'Sicko' slant irksome even in Canada

Ok, so maybe Moore's facts on Canada are wrong. I'm not here to argue that one way or the other. What I am here to say is that I believe that health should be a natural born human right, Like water, like breathing air. I donb't care if youa re homelsss and never worked a day in your life or if you are rich enough to buy the best care. Moore is right in that socialized medicine is viewed in the U.S. as a form of communisim, or something that is not the governments responsibility. I believe that notion is wrong. And here is the truth, that if you were homeless and had no health care and had a health problem, you would want health care access. The facts are that our system costs too much. We have to wait a long time to get seen, and our system is not the most efficient. If I had the choice between no health care, or some health care that's perhaps not the most efficient, I'd take the inefficient care. Anything less, to me, seems to be a crime against humanity.

Ok, so maybe Moore's facts on Canada are wrong. I'm not here to argue that one way or the other. What I am here to say is that I believe that health should be a natural born human right, Like water, like breathing air. I donb't care if youa re homelsss and never worked a day in your life or if you are rich enough to buy the best care. Moore is right in that socialized medicine is viewed in the U.S. as a form of communisim, or something that is not the governments responsibility. I believe that notion is wrong. And here is the truth, that if you were homeless and had no health care and had a health problem, you would want health care access. The facts are that our system costs too much. We have to wait a long time to get seen, and our system is not the most efficient. If I had the choice between no health care, or some health care that's perhaps not the most efficient, I'd take the inefficient care. Anything less, to me, seems to be a crime against humanity.

Sorry about your mother. However, millions of people die each year in the U.S., because the American health care system failed to save their lives. I am sure there are thousands of stories which are much worst then yours. Anecdotal evidence has no place in a debate. The truth is more Canadian's like their health care system then American's (http://dll.umaine.edu/ble/U.S.%20HCweb.pdf) and they spend half as much! Also, wait times are not as bad as people make them out to be. ( http://www.healthservices.gov.bc.ca/waitlist/ ). If a Canadian doesn't want to wait, he is free to travel to the U.S. or any other Country.

I grew up and Canada, but now I live in the USA. Neither system of healthcare is perfect. However, for all the flaws that there may be in the Canadian system, it is still far better for everyone to be able to get care when they need it. Denials of care based on a companies bottom dollar in my eyes is dispicable. People have died because companies didn't want to have their profits affected. People have died because the claims person wanted to get a bonus from their denial rate. How would you like to have a loved ones life put in jeopardy because someone wanted to get a bigger bonus so they could spend their next vacation on a caribbean island? Lastly, go to any bankruptcy court hearings and notice that 70% of the people filing for bankruptcy are doing so because of medical expenses. No the canadian system is not perfect, but it sure beats the for profit healthcare system that is going on in the USA.

Hey - guess who sponsors this woman's think tank!

Pfizer. Lily. And PhRma!

Shocking that she would feel this way, isn't it?

Take out a classified ad in an American publication and ask people to contact you if they have experienced any problems or challenges with their health insurance company or with receiving healthcare in their community. That’s what Michael Moore did, and to his amazement he received thousands of responses. Some of the most egregious of these responses became the basis of Mssr. Moore’s documedy “Sicko”.

Everyone involved in healthcare or the selling of health insurance or interested in improving the quality of healthcare in the United States needs to see the movie or at least be familiar with one major point the documedy makes: Sh*t Happens! - And some of it quite deplorable and unconscionable.

What Michael Moore did NOT do was take out a classified ad in Canada or England or France or some other country with “nationalized” healthcare to ask people to contact him if they had experienced any problems or challenges with receiving healthcare in their community. Email, as I have, your friends, family and business associates in the UK, Austria or Canada and you will hear "horror stories" as well. Their healthcare systems are far from the panaceas Moore attempts to paint.

Yes, “Sicko” is convincing in showing the viewer that the delivery of healthcare in the United States can be at times inequitable, unaffordable, unattainable, and downright ludicrous, but Moore misses the mark in providing evidence that a universal “nationalized” plan would “get it right” or is even necessary. It doesn't resolve the "shortage" of healthcare professionals in the U.S. Nor does it resolve the rising costs of healthcare. Health insurance - whether issued by the private or public sector - is expensive because the delivery of healthcare is expensive, and costs continue to rise as technology/R & D increases, for instance.

