"SiCKO" Doesn't Go Far Enough!

The only possible authentic criticism of Michael Moore’s “SiCKO” is that the movie doesn’t go far enough from a patient rights perspective. We can’t blame Moore for this; he simply doesn’t have the requisite experience in hospital-based patient care. However, he could have used his insights into systemic problems to drill down to the hospital bedside in exposing another crisis patients/families face everyday in the delivery of their health care.

Moore makes a critical distinction between the ‘medical model’ and the ‘social model of medicine.’ Under a social model of medicine, a health care system rewards doctors based on the health of their patient populations. Every other industrialized nation uses a social model of medicine. By contrast, Moore notes the US health care system uses a ‘medical model.’ Under this regime, the system reimburses doctors based on the number of procedures they perform.

Moore uses this important distinction to underscore problems of access. When a health care system incentivizes doctors to keep a patient population healthy, patients in that population naturally have ready access. In the US, while doctors have the financial incentive to perform more procedures, insurance companies are motivated to limit the number to increase profit. Moore documents brilliantly how US citizens are caught in the middle of this epic struggle between doctors and insurance companies to make money.

Moore chooses to focus primarily on ‘denial of access’ as a consequence of the medical model. Of course, this is quite understandable given the severity of the problem. However, it would have been very easy for him to have also exposed another consequence of the ‘medical model.’

It is a crisis more deadly than the access problem. It also has a greater impact on more US citizens.

Comments

[Leslie Nova]

Sicko does not go far enough!! Sadly the powers in Washington will do everything in their power to protect the medical insurance industry and their wealth ammassing stratigies. Our health and quality of life means nothing to them. They are concerned with maintaining the billionaire status of these blood sucking giants because they are,in fact, the same people, and they identify with these methods of their enriching exploitation.

Recently Bush says, without thought or real comment, that he will veto medical programs for children. His reason...it's socialized medicine and that means it's evil (my daddy told me so). Meanwhile he will be getting his medical treatment from his government health care insurance paid by taxpayers. A health care quality that few of the regular population will ever receive. And one in four, or one quarter of the US pop, will not receive at all. Don't you find it interesting that the rich Bush family uses the "socialize medicine" which they find so distasteful for the rest of us when they can easily afford to pay doctors privately.

Privitization of health care is the same formula for wealth amassing and segregation of classes used by the county clubs. Country clubs are private parks and recreation facilities that are comfortably shared and better taken care of if you can afford to pay the dues. While everyone has the right to privacy and building something for themselves, it is not appropriate for health care. But these country club people have this mentality to their very core. The rich always have to teach their children not to pity or worry about the lowly others that watch from the fence. They think it applies to health care and everything. The poor are poor and they will live and die like the poor do. Like wild animals that curl up and die and suffer without assistance. That is who we are to them. They've been taught this since the cradle and that is what they truely believe. They simply cannot comprehend that we are people as good as them. We are not. We are the animals that serve them. They can't even percieve our suffering because they have always been taught to never entertain any strange feelings of empathy for the low people that interfere with who they see themselves as, and how they should maintain this belief system. A belief system that benefits them at the cost of others. It's like the conversation one has with a child who sees someone kill an animal for the first time for food. We are their food. They will not change. We will have to remove these elitists. Begging them to consider us is a complete waste of time and they love it that we are wasting our time thus. Demand clean elections. Demand accurate vote counting. Demand Democracy and get and send the country club boys back to the clubs. Refuse to be force fed this evil belief that everything should be privitized and run in a way that the "deserving" are not pained, but enriched by the underserving. For God's sake, see them for what they are!