Psst, Michael Moore: Health costs screw business, too
Because he’s a documentary filmmaker and not a politician, Michael Moore isn’t obliged to pretend that fixing America’s health-care system is a mere matter of realigning market forces. Moore’s new film, Sicko, makes a straightforward case for “socialized medicine.” Most other industrialized democracies have adopted some form of socialized medicine—Sicko visits France, Britain, and Canada—and while Moore can be faulted for depicting these health-care systems as flawless, the truth is that in most respects they are superior to the American system. Sicko tells story after heartbreaking story about ordinary people getting screwed out of the health-care benefits they thought they had coming. Yet one significant victim of America’s market-based health care system is left out: market capitalism itself.
I refer not to health insurers, nor to health maintenance organizations, nor to for-profit hospitals, but rather to businesses outside the health-care sector that are saddled with the growing cost of providing health insurance to their employees. This obligation puts American companies at a disadvantage with respect to foreign competitors whose governments provide health care. The most obvious victim, ironically, is a company Moore knows very well: General Motors. Because of health-care obligations, the automaker that Moore pilloried in his first film, Roger and Me, is fighting for its life.
In other Sicko news, Google dis’ed the movie so as to not upset the health care industry who spends $$$ on advertising on Google. Or did it?
Because of health-care obligations, the automaker that Moore pilloried in his first film, Roger and Me, is fighting for its life.
Right… And that’s the ONLY reason I’ll bet.
Hopper, I need that rolling eyes icon again.
My wife and I are paying $575 a month for a 90% coverage group plan. Every year the rates increase, and most years there’s a small cut back in benefits. Just to cover the employer the plan is just over $100 per month. There is no current way to make this family coverage affordable for low wage earners without large government subsidies. The cost is much higher for individual policies and they out right reject many applicants, even if you’re a few pounds over the recommended BMI for your height. The only way universal care will happen in this country is if Medicare/Medicaid is transformed into a supplement paid to private heath insurance companies. Can you imagine that cluster f*ck.
Mr. RTaylor – why would it have to be a clusterfuck?
Let’s take an alternate idea: every American who makes $50,000 or more puts in 1% of their income into health care, every American who makes $150,000 or more contributes 3% of their income. So that’s $500 a year on, say, 100,000,000 people for around $50,000,000,000 dollars, and then say another $150,000,000 from those in upper brackets. Now we’re at $200,000,000 – roughly what we’re spending in Iraq right now. (These numbers are of course pulled out of my ass, but let’s just start with these for now.)
Now we start building hospitals, medical schools, and offering free health/dental care to everyone. Now, in my case, I pay $100 per paycheck just for health care through my employer – $2400 a month. That’s $1900 a year I could be saving, money my employer could be saving. Those who want private plans could go ahead and get it. People who are poor and can’t afford it (or middle class) could not only get emergency treatment, but we could pay for preventative treatment, and make people *more* productive, reduce cancer/heart disease and so on by getting people in (and offering incentives to keep their health up, like tax refunds – you save the system $, and will give it a back to you).
Yeah, big evil bureaucracy at work – but compared to a corporate bureaucracy that is out to screw your health for their dollars, to one that wants to improve your health, the latter idea seems superior to me. It will take work, and we’ll suffer for about 10 years as we get the kinks out, but once done, it could wind up saving people money over the long term.
Andrew, you’re such a hypocrite.
Did the socialized medicine system in Japan prevent you from visiting a private physician? In fact, in any of the countries with a health care system supported by the state – in Moore’s movie – do any of those nations make it illegal for a citizen to spend their own money on private health care?
Of course not. You’re just another self-centered kreep who hates paying taxes into a general fund for the benefit of the whole country.
BTW – by all the parameters used for measuring the effectiveness of health care, infant mortality, life span, etc., the richest nation in the world ain’t #1. The result of politicians and corporations who agree with you.
Sorry! I meant $2400 a year! My apologies.
@Pedro: Why is making money and wanting to do good things opposing ideas? Why is it if you make few billion dollars, then decide you want to help the poor (like, say, Ted Turner), you’re a hypocrite because you don’t live in a tractor trailer? You should ruin your finances and make your children’s lives hell just to help people?
Heaven forbid! Look at his statement:, which boils down to “I have money, and if someone says they’ll shut down my movie (like Disney tried to) or try to silence me, I have enough money to say ‘Fuck you, bitch!’, and keep going.”
Moore’s gone too far off the deep end to be taken seriously anymore. Unfortunately, this appears to be impacting the debate he wants to see take place in this country.
I notice that several of the folks who have posted pro-socialized medicine here are the same people who are constantly bitching about everything the US government does.
What makes you think they would be any better at running health care?
Wow, do any of you guys know any Canadians? I live in Seattle, and my wife used to work at a Dr’s Office here. She had people coming down from BC all the time to go to the DR she worked for.
