michael moore on larry king
gue_barium
Posts: 5,515
good man, michael.
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KING: Would you say the Canadians are happy with their system?
MOORE: Yes, they are. According to the latest polls that they've taken, 78 percent say that they're happy with their system. You won't find that number with Americans in terms of our health care system.
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It looks like the video will be on the cnn site tomorrow, for those interested.
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Not anywhere remotely close.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
he had a voice that was strong and loud and
i swallowed his facade cos i'm so
eager to identify with
someone above the crowd
someone who seemed to feel the same
someone prepared to lead the way
Freeper alert.
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In Canada dental work is not covered. You need a plan at your work or to buy into one. However tooth extraction is like $60 a tooth or something like that. Approx the same for cleanings.
I'm quite happy with the system in Canada. It's not super awesome, but it's certainly adequate, and it will keep your ass alive and healthy. I am looking at brain surgery in a few months btw... In reality, doctors can only do so much, the rest is mostly up to the individual.
The main thing is to be persistent and knowledgeable about your symptoms, condition etc..and get an umpteenth opinion if you want/need to (free).
There's always horror stories, but that rings true for everything that happens in life from going to the bathroom to sky diving.
and reveling in it's loyalty. It's made by forming coalitions
over specific principles, goals, and policies.
http://i36.tinypic.com/66j31x.jpg
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Who's Really 'Sicko'
In Canada, dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week. Humans can wait two to three years.
BY DAVID GRATZER
Thursday, June 28, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
TORONTO--"I haven't seen 'Sicko,' " says Avril Allen about the new Michael Moore documentary, which advocates socialized medicine for the United States. The film, which has been widely viewed on the Internet, and which will officially open in the U.S. and Canada on Friday, has been getting rave reviews. But Ms. Allen, a lawyer, has no plans to watch it. She's just too busy preparing to file suit against Ontario's provincial government about its health-care system next month.
Her client, Lindsay McCreith, would have had to wait for four months just to get an MRI, and then months more to see a neurologist for his malignant brain tumor. Instead, frustrated and ill, the retired auto-body shop owner traveled to Buffalo, N.Y., for a lifesaving surgery. Now he's suing for the right to opt out of Canada's government-run health care, which he considers dangerous.
Ms. Allen figures the lawsuit has a fighting chance: In 2005, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that "access to wait lists is not access to health care," striking down key Quebec laws that prohibited private medicine and private health insurance.
In the U.S., 83 House Democrats voted for a bill in 1993 calling for single-payer health care. That idea collapsed with HillaryCare and since then has existed on the fringes of the debate--winning praise from academics and pressure groups, but remaining largely out of the political discussion. Mr. Moore's documentary intends to change that, exposing millions to his argument that American health care is sick and socialized medicine is the cure.
It's not simply that Mr. Moore is wrong. His grand tour of public health care systems misses the big story: While he prescribes socialism, market-oriented reforms are percolating in cities from Stockholm to Saskatoon.
Mr. Moore goes to London, Ontario, where he notes that not a single patient has waited in the hospital emergency room more than 45 minutes. "It's a fabulous system," a woman explains. In Britain, he tours a hospital where patients marvel at their free care. A patient's husband explains: "It's not America." Humorously, Mr. Moore finds a cashier dispensing money to patients (for transportation). In France, a doctor explains the success of the health-care system with the old Marxist axiom: "You pay according to your means, and you receive according to your needs."
It's compelling material--I know because, born and raised in Canada, I used to believe in government-run health care. Then I was mugged by reality.
Consider, for instance, Mr. Moore's claim that ERs don't overcrowd in Canada. A Canadian government study recently found that only about half of patients are treated in a timely manner, as defined by local medical and hospital associations. "The research merely confirms anecdotal reports of interminable waits," reported a national newspaper. While people in rural areas seem to fare better, Toronto patients receive care in four hours on average; one in 10 patients waits more than a dozen hours.
