wrong, or you didn’t talk to someone in the accounting department before you stopped by, or your father had diabetes, or whatever. What kind of system is that? Sure they might be short on resources at Canadian facilities, but you never have to worry that they are actively working against you.

Ok then, you're not necessarily suggesting replacing the drug patent system, just providing another mechanism for funding research (basically, an ad-on). That's different than a system where the ONLY way to fund research is through a drug prize.

Still have problems with the system... if a drug costs less to develop than what the prize is worth (and ultimately what the company would charge consumers) then you'd basically be increasing drug profits for no reason at all (and passing the cost on to the taxpayer).

I do think the government has a place in fostering research, but rather than offering 'prize' money, I think a better use of their resources would be to fund basic research (stuff that doesn't have immediate benefits, but may benefit in the future.)

The profit motive is what we are trying to capitalize on here. If one research company can develop a new drug more efficiently and at less cost than another company, isn’t that a good thing? The extra money can go to their investors or into better equipment so they can research other medications, thereby earning more prize money. Researchers get paid, we get new medications, what’s not to love?

 

[Billdave2]

I have a very good friend who who is English, married a US citizen, and moved to this country (US). He used to tell me all the time about how horrible how health care system was compared to the one back home. Then his father had a heart attack. He survived but was told he would need routine angioplasty. Because of his age (he was in his early 60's) he was told he would did not have priorty. It was over two years before he got the angioplasty. My friend has changed his opinion slightly. I know this is just anecdotel, but so are most of the really bad stories we hear about our system. When I was in college, we were required to pay for a health plan. It provided medical service up to and including minor surgery. The waiting room was always crowded and each of the three times I went I got the same diagnosis, strep throat. The weird thing was, one of the times I went was for back pain (I had fell and hurt it). Actually it was the running joke that the CDC needed to come to campus since thier always seemed to be an epidemic. Their are hidden dangers to socializing medicine. I highly doubt Governement Doctors would make the kinds of saleries that would entice the "best and brightest" to go through the long and extremly hard schooling that becomeing a doctor requires. Tort reform would probably do more to fix the US medical system than anything else.

 

[Random]

I highly doubt Governement Doctors would make the kinds of saleries that would entice the "best and brightest" to go through the long and extremly hard schooling that becomeing a doctor requires.

Moore actually covered this a bit. He spoke to a young British doctor about how he lived. He lives in a million dollar house, and drives an AUDI. The doctor then went on to say that while he was comfortable, if he wanted to own “two or three homes, or four or five cars” he would not be able to do that under the NHS and would have to go to the US.

 

[Snide]

Tort reform would probably do more to fix the US medical system than anything else.

This is actually a myth that is somehow surviving. I don't have time ot post links now, but Google will suffice.

 

[Darat]

...snip... Their are hidden dangers to socializing medicine.

...snip...

I think you mean making health care universal but still what are these hidden problems?

I highly doubt Governement Doctors would make the kinds of saleries that would entice the "best and brightest" to go through the long and extremly hard schooling that becomeing a doctor requires. ...snip...

It's Wikipedia so take these with a large lump of salt (I am not a GP, that is not medical advice!) :

UK
A GP can expect to earn about £70,000 a year without doing any overtime, although this figure is extremely variable. A recent report[2] notes that a GP can potentially earn £250k per year. These potential earnings have been the subject of much criticism in the press for being excessive [3]. However, an average full time GP is more likely to earn a little less than £100,000 before tax

USA
There is currently a shortage of family physicians (and also other primary care providers) due to several factors, notably the lesser prestige associated with the young specialty, the lesser pay, and the increasingly frustrating practice environment in the U.S. Physicians are increasingly forced to do more administrative work, shoulder higher malpractice premiums due to highly profitable insurance monopolies that charge excessive premiums, thus forcing doctors to spend less and less time with patient care due to the current payor model stressing patient volume vs. quality of care. Things are starting to change as more insurance carriers consolidate. They are not stressing performance but more and more volume, thus increasing insurance company profit margins. Physicians are starting to shun insurance carriers to lessen the paperwork in order to focus more on patient care as they are originally trained to do. The average starting salary in the United States for family physicians is $100,000 to 130,000 a year.

Sterling to USA Dollar exchange rate is currently around £1:$1.97 so going from the lowest UK figure (£70,000) a UK GP starting salary is about $137,900 compared to USA $100,000.

 

[casebro]

Michael Moore is middle aged, and obese. I'll bet he needs lots of routine health care. I wonder where he gets it? Habana, or the Mayo Clinic?

 

[Billdave2]

I think you mean making health care universal but still what are these hidden problems?



It's Wikipedia so take these with a large lump of salt (I am not a GP, that is not medical advice!) :

UK
A GP can expect to earn about £70,000 a year without doing any overtime, although this figure is extremely variable. A recent report[2] notes that a GP can potentially earn £250k per year. These potential earnings have been the subject of much criticism in the press for being excessive [3]. However, an average full time GP is more likely to earn a little less than £100,000 before tax

USA
There is currently a shortage of family physicians (and also other primary care providers) due to several factors, notably the lesser prestige associated with the young specialty, the lesser pay, and the increasingly frustrating practice environment in the U.S. Physicians are increasingly forced to do more administrative work, shoulder higher malpractice premiums due to highly profitable insurance monopolies that charge excessive premiums, thus forcing doctors to spend less and less time with patient care due to the current payor model stressing patient volume vs. quality of care. Things are starting to change as more insurance carriers consolidate. They are not stressing performance but more and more volume, thus increasing insurance company profit margins. Physicians are starting to shun insurance carriers to lessen the paperwork in order to focus more on patient care as they are originally trained to do. The average starting salary in the United States for family physicians is $100,000 to 130,000 a year.

Sterling to USA Dollar exchange rate is currently around £1:$1.97 so going from the lowest UK figure (£70,000) a UK GP starting salary is about $137,900 compared to USA $100,000.

http://society.guardian.co.uk/health/story/0,,1943648,00.html
This article says that "Newly qualified doctors can expect to earn £20,741 in their first year", that would be about $41,000 US less that half the $100,000 that their counterparts in the US start at.

Also, wikipedia seems to be lumping higher malpractice premiums in with insurence monopolies(HMO's?), when I am pretty sure malpractice premium are the result of large damage possiblities in malpractice cases.