| Skipo
michael moore’s sicko misses
facts.
michael moore’s new movie, sicko,
should be called “skipo,” since
it skips over so many vital facts
en route to government medicine.
an engaging and surprisingly funny
moore explores a grim topic:
america’s problematic health-care
system. moore effectively diagnoses
one of its key ailments. hmos and
other managed-care companies often
earn billions by just saying,
“no” to victims of grave
illnesses. moore introduces us to
real men, women, and children who
this industry has failed.
bankrupted by cancer- and
coronary-related medical bills,
donna and larry smith move into
their grown daughter’s home
storage room. an oregon man
accidentally saws off two
fingertips and must re-construct
either his middle finger for
$60,000 or his ring finger for only
$12,000. tracy pierce waits for his
insurer to approve a promising
bone-marrow transplant to treat his
kidney disease. the company
refuses, and he soon dies, widowing
his bride, julie, and leaving tracy
jr., 13, fatherless.
these are the bitter fruits of
america’s private,
third-party-payer system. not quite
socialist, not quite capitalist, it
creates endless distortions as
review boards and other gatekeepers
essentially hide doctors from
patients.
moore and other universal-health
advocates would exacerbate this
problem by making uncle sam the
ultimate third-party payer.
while promoting this prescription,
moore overlooks many facts that
would balance his otherwise
well-crafted film. for now, its
leftward tilt makes the leaning
tower of pisa look like the
washington monument.
milton friedman observed, “there
is no such thing as a free
lunch.” sadly, there’s no such
thing as free health care, either.
universal health care’s finances
must come from somewhere.
“somewhere” turns out to be
taxpayers’ pockets.
britons, canadians, and frenchmen
purchase their “free” coverage
through their taxes. in america,
44.7 percent of health expenditures
came from tax-funded government
spending in 2004, according to the
organization for economic
cooperation and development (oecd).
in canada, that figure was 69.8
percent; while in france it was
78.4. fully 86.3 percent of british
health spending was
taxpayer-funded.
these countries also endure high
overall tax burdens, largely due to
government medicine. in 2005, oecd
reports, taxes as a share of gdp
stood at 41.2 percent in canada,
41.9 percent in britain, and 50.9
percent in france. america has it
relatively easy, with just 31.7
percent of gdp devoured by taxes.
of course, for many americans, the
trade off is lower taxes vs. higher
payments for health insurance. this
cost varies according to employment
contracts, health circumstances,
and more. still, “free”
medicine is as beautiful and
realistic as a unicorn.
moore claims 50 million americans
lack health insurance. the moving
picture institute’s stuart
browning challenges that
oft-repeated “fact.” in a case
of dueling documentaries,
browning’s nine-minute film,
uninsured in america, deconstructs
the more common “45 million
uninsured” soundbite and finds
that 9 million of these people earn
over $75,000 annually and can buy
coverage but don’t. some 18
million are healthy, 18-34-year-old
“young invincibles” whose
priorities exclude insurance.
“if i’m out eating, i want to
eat good food,” faye chao, 26 and
uninsured, told browning.
“there’ve been times i’ve
been in new york, and i’m
spending at least $800 a month just
going out.”
these americans also turn to local
clinics for treatment when
necessary.
for instance, chandra nalaani, 27
and uninsured, visited san
francisco’s lyon-martin women’s
health services.
“i got an annual exam,” nalaani
said. “they tested me for a bunch
of things…in my case, because i
wasn’t making much, it was
free.”
of the uninsured, 14 million fail
to enroll in medicaid and other
low-income health programs for
which they are eligible.
even if these numbers somewhat
overlap, browning estimates that
just eight million americans
chronically lack coverage.
moore’s 50-million-man standing
army of the uninsured thus is a
potemkin force.
while moore glows like a
jack-o-lantern about the wonders of
the british national health
service, gordon brown sees massive
room for improvement. just days
before becoming great britain’s
brand-new prime minister, brown
told labour party colleagues on
june 24:
from everything i have seen going
around the country, and from
everything i’ve heard, we need to
do better, and the nhs will be my
immediate priority. we need to and
will do better at insuring access
for patients at the hours that suit
them. we’ll be better at getting
basics of good hygiene and
cleanliness right. better also at
helping people to manage their own
health. better at ensuring patients
are treated with dignity at all
times in the nhs. better at
providing the wider range of
services now needed by a growing
elderly population. and while
implementing our essential reforms,
better at listening to and valuing
our staff.
moore’s insinuation aside, hmos
are not solely the brainchild of
that oft-flogged bete noir, richard
milhous nixon. in fact, the hmo act
of 1973’s sponsor was none other
than senator edward moore kennedy
(d., mass.). in 1978, as the
institute for health freedom
recalled, kennedy sang hmos’
praises:
as the author of the first hmo bill
ever to pass the senate, i find
this spreading support for hmos
truly gratifying…hmos have proven
themselves again and again to be
effective and efficient mechanisms
for delivering health care of the
highest quality.
hmophobes, including today’s ted
kennedy, somehow fail to mention
that hmos once were the left’s
answer to america’s earlier
medical challenges.
sicko dramatically features a man
stitching shut a deep cut on his
own leg. though he lacked
insurance, this was unnecessary.
