Michael Moore and Olbermann on Sicko

I've written before that I think this film, Sicko, is something every American citizen should see. Michael Moore has been taking heat lately, from bought-and-paid for Gupta on CNN, from the vast realm of nitwits from the right wing nuttery. Tonight, he was on Countdown with Keith Olbermann. The clip is here, and it's worth watching.

If you've not seen the film yet, please do. If you've seen the film and are as outraged as I am, please go to www.MichaelMoore.com and read what's happening. Head over to www.SickoCure.org for an easy, efficient way to take action. Go to www.PNHP.org, the outfit behind SickoCure, and read why physicians favor single payer universal health care. Nothing will change unless we all unite and take action. Meanwhile, stay healthy.

fact checking michael moore

The American Prospect has an interesting piece on why the mainstream media, so quick to swallow every lie the Bush administration hands them, are so eager to fact check, confront, investigate Michael Moore.

Take CNN. A few days after the release of Sicko, they set a whole team on fact checking the provocateur's documentary. "We found," they said, "that his numbers were mostly right, but his arguments could use a little more context. As we dug deep to uncover the numbers, we found surprisingly few inaccuracies in the film. In fact, most pundits or health-care experts we spoke to spent more time on errors of omission rather than disputing the actual claims in the film. . . .

To wit, Moore is a documentary filmmaker. Fred Thompson is a likely Republican candidate for president. Thompson recently released a radio commentary on the Moore's movie that mixed outright falsehoods with deceptive omissions. There was no media outcry, no Wolf Blitzer follow-up, no CNN truth squad. Nothing. Silence.

The world is full of political provocateurs and public hotheads, but only Moore triggers the media's all-too-absent obsession with factual accuracy. Ann Coulter doesn't, and Al Franken doesn't, and Rush Limbaugh doesn't, and Mitt Romney doesn't. Only Moore. Because he scares them.

Here's a radical thought, though: Maybe if these mainstream media types were as incredulous towards the powerful as they are to Moore, his productions wouldn't pose a threat. After all, there's nothing wrong with fact-checking, and asking hard questions, and raising an oppositional eyebrow towards pabulum and propaganda. The problem isn't that the media is so quick to doubt Moore. It's that they're so trusting the rest of the time.

Michael Moore kicks wolf blitzer's ass

And it is delicious. I adore this righteously angry man. I am sure the vast realm of wing nuttery will begin to rant about Moore's confrontation of the smug liar Blitzer, but for the moment, this is very fine.

it could happen to you, too

I've just returned from a screening of Sicko and I am convinced that this should be mandatory viewing for everyone in this country. If you've ever worked for a living, if you've ever had the comfort of health insurance, if you are a part of the vast American middle class, lower to upper, please see this documentary.

If you think you don't have to worry about health concerns, you may change your mind. I never worried either, not until my husband got sick. I've talked about his ailments before and I won't go into them again, but I want to clarify, for all of you working folks, that Mike and I worked too. Together, we had a very comfortable life, financially secure, no worries. Our house was paid off. We had health insurance, life insurance, dental, vision. We owned stock, mutual funds, cash accounts. We collected investment quality antiques. We were in every way, the two of us, far better off financially than many of our friends and people with whom we worked. No kids at home, two nice incomes. American dream.

Mike got so sick he couldn't work and we lost the bigger portion of our monthly income. No worries, I said, I'll do something else and I started a business. By the time he couldn't work, we were looking at medical bills of around $8,000 ~ not too bad, we had savings. The bills mounted as his condition deteriorated.

We had the best policy offered by the State of Oklahoma, a preferred provider plan, a blessing. But we had co-pays. They don't seem like much when you see the doctor once every six months or once a year. But those co-pays begin to add up when you're seeing the doc almost daily, when new meds are prescribed at least weekly, when tests and exams and treatments are being conducted constantly and every new encounter ~ doctor, hospital, pharmacy ~ requires another co-pay.

It was okay, though. There was a cap on the yearly out of pocket ~ $3500 for pharmacy and $6000 for hospital and, well, no cap on the doctor visits but those were only $25 a pop, and oops! that test isn't included in the out of pocket and, well, this test is not approved by the insurance company. ER visits were never less than $1800 except the single time he was admitted to the hospital. We were seeing the docs 3-4 times a week, and then there were the drugs. The most expensive drugs weren't approved for payment under the formulary. The $1400 monthly for interferon and ribavirin wasn't covered because the combination was considered experimental. It was the only treatment for one of his worst ailments, and yet it was experimental.

My health insurance was paid by my agency; Mike's was $440 a month. I'll break it down a little, these monthly expenses:

$ 440 for health insurance
$1400 for unapproved meds
$ 680 for approved meds with co-pays
$ 400 minimum co-pays for office visits
$ 300 average co-pays for various treatments, hospital stays, ER tx and the like

That's over $3000 a month for medical bills alone and we were insured. Some months were worse, some were better. With less than half of our usual income, it was a disaster in the making. I refinanced the house we'd paid off the year before he became ill. Most of it went to medical bills. I started a business and it was an instant success. I had extra money from the business to put toward medical bills, but I was working 80 hours a week. I sold stock I'd had forever and put it toward the ever increasing costs. This went on for almost five years, bills and bills and bills and bills.

