Then they interviewed someone who had worked for the insurance companies whose job it was to go thru people's medical records - after they'd had an expensive procedure - and find something in their record - like a yeast infection - they could use as an excuse to drop them.
The interviewed doctors who talked about the incentives - bonuses for rejecting the most procedures, promotions because they had saved the company money by rejecting needed procedures. We heard stories of people who died because of refused procedures. Here are a few clips I took in the theater to go with this review.
Moore effectively attacks the stories that Americans have been taught about health care. Here are a couple of the myths he challenges:
1. America has the best health care in the world
2. The free public health systems in Canada and England are second class, you have to wait forever for treatment, and the doctors are poor.
3. Cuba is a wretched country
4. Americans take care of their own
He challenges #s 1 and 2 by looking at people with similar health issues in the US and in other countries and how they got treated. A man in the US without health insurance who cut off the ends of two fingers is told - the middle finger will cost you $70,000 to fix, the ring finger $12,000. Which do you want? Then they showed a guy in Canada who cut off four whole fingers and had them all reattached - and he could move them - for free. You saw the sick baby comparison in the movie. They tour health care in England looking for the terribly things people say about it and find it pretty good.
OK, I'm sure you can find horror stories in Canada and England, just as you can find stories of good care in the US. My wife and I have had good care with caring doctors in nice facilities. But we are also hearing from friends who are turning 65 who are having trouble finding doctors who will take patients on medicare.
The real issue is the outcomes. The statistics he gives are consistent with others I've heard showing the US lower in critical stats such as infant mortality rate and life expectancy than these other countries with free health care - even Cuba. If you're thinking, "that's BS," I'd ask you to stop and think why you think that. Probably because it goes against the stories in your head that we have the best health care. Go look up the statistics - not on Rush Limbaugh's site, but at the US Centers for Disease Control or the World Health Organization. Here's a table I put together from two WHO stats, you can see life expectancy and costs.
According to this table, Moore was wrong. Cuban life expectancy for both males and females for infants is .7 years lower than US life expectancy. On the other hand, Cuba manages to be that close paying 3.7% of what the US pays for health care. Maybe the US should contract out our health care system to Cuba.
And finally Moore shows footage of various politicians, including Bush, talking about our great heroes who worked to rescue people after 9/11. Then he interviews some of them five years later with respiratory diseases and other problems who can't get the health care they need. He takes them and other people he's interviewed for the movie to Cuba where one gets $120 worth of medication at home for 3 cents, and everyone gets looked at with fancy equipment, diagnosed, and some treatment and a health plan for home. Would you get treated like that in Cuba if you walked in off the street and didn't have a camera crew with you? I don't know. I do know years ago an older friend of ours got great treatment for a stroke while visiting Canada at no cost. And in Thailand recently, my wife got rabies shots after she was bitten by a dog, for about $20 per shot. From a list serve discussion of rabies in North Carolina:
>Treatment involves at least 6 injections in the arm, given over 28 days.
>More injections are sometimes given near a wound, if the rabid animal has
>broken its victim's skin. The cost typically ranges from $1500 to $2000 and
>is often covered by insurance
If we take the low figure, that would be $250 per shot. More than 10 times the cost in Thailand.
This movie takes on people's myths about America's greatness, about the efficiency of the market, about how bad other countries are. This confrontation with a view of things different from the propaganda we're used to seeing will cause many people to go into denial. They will sit and squirm in this movie, because they'll have to deal with their own deception. But they'll know from their own experiences or from that of friends and relatives, that these stories ring true.
Truer than the images we get in commercials from the health care systems or from politicians who have received large campaign contributions from these industries. Politicians who have been wined and dined and flown to nice resorts by their lobbyists.
I read somewhere that the difference between Russian newspaper readers and Americans was that the Russians KNEW their papers were all lies and thus they learned how to read between the lines.
I have heard about this kind of thing over where you are, from time to time!
ReplyDeleteFor at least 20 years and although our national health service has it's problems, we have always been glad it is free for everyone! If only for the one reason the insurance companies can't play god.