SICKO

[Dave_Schuldt]

Great flick! I almost cried during the Cuban part. Makes me proud to be an American when some Commie country can provide the care that we can't. Guy has knack for publicity stunts.

 

As for Moore, that boy is fat. He's got to start taking care of himself or he will need to go some place with free medical care.

 

GO SEE IT!

[dmuja]

Arthur Jensen: [to Howard Beale/Dave Schuldt]

 

They say I can sell anything; I'd like to try to sell something to you.

 

It is the international system of currency which determines the vitality of life on this planet. THAT is the natural order of things today. THAT is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today. And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature!!! And YOU WILL ATONE!!!

 

Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little 21-inch screen and howl about America, and democracy. There is no America; there is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today!

 

You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear?

 

You think you've merely stopped a business deal? That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back. It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity. It is ecological balance.

 

You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations; there are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West.

 

There is only one holistic system of systems; one vast, interwoven, interacting, multivaried, multinational dominion of dollars.

 

The world is a business, Mr. Beale; it has been since man crawled out of the slime. Our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality - one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock - all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.

 

And I have chosen you, Mr. Schuldt ahh...Mr Beale, to preach this evangel.

 

 

[glassgowkiss]

"Makes me proud to be an American when some Commie country can provide the care that we can't"

now that's a load of shit. This care is provided to the chosen people only. the group at the top decides if you get it or not. the only reason cuba sustained their "economy" is because soviets were dumping something like million bucks a day to keep it going. it was also used as a retreat for soviet and other "nomenklatura" oligarchs. it was also used by soviet trained terrorists, like Carlos to recover.

imo moore crossed a line of documentary vs propaganda long time ago. and his "facts" are not facts but a bunch of bs. take his doc on guns. he meets with Heston- NRA president. i don't like nra, but little honesty please. the episode of a girl getting shot in flint and nra rally were 7 months apart!

[KaskadskyjKozak]

This care is provided to the chosen people only. the group at the top decides if you get it or not. the only reason cuba sustained their "economy" is because soviets were dumping something like million bucks a day to keep it going. it was also used as a retreat for soviet and other "nomenklatura" oligarchs. it was also used by soviet trained terrorists, like Carlos to recover.

 

Exactly. The people on this site who support Moore, and Moore himself would make fine полезные идиоты коммунистов.

 

 

[Jim]

Facts seem to check out well enough in this film. I think it's obvious that the current system is not working well enough - 50 million uninsured and those that are subject to the willy-nilly decsions of the profit motive - that's reassuring.

[catbirdseat]

The fact remains that our health care system costs more and provides worse care on average than most of the world. If you are rich it works out just fine, but otherwise you are screwed.

 

Mr. Moore is trying to light a fire to promote change. There is nothing wrong with that. We need change.

 

Talking about Cuba is guaranteed to ellicit a response from Bob same way talking about road closures will bring out Fairweather. Those who hate communism aren't willing to credit Cuba for anything it does right. Despite its many faults, it does health care right.

[Jim]

You're correct. Given the resources we have in this country we should be doing a much better job of allocation of medical care. Instead we have a system that guarantees profit over health care. We're tied with what, Bosnia, at 39th on the World Health Organization health rankings?

[JayB]

1. Per the same set of rankings, Canada comes in 29th, just behind Morocco, and New Zealand ranks 41st, and Colombia comes in at 22nd, just above Sweden. South Korea ranks below Jamaica, Venuezuela, and Albania.

 

2. Do you two honestly think that ordinary Cubans have access to the resources and standard of care shown in the movie?

 

The World Health Organization's ranking

of the world's health systems.

Source: WHO World Health Report - See also Spreadsheet Details (731kb)

 

Rank CountryView this list in alphabetic order View this list in alphabetic order View this list in alphabetic order

 

1 France

2 Italy

3 San Marino

4 Andorra

5 Malta

6 Singapore

7 Spain

8 Oman

9 Austria

10 Japan

11 Norway

12 Portugal

13 Monaco

14 Greece

15 Iceland

16 Luxembourg

17 Netherlands

18 United Kingdom

19 Ireland

20 Switzerland

21 Belgium

22 Colombia

23 Sweden

24 Cyprus

25 Germany

26 Saudi Arabia

27 United Arab Emirates

28 Israel

29 Morocco

30 Canada

31 Finland

32 Australia

33 Chile

34 Denmark

35 Dominica

36 Costa Rica

37 United States of America

38 Slovenia

39 Cuba

40 Brunei

41 New Zealand

42 Bahrain

43 Croatia

44 Qatar

45 Kuwait

46 Barbados

47 Thailand

48 Czech Republic

49 Malaysia

50 Poland

51 Dominican Republic

52 Tunisia

53 Jamaica

54 Venezuela

55 Albania

56 Seychelles

57 Paraguay

58 South Korea

 

