Just finished seeing Michael Moore's SiCKO

by Jourles 82 Replies latest social entertainment

  • SixofNine
    SixofNine

    Thanks for the review, can't wait to see it.

    Insurance companies are a totally unnecessary component of health care. Do.not.need.to.exist. Waste billions of dollars on profits, advertising to compete, avoidance of payout, wasteful record keeping/moving etc... for something that every one of us needs in a modern world almost as much as we need water or air: health care.

    Think about it; insurance companies spend millions of dollars just looking for ways to NOT pay for your health care.

    All that said, insurance companies won't go down w/o a fight.

  • purplesofa
    purplesofa

    I am so glad MM has made this doc. Until I was exposed to the internet, and talked to people from other countries, I thought US was the place to be for healthcare.

    The general public just does not know that it can be better and is better elsewhere.

    I work in a hospitol, so of course I have stories.....also personal experiance.

    I never was on medication that I had to take each month, but now I am.....and there are months when I don't have the money when the last months script runs out. My meds are not life saving, so it makes me really think about the people that must choose food over medicine or vice versa.

    People are locked into jobs they do not like, for healthcare benefits only.

    It makes my blood boil when I think of prisoners and terrorists that are prisoners that get better healthcare than children, Innocent children that have never commited any crime!

    A friend of mine from UK was sick with cold......we were chatting one day and he said he was feeling better, so I asked him.....Will you go back to work tomorrow? He said NO. I was like, as soon as I can get my head off the pillow I am back at work. He said they are off work for periods......They call into work for a period of time. I thought how nice....to be able to get sick, get well and recover. It's just not that way from my prospective here in my world.

    Thanks for posting

    purps

  • Blueblades
    Blueblades

    We saw parts of it on You Tube. Looks like a wake up call for all of us, not me, "WE".

    Blueblades

  • restrangled
    restrangled

    I didn't read through the entire thread, so am not sure some one else posted this....saw it on the news this morning.

    Apparently the movie is available for Down Loading for free.

    Don't know where, and MM had no problem with it although his producers did.

    I can hardly wait to see the movie!!!!! I saw highlights where he is shouting into Guantanamo about the supposed horrible men getting top end health care and he would like the same.

    I was cracking up.

    r.

  • sammielee24
    sammielee24
    The doctor said that he gets paid more(similar to a bonus) to preventdiseases, to get people to stop smoking, etc. In a nutshell, if he treats a patient right the first time, he gets paid more(I think

    I'm not sure about bonus' or such, but I do know that one of the contributing factors in the USA with the higher number of deaths and lower standard of health care, is cost. In a more social health care, your annual physical or necessary visits when you first feel sick are covered, so it makes sense that illness is detected and treated earlier. In the USA, if a person does not have adequate health insurance, they simply don't go to the doctor until it is too late and then it costs more to treat the illness with a less successful outcome. Many people have a $5,000 annual deductible for example, so they simply won't go because they can't afford it. sammieswife.

  • Jourles
    Jourles
    A friend of mine from UK was sick with cold......we were chatting one day and he said he was feeling better, so I asked him.....Will you go back to work tomorrow? He said NO. I was like, as soon as I can get my head off the pillow I am back at work. He said they are off work for periods......They call into work for a period of time. I thought how nice....to be able to get sick, get well and recover. It's just not that way from my prospective here in my world.

    MM interviewed a group of American expats living in France. When he asked how many sick days do they get off of work, they all kind of laughed. Apparently in France, if you're sick, you're sick. You're not limited to 5 days off per year or whatever your employer gives you. Also, the standard work week is only 35 hours. Everyone gets 5 weeks of vacation a year. If you work more than a standard 35 hour workweek, you get extra vacation time as well. If you get married, you get something like 7 extra days off for your honeymoon. There was another man living in France who had cancer?tumor?(crap, I forgot what his ailment was), but his doctor prescribed 6 months off to recover and his salary was covered 100%. The gov't picked up 65% and his employer covered the other 35%. In another scene for France, they spoke about a gov't official who had an epiphany while needing a plumber after hours. He thought that if a plumber could come to his house 24/7, then why couldn't a doctor do the same thing? They now have a dispatch system just for this purpose. MM rode around with one of these doctors on several housecalls. Even new mothers get quite a few gov't provided perks - nannys that can clean and cook. Keep in mind, this is just for France!

    Apparently the movie is available for Down Loading for free.

    Don't know where, and MM had no problem with it although his producers did.

    Yeah, MM said that this was happening already. He told us outside the theater that he didn't care if people downloaded the movie. He said he isn't "a big fan of our country's copyright laws and wouldn't press charges against anyone who did download it." He didn't mention anything about the producers though(of course, they are looking at if from a box office perspective $$$) I have a feeling that SiCKO will probably gross more than 9/11. I'd be willing to stake my left nut on it.

    This film is heavily laced with humorous sarcasm. Myself, I have a very sarcastic type of humor so I really enjoyed the one-liners. It is balanced well with the other sad parts.