There was a 2 month wait in Canada, and the nearest doc was in Alberta! And she worked for a Sleep Doc, and they are all over down here. Only good thing about Canadian health care system is if you are a US citizen in Canada and need service.
I have been in that situation a few times. You get 2 or 3 DR’s helping you because they know they are going to get paid. While at the same time the Canadian next to you with a much worse problem, barely gets to see a Doc.
There are pluses and minuses to any system. And our system needs a change, but please do not make it like Canada’s!
Personally I just changed over to a HSA plan and love it. Low cost, plus a tax free savings plan, I get to use as a IRA when i turn 60. It helps address our country’s two biggest problems, Health care and social security.
Ken
#12, Ken
You live in Seattle and the closest Canadian Doctor is in Alberta? Would there be a Seattle Idaho or Montana I don’t know about?
Canadian health care isn’t perfect. It is though, a far sight better then American health care.
My father had a knee replacement at age 84. At first he was on a waiting list of approximately 18 months as this was considered voluntary surgery. A few months later when his knee started interfering with his quality of life he was rescheduled and had the surgery three weeks later. Cost was $2.00 for using the phone.
At the same time, my wife had a ruptured fallopian tube from an ectopic pregnancy. An emergency ultrasound showed the problem. She lay there for several hours, bleeding internally, while the surgeon tried to get the insurance plan to pay for the operation. The upshot is her insurance was through the very same hospital she had the operation in. Later came the battle to get the insurance to pay. Total cost, over $1,000 from our pockets.
Yes there are horror stories. Not every Canadian gets perfect care. Some even fall through the cracks. Canadian health professionals even occasionally make mistakes. But on the whole Canadians are much better off then Americans. And very few Canadians are sent for tests or procedures they don’t need.
If there weren’t so many “I’m suing my doctor because the heachache pills he gave me didn’t work!” patients maybe health care wouldn’t be that expensive.
“…but rather to businesses outside the health-care sector that are saddled with the growing cost of providing health insurance to their employees.”
Damn straight.
My company put together a presentation for this year’s open enrollment time – knowing everyone would be bitching about the increased contributions and reduced coverage, because costs keep rising.
They made a point of showing that while we were bitching about how much $$$ our 15% was, they wanted us to be aware of -exactly- how much their 85% was. 🙂
Amazing to see how much the company is paying for every employee who elects [read: can afford] family coverage.
No wonder they hire temps, and run with a skeleton crew – rather than hire more people… which would increase the Soc Sec and Medical costs to the company.
Makes me wince every time I read reports about rising “worker productivity”, and “experts” arguing over which technologies are allowing us to make those gains.
I wouldn’t exactly call Kurt Loder of MTV a conservative storm trooper and even he can see the obvious flaws on Sicko: http://tinyurl.com/26qw7y
Yes, the American system is seriously hosed up but I’m not so sure socializing it is going to help. Maybe it would, but it could get a whole lot worse as well. If nothing else, look at the population sizes of the various countries involved: at 300 million people to take care of, that’s a hell of a big bureaucracy …
TheGlobalWarmer: I’d like you to give us one example where government provided health care made things “a whole lot worse”.
And Ken the only people waiting that long for doctors in Canada are non-residents. Your wife wasn’t seeing Canadians, she was seeing Americans working in Canada.
The simple facts of this situation are this:
1) The U.S. spends 15% of its GDP on health care. The next highest spending country in the developed democratic world spends 9%.
2) The U.S. has about the 47th best health care in the world for its top dollar. Only Israel among the developed democratic nations of the world has a lower life expectancy or higher infant mortality. Our numbers put us more in line with the better developing nations of the world.
3) No health care in the world covers everyone. Nationalized health care systems use cost benefit analyses for what to cover. We simply say “poor people can only get care in emergency rooms.” No preventive medicine for you.
Is this how we want to live? Is this moral? I think not.
Great way to make health care more expensive than it already is, more government. We’ve already seen school tuitions go up after government started footing the bill. They should look at taking away the health care tax exemption for businesses, and maybe this will put a little cost control in health care. HSAs are a good start too.
MikeN: The US system is the most expensive in the world. Of course the corporations that benefit know about viral marketing!
I wonder how expensive our health care system would be if people ate right and exercised some? Oh but it’s a free country…….I guess you can call that the downside to freedom.
moore is a retard. he can’t honestly believe that socalized medicine is the best choice. Always remember that the this is the same government that gave us the DMV, Homeland security, and the IRS.
do we really want them in charge of our health care?
The CRUX OF THE MATTER IS GOUSA healthcare is set up on a for-profit basis. For profit for doctors, hospitals, insurance carriers and such giving us a “system” where 23-27% (from memory) of the cost is eaten up in competitive activities that deliver ZERO healthcare.
There is another constant 10-15% eaten up by FRAUD given alot of cover by the beauocracy creted above.