“every american hospital is
required to provide emergency care
to all comers, regardless of
ability to pay,” says cato
institute healthcare analyst
michael cannon. the 1986 federal
emergency medical treatment and
active labor act makes such
services mandatory for anyone
arriving within 250 yards of a u.s.
emergency room.
thus, a trauma surgeon would have
sutured this man’s wound. yes,
the hospital either would have
absorbed this procedure’s cost or
spread it across the bills of the
insured (another cause of medical
inflation). these cross-subsidies
notwithstanding, he would have
received professional treatment.
moore shows michiganders driving
into canada for “free” medical
attention. what he leaves unseen
are the canadians who come to
america for treatment. canada,
along with only cuba and north
korea, forbids its citizens from
paying doctors for private medical
treatment. in a kind of therapeutic
underground railroad, vancouver’s
timely medical alternatives, inc.
helps canadians avoid lengthy
medical waiting lists by arranging
for their treatment in american
hospitals. it says its clients can
be operated on within seven days
through its u.s. partners rather
than six to ten months under
canadian government medicine.
“five or six years ago, seven out
of ten canadian provinces,
representing roughly 95 percent of
the population, had contracts with
american companies for cancer care
provided in the united states,”
says the manhattan institute’s
dr. david gratzer, a toronto
physician. “today, some patients
from over-subscribed canadian urban
medical centers are sent eight
hours away to underused rural
medical facilities for cancer care,
much like someone going from
manhattan to buffalo for
chemotherapy.”
another drawback of high-tax-funded
“free” government medicine is
its limited modern technology.
cato’s michael cannon and michael
tanner found that in 2000, there
were 13.6 ct scanners in america
per million people. there were 8.2
million such devices per million
canadians and 6.5 per million
britons. lithotriptors use sound
waves to pulverize kidney stones
and gall stones. while america had
1.5 of them per-million citizens,
canada and britain had,
respectively, 0.4 and 0.2.
the paucity of such equipment
creates lines and delays.
vancouver’s fraser institute
estimated a median wait in 2006 of
4.3 weeks for a ct scan and 10.3
weeks for an mri.
sicko’s most revealing footage
captures moore’s pilgrimage to
karl marx’s grave in london’s
highgate cemetery. single-payer
countries “live in a world of
‘we,’ not ‘me,’” moore
says. “we’ll never fix anything
until we get that one basic thing
right.” moore deserves credit for
being so amazingly candid about his
ideas’ truly socialist roots.
still, a major conundrum haunts
this clamor for the kind of
government medicine that would make
marx misty.
while workers theoretically would
own the means of medication under
universal care, in reality,
politicians would be in charge. the
same liberals who denounce fema and
walter reed army medical center (a
single-payer showcase) for their
embarrassing incompetence want
uncle sam to conduct bypass
surgeries, deliver babies, and
perform vasectomies.
how puzzling. america has just one
federal government. sometimes the
sensitive, caring, weepy democrats
run things; sometimes the cold,
racist, iron-hearted republicans
rule. universal health care would
mean that american medicine —
from the left’s perspective —
now would be in the scheming hands
of those who “lied us into war”
and gleefully drowned poor blacks
in new orleans’ attics after
katrina. if hillary clinton had
nationalized health care in 1993,
american hospitals and clinics
would be controlled today by dr.
dick “double-barrel” cheney and
his boss, chimpy mchitler, m.d.
if that doesn’t shiver the
timbers of government-medicine
supporters, they should visualize
dr. rudy giuliani with a scalpel in
one hand and the universal
health-care budget in the other.
unless america scraps elections and
simply yields power permanently to
bleeding-heart democrats, michael
moore’s fans should remember that
every two to four years, universal
health care could fall into the
clutches of cruel republicans.
government-medicine boosters could
rue the day their collectivist
dream came true.
I saw SiCKO Fri night and it was pretty amazing. It showed the 9/11 rescue people who were called heroes by Bush and Giuliani but now they need health care from the injuries and problems they got working on ground zero. Why won't America take care of our heroes????? That's the question we need to answer. Also how can every other country like us give everyone health care and why can't we?? We need answers to these questions. See the film! |
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