Just watched Michael Moores SICKO

[TripperFan]

Originally Posted by AKA

I've grown quite cool on Michael Moore. I don't think I'll be seeing this movie.

I know what you mean. I'm not sure on the guy anymore myself. He wouldn't allow himself to be interviewed on "certain subjects" while in Toronto recently. I'm sure his movies are still eye opening, but yeah, what's inaccurate (as I'm sure there are in many social documentaries) and what isn't? You could be ending up getting yourself riled up for nothing.

In response to Fleet, yes, quite a few Canadians do go Stateside for certain medical treatments and surgeries (mainly heart), but that can be said of Americans coming up to Canada for certain procedures (especially cancer and pediatric). I know of quite a few. However, that said, our gov't has been destroying the fantastic health system we enjoyed for the past 20 years - both Liberal and Conservative. They capped doctors' salaries and what they could do so many have moved south to work in the U.S. while allowing fraud from the public to go unchecked.

Frankly, I don't think either system is ideal right now. It sure would be nice to find something that would work like it used to, but fraud was just rampant (and I hate to say it, but it was mainly new immigrants hopping on the system illegally that shut it down, but the gov't also allowed it to a large degree). There's been a lot of damage done. I don't know enough of the U.S. nor have seen this movie to comment further.

[Fleet]

Originally Posted by Blair's Number #1 Fan

Michael Moore rocks! It's nice to see someone who tells it like it is.

You've got to be joking. He tells it like he sees it, not like it actually is.

[Janice]

[puertaazul]

Actually, people on both sides of the political spectrum have been giving this movie rave reviews. I think you should all see it before you judge whether or not Moore is exaggerating or trying to pull one over on us. It couldn't hurt. I just watched this newest clip and it makes me want to see it even more.

[Fleet]

Originally Posted by puertaazul

Actually, people on both sides of the political spectrum have been giving this movie rave reviews. I think you should all see it before you judge whether or not Moore is exaggerating or trying to pull one over on us. It couldn't hurt. I just watched this newest clip and it makes me want to see it even more.

If it's a Michael Moore production, it's being exaggerated.

[Janice]

[TJL]

I think Moore is reaching a bit when he says Cuba has anything better to offer than the United States.

Aside from really good cigars...

[Fleet]

Originally Posted by TJL

I think Moore is reaching a bit when he says Cuba has anything better to offer than the United States.

As Mark Levin said, "He is a nut. And he's made tens of millions of dollars being a nut."

[dawsongirl]

Originally Posted by Fleet

Fahrenheit 7/11 movie

A movie about a convenience store. Though he may know those quite well...

I've read that many Canadians come down here for the health service.

lol...I've heard the opposite.

[dawsongirl]

Originally Posted by Ireneparalegal

Just don't visit Martin Luther King/Drew Medical Center's E.R. in Los Angeles:

LOS ANGELES — New 911 tapes released Tuesday reveal that dispatchers refused to send help to a woman ignored by hospital staff as she lay dying on the floor of a Los Angeles emergency room.

Edith Isabel Rodriguez, 43, died after dispatchers on two 911 calls refused to contact paramedics or an ambulance to send her to another facility, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday. The second dispatcher went so far as to argue with the caller over whether it was a real emergency.

Rodriguez died of a perforated bowel on May 9 at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital. Her death was ruled accidental by the Los Angeles County coroner's office.

In the calls — posted after they were released by the county Sheriff's Department under the newspaper's California Public Records Act request — callers plead for help for the woman left bleeding from the mouth and writhing in pain for 45 minutes on the hospital's floor.

"I'm in the emergency room. My wife is dying and the nurses don't want to help her out," he said in Spanish through an interpreter.

"What's wrong with her?" a dispatcher asked.

"She's vomiting blood," Prado said.

"OK, and why aren't they helping her?" the dispatcher asked.

"They're watching her there and they're not doing anything. They're just watching her," Prado said.

The dispatcher told the man to contact a doctor and then said paramedics won't pick up his wife because she already was in a hospital. Later, she told Prado to contact county police officers at a security desk.

Experts have said Rodriguez could have survived had she been treated early enough. The head of the county's Department of Health Services, which oversees the facility, has called her death "inexcusable."

A second 911 call was placed eight minutes later by a woman bystander who requested that an ambulance be sent to take Rodriguez to some other hospital for care.

"She's definitely sick and there's a guy that's ignoring her," the woman told a different dispatcher.

During the brief call, the dispatcher argued with the woman over whether there really was an emergency.

"I cannot do anything for you for the quality of the hospital. ... It is not an emergency. It is not an emergency, ma'am," he said.

"You're not here to see how they're treating her," the woman replied.

The dispatcher refused to call paramedics and told the woman that she should contact hospital supervisors "and let them know" if she is unhappy.

"May God strike you, too, for acting the way you just acted," the woman said finally.

"No, negative ma'am, you're the one," he said.

"What's real confusing … was that she was at a medical facility," Sheriff's Capt. Steven M. Roller, who is in charge of the Century Station, which handled the calls, told the Times. "That poses some real quandaries."

Roller told the Times that the second dispatcher's tone was inappropriate.

"As a station commander, I don't like any of my employees getting rude or nasty with any caller, regardless, and in that particular case, obviously, the employee's conduct could have been better," Roller said, telling the Times the employee received written "counseling."

Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital formerly was known as Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center. The name was changed as part of a reorganization after years of problems including patient deaths blamed on sloppy nursing care and hospital mismanagement that has threatened its federal funding.

Was it because she was poor? See, I never have had faith in that "You can be seen in any ER with or without insurance." Pretty sure you can't if there's a county/government run hospital nearby.