 

 

 

[glassgowkiss]

The fact remains that our health care system costs more and provides worse care on average than most of the world. If you are rich it works out just fine, but otherwise you are screwed.

 

Mr. Moore is trying to light a fire to promote change. There is nothing wrong with that. We need change.

 

Talking about Cuba is guaranteed to ellicit a response from Bob same way talking about road closures will bring out Fairweather. Those who hate communism aren't willing to credit Cuba for anything it does right. Despite its many faults, it does health care right.

like what exactly does it that's so right? somehow you missed a little fact that people get on rafts and risk their lives to flea from this "paradise". i don't see too many americans doing it the other way. i had a taste of this system first hand. it's exactly the same way as moore would go to north korea and show how well system works there. before posting some pinko bs think- that's my advice.

[underworld]

Around the time Mr. Moore was putting the finishing touches on his documentary, a hospital in Sutton Coldfield announced its new money-saving linen policy: Housekeeping will no longer change the bed sheets between patients, just turn them over. France's system failed so spectacularly in the summer heat of 2003 that 13,000 people died, largely of dehydration. Hospitals stopped answering the phones and ambulance attendants told people to fend for themselves.

 

With such problems, it's not surprising that people are looking for alternatives. Private clinics--some operating in a "gray zone" of the law--are now opening in Canada at a rate of about one per week

 

linky

[KaskadskyjKozak]

 

if you guys want European health care, move to Europe.

 

you might find life there, and your standard of living, is not so rosy as you think.

 

[Jim]

if you guys want European health care, move to Europe.

 

you might find life there, and your standard of living, is not so rosy as you think.

 

Or if you can't take the heat of debate in a democratic society then move to China.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

if you guys want European health care, move to Europe.

 

you might find life there, and your standard of living, is not so rosy as you think.

 

Or if you can't take the heat of debate in a democratic society then move to China.

 

I encourage this debate. Make it part of your platform - Hilary Care II. I'll laugh at your asses on election day.

 

[JayB]

When's the documentary coming out that chronicles the adventures of the hordes of South Korean's making a pilgrimage to Columbia in search of adequate health care?

[cj001f]

it was replaced by Washingtonians moving to Massachussetts for an education

[pink]

maybe mr. moore can buy us all healthcare with all the money being made.

[archenemy]

Don't you sound like a democrat? Wanting someone else to pay your way....

[Jim]

Don't you sound like a democrat? Wanting someone else to pay your way....

 

No. Just pay my way efficiently rather than have 200 insurance companies and their corresponding adminstrative overhead and profit, have a single payer system that saves enough money to cover everyone.

[Jim]

Post deleted by Jim

[underworld]

the government ...efficient????

[Jim]

Yes. Much more efficienct than any insurance company. 1.4% overhead compared to 12%+ when including overhead and profit for private insurers. I know - you can find the reports from the insurance companies about the "hidden cost of Medicare". Right

 

CBO report: http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdoc.cfm?index=5004&type=0

[archenemy]

How many people work in the insurance industry? just out of curiosity...

[JayB]

Can the frequent contributors to this topic who argue on behalf of a "single payer" system please define exactly what they mean by the term?

 

There are a number of permutations that full under the "single-payer" banner, and consequently the "single-payer" system in Switzerland that has secured it a position in the WHO rankings six places below Greece's "single payer" system is not quite the same as the "single payer" system in Canada that has secured the Canadians a spot 18 places beneath Portugal's "single payer" system.

 

Also - one wonders whether administrative overhead is the sole determinant of efficiency. Would something like failure to catch excess billing and fraud be considered an inefficiency in a single payer system. If increasing the administrative overhead resulted in a reduction in both excess and fraudulent billing, and the net result was a reduction in total expenditures, would the administrative overhead necessary to achieve these savings still be considered wasteful?