This problem hit close to home last year: A relative, living in Winnipeg, nearly died of a strangulated bowel while lying on a stretcher for five hours, writhing in pain. To get the needed ultrasound, he was sent by ambulance to another hospital.
In Britain, the Department of Health recently acknowledged that one in eight patients wait more than a year for surgery. Around the time Mr. Moore was putting the finishing touches on his documentary, a hospital in Sutton Coldfield announced its new money-saving linen policy: Housekeeping will no longer change the bed sheets between patients, just turn them over. France's system failed so spectacularly in the summer heat of 2003 that 13,000 people died, largely of dehydration. Hospitals stopped answering the phones and ambulance attendants told people to fend for themselves.
With such problems, it's not surprising that people are looking for alternatives. Private clinics--some operating in a "gray zone" of the law--are now opening in Canada at a rate of about one per week.
Canadian doctors, once quiet on the issue of private health care, elected Brian Day as president of their national association. Dr. Day is a leading critic of Canadian medicare; he opened a private surgery hospital and then challenged the government to shut it down. "This is a country," Dr. Day said by way of explanation, "in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years."
Market reforms are catching on in Britain, too. For six decades, its socialist Labour Party scoffed at the very idea of private medicine, dismissing it as "Americanization." Today Labour favors privatization, promising to triple the number of private-sector surgical procedures provided within two years. The Labour government aspires to give patients a choice of four providers for surgeries, at least one of them private, and recently considered the contracting out of some primary-care services--perhaps even to American companies.
Other European countries follow this same path. In Sweden, after the latest privatizations, the government will contract out some 80% of Stockholm's primary care and 40% of total health services, including Stockholm's largest hospital. Beginning before the election of the new conservative chancellor, Germany enhanced insurance competition and turned state enterprises over to the private sector (including the majority of public hospitals). Even in Slovakia, a former Marxist country, privatizations are actively debated.
Under the weight of demographic shifts and strained by the limits of command-and-control economics, government-run health systems have turned out to be less than utopian. The stories are the same: dirty hospitals, poor standards and difficulty accessing modern drugs and tests.
Admittedly, the recent market reforms are gradual and controversial. But facts are facts, the reforms are real, and they represent a major trend in health care. What does Mr. Moore's documentary say about that? Nothing.
Dr. Gratzer, a practicing physician licensed in Canada and the U.S. and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, is the author of "The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care" (Encounter, 2006).
Mike Gravel supports Single-Payer universal health insurance too.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=8T2A9aoKWXc
i guess you didn't see the rebuttal on cnn. sicko is pure bs. in cuba; a doctor earns $20.00 per month. if your not a resident you have to pay for your care unless you're making a documentary to make the us look bad. there is a seperate hospital for non-residents. residents must supply their own sheets etc and food. the conditions are deplorable and wouldn't be accepted in most civilized countries. also; in other countries the working class pays for the layabouts as healthcare is paid for through taxes. france has the best healthcare but it also has the highest taxes. in other countries the wait times are incredable. they showed patients in canada waiting an entire day for an appointment.
when it's all said and done; YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR.
The same applies to every country in the world. But then this has nothing to do with the subject at hand - America's health care system.
the movie made it seem like you can take a boat to the cuban harbour and get $60K surgery free. a couple of reasons america will never have free healthcare is america has too many layabouts. i refuse to pay for a dozen other peoples healthcare just because they either don't want to work or don't report their drug earnings. the next reason is crap like sicko is presented to the people and the sheep follow along. but they follow blindly because they believe the bs in the movie. with the masses filled with bs information they demand free healthcare based on the lies they were told. but they don't know what they're asking for. they're asking for their taxes to be doubled. they're asking for waits of hours to see a doctor and possably years waiting for surgeries or even MRIs.
be careful what you ask for; you just may get it.
US-15.4%
Canada-9.4%
France-10.5%
Cuba-6.3%
UK-8.4%
http://www.who.int/whosis/database/core/core_select_process.cfm?countries=all&indicators=nha
The US economy is also MUCH bigger than the economies of the UK, Cuba, Canada, and France so the US expenditures on health care are simply ridiculous compared to places with universal health care and for what?