[dawsongirl]

Originally Posted by Janice

MOORE'S SICK RX

MICHAEL Moore's new film "Sicko," a critique of the U.S. health-care system and paean to socialized medicine around the world, premiered amid great fanfare at Cannes last month. Time magazine reviewer Richard Corliss rejoiced, "The upside of this populist documentary is that there are no policy wonks crunching numbers."

Wouldn't want anyone messing up Moore's fantasy with . . . facts.

The American health-care system undeniably has serious problems, and Moore effectively dramatizes the suffering of people caught up in them. Yet he often exaggerates those problems. For example, he frequently refers to the 47 million Americans without health insurance, but fails to point out that most are uninsured for only brief periods, or that millions are eligible for programs like Medicaid but fail to apply.

Moreover, he implies that people without insurance don't get health care. In fact, most do. Hospitals are legally obliged to provide care regardless of ability to pay, and while physicians don't face the same requirements, few are willing to deny treatment because a patient lacks insurance.

Treatment for the uninsured may well mean financial hardship, but by and large they do get care.

Moore talks a lot about life expectancy, suggesting that people in Canada, Britain, France and even Cuba live longer than Americans because of their health-care systems. But most experts agree that life expectancies are a poor measure of health care, because they are affected by too many other factors like violent crime, poverty, obesity, tobacco and drug use, and other issues unrelated to a country's health system. Americans in Utah live longer than those in New York City, despite having essentially the same health care.

And when you compare the outcome for specific diseases, like cancer or heart disease, the United States clearly outperforms the rest of the world. When former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi needed heart surgery last year, he didn't go to an Italian hospital or to France, Canada or Cuba. He came to the Cleveland Clinic.

While overly critical of U.S. health care, Moore overlooks the flaws of national health-care systems. He suggests, for example, that Canada's waiting lists are mere inconveniences, interviewing apparently healthy Canadians who claim they have no problem getting care. Yet nearly 800,000 Canadians aren't so lucky. The Canadian Supreme Court has pointed out that many Canadians waiting for treatment suffer chronic pain and, "Patients die while on the waiting list."

Similarly, Moore shows happy Britons who don't have to pay for their prescription drugs. But he didn't talk to any of the 850,000 Britons waiting for admission to National Health Service hospitals. Every year, shortages force the NHS to cancel as many as 50,000 operations. Roughly 40 percent of cancer patients never get to see an oncology specialist.

Delays in getting treatment are often so long that nearly 20 percent of colon-cancer cases considered treatable when first diagnosed are incurable by the time treatment is finally offered. Perhaps Moore could have talked to some of these folks?

Visiting France, Moore waxes ecstatic about the government's willingness to pay for nannies to help care for newborns. He apparently doesn't notice that the taxes necessary to pay for such a system have given France one of the lowest rates of economic growth in Europe or that many of the country's best and brightest are fleeing.

Moore also slides over the facts when he implies that the French system is "free." It's funded through a 13.55 percent payroll tax, a 5.25 percent income tax and other taxes on tobacco, alcohol and drug-company revenues. And the system is still running a $15.6 billion deficit.

And French patients still have to pay high copayments and other out-of-pocket expenses, and physicians can bill patients for charges over and above what the government reimburses. As a result, 92 percent of French citizens have private health insurance to complement the government system. Yet there remain shortages of modern health-care technology and a lack of access to the most advanced care.

America needs to have a serious debate about how to fix our health-care system. But Moore's demagoguery and refusal to address the numbers will do little to contribute to that debate. Maybe he could've used a few policy wonks after all.


NY Post
Michael Tanner is director of health and welfare studies at the Cato Institute.

[dawsongirl]

Ok, so to me, it looks like Mr. Moore doesn't like the US. So WHY THE HELL DOES HE LIVE HERE? Go move to France.

[Brieannas21]

Originally Posted by Blair's Number #1 Fan

No, I don't. But the heath care in this country is not what it should be.

AMEN!!!

[Ireneparalegal]

Originally Posted by dawsongirl

Was it because she was poor? See, I never have had faith in that "You can be seen in any ER with or without insurance." Pretty sure you can't if there's a county/government run hospital nearby.

That hospital treats a majority of poor people in the E.R., so I can't say that it is because she was poor. However, it seems that because of that fact, the people are treated horribly.

What makes this more horrible is that she was suffering from something that had to do with her stomach lining. She was treated THREE TIMES previously in that same E.R. and she was prescribed IBUPROFEN. You don't give someone a pain killer that can irritate an already irritated stomach lining problem. Each time she took a pill, all it did was further the damage to what was already wrong. It was causing more bleeding. Basically, she was slowly being killed. Had they seen her immediately she could have been saved.

[dawsongirl]

Originally Posted by Ireneparalegal

That hospital treats a majority of poor people in the E.R., so I can't say that it is because she was poor. However, it seems that because of that fact, the people are treated horribly.

What makes this more horrible is that she was suffering from something that had to do with her stomach lining. She was treated THREE TIMES previously in that same E.R. and she was prescribed IBUPROFEN. You don't give someone a pain killer that can irritate an already irritated stomach lining problem. Each time she took a pill, all it did was further the damage to what was already wrong. It was causing more bleeding. Basically, she was slowly being killed. Had they seen her immediately she could have been saved.

Oh man...I can't tell you how many times I've been told by pharmacists alone that ibuprofen eats at your digestive tract. Doctors and nurses HAVE to know that! Damn...they sure have some quacks at that hospital. Her husband should definetly sue. The hospital and that little twit at 911.