  • Mary
    Mary

    These kind of comments just boggle the mind:

    I have no problem with the profit motive of companies bring life saving medications to mankind. Would there be extremely cheap HIV medications available to the Third World today if profit orientated companies didn't develope them expecting a return on their investment?
    How does getting people who can afford it to take up private insurance, thus taking the pressure of the public system, bad? And how is protecting patents on inventions a bad thing? Patents expire in very short order these days. Companies that have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in getting a drug to market get a small window of opportunity to make a bit of money on that investment. When the patent expires, you see all the generic brands coming out. Lexapro wasn't here fo 5 years before the patent expired. Now I'm on some generic version. I must admit I felt a bit sorry for the company that invented Lexapro - they single handedly changed my life by bringing my bipolar episodes under something akin to control. Now some fly-by-night mob that risked nothing to invent Lexapro can undercut the original firm and still make huge sums of money for basically doing very little.

    No one is saying that the pharmeceutical industry shouldn't make a good 'return on their investment', but like the oil industry, making a good, even excellent profit isn't enough for the greedy bastards that run the health industry. There's a huge difference between making a damn good profit and gouging the hell out of the public. The horror stories you hear about Americans that are denied health insurance if they've ever had something like cancer or other serious diseases, is simply appalling. I did a thread on this not too long ago and one of the posters on here desperatly needs some tests done, but since she had cancer a few years ago, she can't get any coverage any more and is left owing tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills.

    My boss is good friends with the man who owns one of the drug companies up here in Ontario. Even though the government puts a cap on how much they can charge for drugs, this guy's company is worth over a billion dollars. The problem in the States is that there is no cap on what doctors charge for their services, there's no cap on what Insurance companies charge for premiums (and then look for any way to get out of paying for it) and there's no cap on what the drug companies charge for medication. The whole industry has gotten completely out of hand and it's time that changes were made. Funding a National Health Care system in the States could probably be done by two things: Raise taxes by 1% or 2% and pull the troops out of Iraq. Bush has had no problem spending a trillion dollars on this stupid war-----I'm sure the funds could be found for something useful like a healthcare system.

    As someone else already mentioned, I don't know of anyone in Canada who's lost there house due to 'medical bills'. When I had cancer a few years ago, everything was paid for: the operation, all the doctors' visits, meals, hosptial room (I think I paid $20.00 extra for semi-private that my benefits didn't cover), radiation, follow up visits, etc. When you've got a life threatening illness, the last thing you need to be stressing about is: how am I going to pay for this? Yes we're very highly taxed up here and for all the taxes we pay, our health care system is grossly underfunded and the wait lists can definitely be long. However, if you have something like cancer that requires immediate attention you'll get it. I found out that if I had had to wait longer than 2 months for my surgery, OHIP would have paid for me to get it done in the States.

    I hope Hillary Clinton gets in and does something about it. It's an absolute disgrace that the richest country in the world has a system where people are still dying because they can't afford treatment.

  • Jourles
    Jourles
    Insurance companies are a totally unnecessary component of health care. Do.not.need.to.exist. Waste billions of dollars on profits, advertising to compete, avoidance of payout, wasteful record keeping/moving etc... for something that every one of us needs in a modern world almost as much as we need water or air: health care.

    Wait until people hear from the whistleblowers in the film. Especially how some managers would get a better bonus for a higher "deny" percentage rate. Basically, if there were 5 managers in a group, the one with the most denials earned the highest bonus. There was one company which always maintained at least a flat 10% deny rate.

    MM also interviewed a "hitman" whose sole job was to comb through claims trying to find pre-existing conditions or omitted information which he could deny after the fact. crazy

  • Jourles
    Jourles

    I hope Hillary Clinton gets in and does something about it. It's an absolute disgrace that the richest country in the world has a system where people are still dying because they can't afford treatment.

    I wouldn't be so sure about Hillary. In one breath, MM commended her for trying to bring about universal health care back in the 90's. But in the very next scene, he lumped her right in with the other sellouts. By "sellout," I mean health care industry campaign contributees. Don't expect UHC to come to fruition if Hillary gets elected. She is the #2 recipient of donations from the health care industry. Guess who is number 1? MM told us that Weinstein(one of the main producers of the film, MM's good friend and a friend of the family to the Clintons) asked him to cut that part out about Hillary being the #2 recipient. MM refused.

    If this is a huge issue for voters, find a candidate that isn't in the pockets of the health care/insurance industry.

  • G Money
    G Money

    Sickness and disease is big business. Look at the HMOs and drug companies. They make all the $$$. The doctors don't really make all that much, maybe $100,000 to $200,000 and they work long hours and are on call alot. I've known a few in the USA. The drug companies and other make millions. It is more the institutions rather than the individuals who are really profiting off others misery. Private doctors in countries with socialized medicine do give better service in my opinion and from what I've heard from others. Then again if nobody got sick and died young, where would we put all those people?? Perhaps its another angle of population control?

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