[JayB]

Glad to see that everyone is satisfied with the soundness of the WHO ranking criteria, though. Anything that ranks Jamaica over South Korea, and Columbia 19 places above New Zealand says "rigorous and methodologically sound" to me.

[JayB]

Drumroll....

 

"Responsiveness: The nations with the most responsive health systems are the United States, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Canada, Norway, Netherlands and Sweden. The reason these are all advanced industrial nations is that a number of the elements of responsiveness depend strongly on the availability of resources. In addition, many of these countries were the first to begin addressing the responsiveness of their health systems to people’s needs.

 

Fairness of financial contribution: When WHO measured the fairness of financial contribution to health systems, countries lined up differently. The measurement is based on the fraction of a household’s capacity to spend (income minus food expenditure) that goes on health care (including tax payments, social insurance, private insurance and out of pocket payments). Colombia was the top-rated country in this category, followed by Luxembourg, Belgium, Djibouti, Denmark, Ireland, Germany, Norway, Japan and Finland.

 

Colombia achieved top rank because someone with a low income might pay the equivalent of one dollar per year for health care, while a high- income individual pays 7.6 dollars.

 

Countries judged to have the least fair financing of health systems include Sierra Leone, Myanmar, Brazil, China, Viet Nam, Nepal, Russian Federation, Peru and Cambodia.

 

Brazil, a middle-income nation, ranks low in this table because its people make high out-of-pocket payments for health care. This means a substantial number of households pay a large fraction of their income (after paying for food) on health care. The same explanation applies to the fairness of financing Peru’s health system. The reason why the Russian Federation ranks low is most likely related to the impact of the economic crisis in the 1990s. This has severely reduced government spending on health and led to increased out-of-pocket payment.

 

In North America, Canada rates as the country with the fairest mechanism for health system finance – ranked at 17-19, while the United States is at 54-55. Cuba is the highest among Latin American and Caribbean nations at 23-25.

 

The report indicates – clearly – the attributes of a good health system in relation to the elements of the performance measure, given below.

 

Overall Level of Health: A good health system, above all, contributes to good health. To assess overall population health and thus to judge how well the objective of good health is being achieved, WHO has chosen to use the measure of disability- adjusted life expectancy (DALE). This has the advantage of being directly comparable to life expectancy and is readily compared across populations. The report provides estimates for all countries of disability- adjusted life expectancy. DALE is estimated to equal or exceed 70 years in 24 countries, and 60 years in over half the Member States of WHO. At the other extreme are 32 countries where disability- adjusted life expectancy is estimated to be less than 40 years. Many of these are countries characterised by major epidemics of HIV/AIDS, among other causes.

 

Distribution of Health in the Populations: It is not sufficient to protect or improve the average health of the population, if - at the same time - inequality worsens or remains high because the gain accrues disproportionately to those already enjoying better health. The health system also has the responsibility to try to reduce inequalities by prioritizing actions to improve the health of the worse-off, wherever these inequalities are caused by conditions amenable to intervention. The objective of good health is really twofold: the best attainable average level – goodness – and the smallest feasible differences among individuals and groups – fairness. A gain in either one of these, with no change in the other, constitutes an improvement.

 

Responsiveness: Responsiveness includes two major components. These are (a) respect for persons (including dignity, confidentiality and autonomy of individuals and families to decide about their own health); and (b) client orientation (including prompt attention, access to social support networks during care, quality of basic amenities and choice of provider).

 

Distribution of Financing: There are good and bad ways to raise the resources for a health system, but they are more or less good primarily as they affect how fairly the financial burden is shared. Fair financing, as the name suggests, is only concerned with distribution. It is not related to the total resource bill, nor to how the funds are used. The objectives of the health system do not include any particular level of total spending, either absolutely or relative to income. This is because, at all levels of spending there are other possible uses for the resources devoted to health. The level of funding to allocate to the health system is a social choice – with no correct answer. Nonetheless, the report suggests that countries spending less than around 60 dollars per person per year on health find that their populations are unable to access health services from an adequately performing health system.

 

In order to reflect these attributes, health systems have to carry out certain functions. They build human resources through investment and training, they deliver services, they finance all these activities. They act as the overall stewards of the resources and powers entrusted to them. In focusing on these few universal functions of health systems, the report provides evidence to assist policy-makers as they make choices to improve health system performance."