People said "you're lucky you could start a business and have it do so well." Other people said "wow, you were lucky you had your house paid off." Lucky. Yes, I was lucky. Really, I believe that. But how much luckier I'd have been if I'd lived in a country where my husband's care would have been assured, where it wouldn't have driven us nearly to bankruptcy to try to make him well, where I wouldn't have had to work two full time jobs to keep up, all the while worrying about him and grieving and tending to his needs. Yes, I was lucky that I had the energy to work like that. I was lucky that my business went so well. I was lucky to have good credit and lots of it, and I am lucky that I've just finished paying off over $35,000 in credit card bills from that awful time. Lucky, too, that the money borrowed on the house is nearly paid back and I almost really own my home again. Lucky, lucky, lucky. That's me.

I am lucky, of course, because my husband is stable and doing so well. He did not die and I've got a lot of years left in me, and I've been able to get out from under this debt again. We're starting to do the things we used to do ~ travel, saving for retirement, saving for college for the grandkids. But lucky as I am, I worry about the next time. What if, God forbid, I could not work? We'd be out of luck because Mike can't work any longer and could not do for me what I did for him.

Michael Moore's Sicko is about people just like us. It is heartbreaking and infuriating and if it doesn't make you angry and fired up and ready to work toward revolutionizing healthcare in this country, nothing will. Please go see this film. It is important. It speaks to every one of us, all of us regular folks, the vast majority of American citizens who are working, living our lives, trying to make it and do well in life. Doing well in this country is an illusion until we have universal health care. All it takes is one illness, one injury, an accident, and it can happen to any one of us. I feel as strongly about this as I've ever felt about anything. It's an opportunity we have right now to change this system, to make our voices heard, to practice compassion for everyone, to take away the constant worry for those of us who have lived through a health crisis.

It's not going to come from our politicians. Of the current crop of presidential candidates, only three Republicans even mention health care on their websites, and those three are looking for private solutions, the very private solutions that have taken us to this point. The Democrats are little better, with only Kucininch proposing single payer insurance for every American citizen. Congress is owned by the health care lobby, so if there's any way out of the disastrous place we're in now, it is going to come from us.

I am enough of a rah-rah cheerleader for my country and my people that I don't believe there's anything we can't do if we put our minds to it. Universal single payer health care is good government, it is good policy, it is compassionate, and caring, the right thing to do. Let's do it. Start by seeing Sicko.

Michael Moore addressing health insurance execs

Excellent two minutes of Moore on the need for nonprofit health care.

Sicko

Another set of clips from Michael Moore's upcoming Sicko, with a cast of characters (the second clip) ranging from Richard Nixon to the AMA to Ronald Reagan. The first clip tells the story of a woman, an ICU nurse at a major hospital, who fought to get her husband's treatment for kidney cancer. It contains the confession of a woman whose job it was to deny care to sick people, even when it was an unnecessary death sentence.

If the second clip doesn't piss you off, you're brain dead. The juxtaposition of Richard Nixon meeting with a corporate medical man to discuss limiting care for the American people, then telling us the very next day that he has a "new plan" for improved care for all is sickening. If you're unconcerned about health care, or if you think you've got yours, so all is well, please watch these.

I think we are about as safe as we can get with my vested self-pay insurance from the State of Oklahoma (at $750 a month) and my husband's Medicare. But I worry about the rest of you, about my extended family, my friends. I remember my stepdaughter's inability to get treatment for a broken neck ~ no insurance ~ and I think this could happen to anyone. Private company, one of the chronic ailments, and *poof* you're uninsured and broke and maybe dead. Please care about this issue, people. It affects all of us.

michael moore, sicko and oprah

Michael Moore appeared on Oprah Winfrey's afternoon program to discuss his latest documentary, Sicko, a thorough dissection of health care and insurance in the U.S. Though insured, my husband and I faced steep medical bills when he became ill several years ago. The expenses were shocking ~ beyond anything we would ever have anticipated ~ and we were fortunate that our insurance company moved from a $1 million lifetime payout to an unlimited payout two years after he became ill. Had that not been the case, we'd have been uninsured by the 4th year of his being sick. I am grateful we had insurance. It was actually considered to be a top notch policy, and the fact that we had a preferred provider plan ~ meaning we could see any doctor on the list, at any time, without having to get approval or go through committee ~ probably saved his life.

Michael Moore discusses horror stories far worse than ours in his newest work. It is a timely piece, this country being the only industrialized "first world" nation not providing single payer universal coverage to its citizens. It is time, truly, and this is an issue that really cannot wait any longer. None of the candidates from either party are suggesting anything that will really help. As Moore notes, when healthcare is a profit-making venture, service to the sick will suffer.

When you have a minute, check out TruthDig's post on the Moore-Winfrey encounter. Then come back and tell me whether or not you wanted to smack Oprah Winfrey? She never thought about the uninsured? Miss Generosity herself? Something about her attitude in this interview really gets under my skin. As far as I'm concerned, Moore's an American hero for this work. I am hoping Sicko, opening nationwide June 29, generates some serious discussion and, even better, some real action on this critically important issue. Meanwhile, y'all stay healthy.