What IS necessary though are reforms - commitments by the American people to provide uninsured children programs, high risk insurance pools, catastrophic healthcare billing "stop gaps", as well as education on the "costs" associated with poor health and wellness lifestyle decisions. We also need to discuss unlinking health insurance from an "employer" relationship, providing true "portability" of health plans by adopting nationally standardized insurance plans, and introducing reasonable "guaranteed issue" individual plans. Most Americans (at least those with health insurance) still value "choice" in the selection of their healthcare benefits.

Private and public partnerships are needed to tackle our healthcare issues, yet each "solution" has the potential to add to the costs borne by the consumer via the private market or the taxpayer via government programs. If "Sicko" in its simplistic approach did nothing, it showed there has got to be, as Bill McKay, the Robert Redford character in “The Candidate”, expounded repeatedly, “A Better Way.” What better time to find a better way, than now.

Ms. Pipes carefully ignores that not one single Canadian has ever lost their home due to their health care bills. Contrast that with the largest cause of personal bankruptcy in the US being health care bills. How many American families are living in their cars, or on the street, because they lost their jobs and homes due to massive health care bills? Canada may not have the final answer, but they are certainly doing some things very right.

Consider the number of people in sales, marketing, lobbying, insurance, and advertising that stand between you and your doctor's care and prescriptions. Each of them take a cut, increasing costs astronomically. Single payer socialized insurance and research funding makes sense when paired with optional additional insurance for those who want and can afford it.

I just don't understand some of the rhetoric being used in this debate. For proponents of the single-payer Canadian-like system: There's no doubting that coverage is tremendous and that its ability to guarantee health care to those unable to pay is an absolutely critical and necessary feature. But there's also no doubting that access is a problem and that bureacracy and waiting times undoes many of the positives of the system. For proponents of the US system: There's no doubt that it's the most flexible in treating the most severe illnesses and that it keeps decision-making in the patients and families hands, but there's also no doubt that far, far too many people are left out in the cold without coverage, and that any of the care that is given is far too expensive.

Why don't both sides of the debate admit that the best way to proceed is to study what works, what doesn't, then attempt to implement what works well and guard against the pitfalls? How do you get coverage and avoid the terrible waits? How do you leave control of what treatments to pursue in families and their doctor's hands and still provide coverage for a family, even if they're poor and lack resources to pay? Why can't people treat this like a healthcare issue and drop the constant reiteration of political points? Calling healthcare an absolute right doesn't change the fact that poor implementation of a government system will deny care to segments of the population, and calling government systems communist or nanny-ist doesn't change the fact that much intervention has already taken place, and will continue to take place, and isn't necessarily of itself contrary to competition or efficiency?

Instead of replicating mistakes by adopting systems wholesale or maintaining the status quo, why don't people try to synthesize a new system that isn't Canadian, European, or American, take the best of each system, and find ways to make it all work together? And to identify the weaknesses of each system and try do design them out, or at least safeguard against them? I swear, all I ever see anywhere are talking points on this debate trying to push one system over another, as if those are the only choices. They're not.

Forcing someone else to pay for my healthcare is tantamount to slavery. I don't have a right to someone else's labor. What we need is less government. The american system is highly regulated and controlled by the government. So let's not mince words. We are not comparing a government run healthcare system with one run by the market. We are comparing a government run healthcare system with one that is mostly run by the government. Let's be explicit about what we are talking about.

A typical Bushie trick to present false choices. The gov't already controls distribution of food via massive subsidies to agri-business. The well-being of Americans is too important to be left in the hands of private companies whose only goal is to maximize profits by denying coverage. Bushies say they support the family, but when the family loses their home and their kids drop out of school because they're living on the street because they couldn't pay their health care bills Bushies call them welfare queens. Americans are tired of Republican tricks and lies that benefit only the haves and the have mores - as Bushie likes to call his base. Your greed has undone you. Next election, you Republicans are going down hard!

This sounds pretty serious, and I thought only US has health care administrative problems. I recently learned that term life insurance quotes get to be more valuable once health care problems get deeper.