So, nothing wrong with waiting if emergencies get you to the front of the line. Something is wrong with the best healthcare if its only available to 30% of the people. Many so called “covered” people in fact have very poor policies not worth much once they try to use it.
Truth hurts. I need a legal pill ($45 per after markups and delivery system) or an illegal toke I grew myself–no cost except the $40,000 per year to keep me in jail for violating this drug law.
It is a “system” with many parts hanging togther, working together to harm the great american public.
Socialized medicine is not the paradise people make it out to be.
I live in Canada. People die here wating for operations that even the most penniless illegal immigrant would get quickly in the USA.
People spend 5 hours in ambulances outside of emergency rooms because there is no room for them inside.
The system is hostile to doctors so they leave by the droves.
We pay 20% sales tax plus a lot of other taxes that add up to give us the highest tax rate in North America. All this for crappy care.
Americans should be happy that their crappy care costs about half as much.
#6.
Moss.
There is no need for name calling and insults.
Make your point as necessary but dont insult me when you know nothing about me.
In fact I am American and Japanese since I have dual citizenship.
#6
Mr Moss…one other thing.
There is generally a (equivalent) US$2000.00 TIP to the doctor for FREE surgery that was already paid for with tax yen
Japan’s sharei system is rather simple. If you want good service or the hoped for outcome of your surgery, you pay the doctor a bribe (sharei). Sharei is the incentive not provided by the official system and apparently can be an effective means of ensuring good care.
29—Even “if” it were true that GOUSA healthcare system was better than Japans, that would say nothing as to whether or not big changes are needed. Bribing drs is about as bad as it can get though.
Also, the notion that “Canada/Europe/Socialized medicine is not perfect” is the peamble of nothing intelligent to say. As Moore himself has said, lets look at those systems and not do what they do that is bad. Lets take what good they do and put it all together?
Anybody not for great change to the GOUSA system is just saying “I got mine, don’t care about the majority of the rest of you.”
America has had a socialized medicine for a very long time, for a large part of the population no less. Thats right, the military has a form of socialized medicine for every member and their families. Maybe we should take a look at how they have been doing over the years (Walter Reed anyone).
The problem is that just like any other government program, socialized medicine will be abused and eventually be buried under its own administration (and don’t even get me started on the pandering that politicians will begin doing, I can hear Neo-Libs now “vote for republicans and they will take away your free healthcare”)
What bothers me most about Government Health care is that by implementing it you are saying that you have a right to someone else’s time or money just by the fact that you happen to be in this country. You can’t afford your own health care? No problem, we will just take money from from someone else, and let you use it, free of charge, and oh by the way, remember to vote democrat.
You think a doctor who specializing in a field and has spend 15 years getting good at that field cost too much? Instead of letting the free market decide what that doctor should get paid we will just come in with the federal government and force that doctor under the penalty of jail time of course, to charge what you think is right.
One of the most telling things that I noticed in my years in the health care industry happen a couple of years ago. I was in Germany for school, for a new Cath Lab that was being released. Anyways me and a bunch of other Europeans were sitting at a table for dinner one night and we began to talk about how many new labs that I install and how old all my systems that I maintain are. The results surprised me, on average I installed nearly 10 times as many labs as they did, and my average lab age was less than half of theirs.
I asked why this was? Their response said it all, “No Hospitals have any money, the Government only gives them what they need to keep the old stuff going, rarely do they get the money to upgrade equipment.”
This many not seem like a big deal, but just on the equipment that I work on, we have taken a quantum leap in abilities over the last 10 years, yet very few of the labs in Europe are less than that in age.
If I had a choice, I would buy into Medicare over any private insurerer. Medicare has overhead costs of 3% versus 20% for private industry.
It’s sad that this is an issue that turns into the typical Republican/Conservative and liberal/Democrat issue. This is one issue where the government does better than private industry.
The simple answer is to extend Medicare to everybody. It won’t happen because of insurers and drug companies, but it should.
The “socialized medicine” talk is bunk. If you are so against socialized medicine, be honest and tell people you want to stop Medicare and Medicaid. Go ahead, I dare you.
#11 – What makes you think they would be any better at running health care?
Because they already do it better than the private sector.
31—You may think “the very best” for the very few is the best system. Yes, you have yours and you don’t care about those who don’t.
How about “the best we can do for everybody” and those with disposable income can buy more if they wish?
You argue for the gated community of haves verses the majority in adverse circumstances. That is comfortable until you have to leave the compound.
>>What makes you think they would be any better at running
>>health care?
Well, for starters, they wouldn’t be paying dickwads like William McGuire $128,000,000/year to try and screw people out of medical care. You can buy a lot of physicals and MRIs for $128,000,000
#20 – I didn’t say anything has gotten worse – especially since it’s not been done here. I said it could be a whole lot worse. From observing how our federal gov’t tends to handle other gigantomungous bureaucracies, I tend to believe the result of this proposed one, most likely would be worse.