Sicko thoughts
Last night I got the opportunity to see Sicko for free - apparently as a member of a “who’s who” of local progressive activists and bloggers. I’m not going to post a highly detailed review of Sicko. Other people can and will do that, and I dropped out of grad school for a reason. I just want to post a few of my thoughts on it, with the preface that everyone should go see it.
I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with Michael Moore films. I generally enjoy them and agree with them but feel kind of cheap for only seeing one (very strong) viewpoint. But this movie was mostly an appeal to emotions, and they’re emotions I agree with and can definitely relate to. A while back, Katie posted on her blog about the mounting medical bills we have because we’re having a baby. We have “good” insurance, but we’re paying out our ears in stuff our “good” insurance doesn’t cover. We probably get about five new bills a week. I know we didn’t get both perspectives from watching this movie, but I’m not sure there is or should be another perspective on those mounting bills.
So Sicko was about us. Moore made a point to say that the movie wasn’t about people without insurance. It was about how the “good” insurance that is supposed to help us when we need it is not good at all. The movie was about how insurance companies are neither our friends nor our allies. Indeed, the movie was about how insurance companies do their jobs best when they don’t do their jobs at all. They are the most successful when they collect their premiums and don’t help me.
And they are being successful with us right now. We are doing something as basic as having a baby. For crying out loud, this is basic. Don’t most people have kids these days? Why do we pay so much for insurance that won’t cover this basic, basic thing.
I just don’t get our system. Why do we do this to ourselves? Why? I understand the concept of capitalism and how much it helps us, but if you were sitting in front of a blank screen and had to draw up our medical system, would you do it this way? Would you say “Well, we know we have doctors on one side and people on the other. Why don’t we have this company in the middle to make a profit?” Let me say it again: insurance companies aren’t there to help us. They’re there to help themselves. And we don’t need them!
I know this is going to sound basic, but this is how I see it. All of us are going to need some level of healthcare over our lives. Most people have kids; kids get sick and need shots. Most people get old and get diabetes or other diseases. Most people will get into the occasional wreck and possibly get hurt. Most people will develop allergies or break an arm or get a sinus infection. Most people at some point will need healthcare. So why must we all pay so much for corporations in the middle to make profits off of this need?
As Moore said in the film, why do we pay for some things everyone needs - police, fire departments, the fcc, for crying out loud - but not other things we all need? We all need healthcare. Why can’t it be a right?
Can’t we all admit there are better ways to do it? Can’t we admit there is a better way to live?
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9 Responses to “Sicko thoughts”
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I just signed up for a bunch of AFLAC insurance, which is basically ‘cover your butt if you really get sick’ insurance. Oh, boy, if I get cancer I will be rich!
About your having a baby, I picked up an interesting economic insight on another blog:
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http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/348604.html?thread=4754876#t4754876
joxn wrote: My point is this, of course: the basic healthcare that everyone needs to stay alive and healthy is not something which an insurance policy is designed to handle. Insurance policies are for rare but statistically definable events. But basic healthcare is not rare — although it is statistically definable: everyone will have to have it, and in the case of preventive care, they’ll have to use it for it to be beneficial.
We need a government-run healthcare system that has a broadly-defined level of basic healthcare, and then tiered levels of healthcare where the defined quality of service tapers off. The top tiers of the QoS pyramid should be exactly the kinds of things that insurance policies are well-suited to; and private insurance companies can come in and make their profit selling policies on those tiers to scared rich people.
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Interesting, eh? Maybe insurance is the wrong paradigm for routine health events like childbirth. Maybe mutual-aid is a better model (like jimmy stewart explained to his savings and load *MEMBERS* during the bank run in ‘it’s a wonderful life’)
I’m Canadian, and I cannot really fully appreciate your situation. I just cannot wrap my head around the idea of a ‘basic’, as you say, health event having any kind of major or lasting impact on my finances in any way… It’s not within the realm of my experience.
However, the things I read about how Americans feel about their insurance makes it seem to me that policy holders like you *cannot* be the actual *customers* of the US private health insurance industry. These companies are doing well, so their customers must be satisfied.
Policy-holders can’t be the *customers* of this industry, because, as Moore points out, providing service to policy holders is a *drain* on insurers - fundamentally and structurally in contradiction with the profit motive. So insurance companies are not in the business of serving them. They can’t be, due to the economic structure of it all.
The customers of US private health-insurance companies can only be investors. Insurance companies must be like resource companies (mining, timber, hydroelectric) and policy holders are the fields they mine. Insurance companies are in the business of extracting as much profit from this resource-bed as they can (without *technically* committing fraud), and this extraction rate is the product they sell to their customers on the stock exchange. That extraction rate is what their customers buy.
This certainly seems consistent with what we hear about life down there!
The constantly and incomprehensibly boggling thing from an outsider’s point of view is the rhetoric of the US right that this private system is moral *because* it is private… Hunh?! Furthermore, using social institutions to manage mutually pooled resources for mutual aid is immoral. Reciprocal altruism as a basis for defining social institutions is… immoral, unpatriotic, even Satanic!
I wish things were better for you all. You are the richest national economy ever in the history of our species, and there is no reason for you all to be struggling like this. You aren’t asked to pave your own roads!! Dig your own sewers!! The government establishes basic conditions for the market to function, besides roads, courts of law, policing etc., why shouldn’t that include a healthy and well-education workforce, as part of the baseline support the government provides so that entrepreneurs can take all that for granted and build from there?
Well written, Jon.
Have yet to see the movie but
when it hit s HBO I will catch it.
Health Care is good if you can
afford it…and none of us can afford it without insurance.
Rather than changing our Health Care lets just fix the insurance problem and have the government pick up the tab for those who can’t afford it?
Sicko review roundup…
Here are some local SiCKO reviews from last Friday’s showing:
• Cathy McCaughan
• Doug McCaughan
• Tommy’s blog (Cathy and Doug’s son)
• Sarah’s blog (Cathy and Doug’s daughter)
• Whites Creek Steve
• Russ McBee
&bull…
I completely agree. I saw the movie a few hours ago. I got tears hearing about the woman who lost her husband and the other woman who lost her baby girl because of this. I always knew that insurance companies were pointless. . .and that they’re only there for money.
I don’t have insurance. I ended up having the worst pain in my entire life all because of bread. I have a high pain tolerance and never yell, let alone scream. I was screa-ming. Falling off the hospital bed in pain, couldn’t walk. During one visit, they tried to numb my intestines and it didn’t work. Anyway, I remember being put in a room. . .and while I was screaming and in pain, they sat right outside laughing and watching football. I waited for help for four hours or more while they had a good time in front of the TV. When the pain finally subsided, I got up and managed to walk out. Just for sitting in that room without seeing one doctor’s face, I was billed hundreds of dollars.
I had to diagnose myself and still can’t pinpoint exactly what is wrong. I just know to stay away from bread.
They also mentioned college being free in other countries. I was rejected for financial aid and I’m below poverty level. My life is now very unfulfilling and I am very stuck.
I feel abandoned and left behind. And it’s angering. It’s even worse that nobody does anything about it. They accept it like puppets. And continue to live for “me” instead of “we.”
Hi Jon! Have been lurking on your blog occasionally but this post requires me to speak up with a big Amen.
These kinds of issues are what led me to found http://www.healthcarepromise.org
Check out the website - it is one way to help move the country toward healthcare for all.
[...] just ran across this website, run by a friend of mine from college. What a great idea: The goal of this website is [...]