Check out this study contrasting the costs of health care in the US in one of the most respected medical journals:
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/349/8/768
Here is something interesting. Thailand and India are actually advertising for people to come to them for inexpensive medical care. The term Medical tourism is used.
http://www.hygeiasurgery.com/about_us.html
but the illusion of knowledge.
~Daniel Boorstin
Only a life lived for others is worth living.
~Albert Einstein
your post came before this post showing discontent for socialized medicine in other countries.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editor...l?id=110010266
i'd also like to add that america although ranked 37 in medical care; was #1 in customer satisfaction. i will pay to be treated NOW. i will pay to have clean sheets daily; my MRI done the day it is ordered by the doctor; and i will pay to be treated like royality when i'm sick. but i won't pay for you.
i support canada's move toward allowing private healthcare. those who can afford better care have it available to them. those who can't still have the government crap. hey; that's almost like the us medicaid system. imagine that.
My friend has been twisting my leg to see this movie and regurgitating "facts" he's heard about this movie. I refuse because I can't stand Michael Moore and his way left attitude (this is coming from a lefty mind you). I also can't stand how he completely shadows the other view.
Our health care is the way it is because of capitalism, and I personally think it's fine the way it is (in most cases).
i hope for your sake that the shoe is not on the other foot one day. a callous and cold hearted person may not help to pay for someone else's need.
i was born dirt poor so the shoe was on the other foot. i'm giving back what i was given when i needed it.
this article is a load of horseshit. it's based on the idea that other countires who use a socialized form of healthcare feel that their respective systems are perfect. a perfect system does not exist anywhere. there are many that are better than others, and many places within each country where conditions will be different than in another part of the country. countries generally recognize when their systems are having problems and try to correct those problems.
i would think that you would be a little more understanding then.
that was cnn's point. only one side was presented and what was shown was edited and prearranged. they went to a canadian hospital and talked to patients on gurnies (sp?) waiting over 7 hours to be seen in the er. they talked to people in britain too.
you can't change things when you fill the mass's heads with worthless crap. give us the straight facts or give us nothing. people are impressionable and believe this junk.
i used to be. i used to give 50% of my net income to causes. the government changed the law to 10% so i paid taxes on 40% of what i gave. then i lived in the city for a while and decided people weren't worth it.
i'm sorry, that's sad that your opinion of others has gone sour.
yes, I'll take the word of Michael Moore over the word of a physician who has practiced in both countries :rolleyes: The takehome is that not everyone IS happy with their healtsystem.
i think the biggest reason is that free healthcare isn't free
you said it all in one sentence.
americans won't pay the taxes of say france. most of the working class is struggling now. how can they pay higher taxes? for the rich; avoiding taxes is easy. there's always a loophole to jump through.
Very well said, Roland. The system here isn't perfect but for the most part I am happy with it too. My mum rather got shafted with her health issues but I also have to realize that she wasn't as proactive with her own health as she needs to be. She is old school as in what the doctor says is golden. I forced her to see a specialist in a larger city and had orginally wanted her to go to Toronto to see someone. By the time I finally got her to Halifax her situ had declined as to there was no way to get her back to how she was they could only stop the progession. She struggles from day to day but she could be worse.
I hope your surgery goes well for you.
the middle class can't pay more, w/o falling to the lower class. It seems the dems have all of these utopic ideas about helping everyone, but how will they be able to afford it? We already spend 46 % of our nations budget on entitlement programs...we cant just keep adding more and more.
It is a very sad world when people have walks and runs for cancer research, drug research, crohns research, etc, and in the end, the ones that benefit from all these great causes are the rich who can afford the treatments and transplants that the dollars raised came up with because the insurance companies will not pay for them and lord knows the average person cannot afford a 100,000 dollar surgery.
Hit the rich for a couple more bucks as well. They could easily afford it and help their fellow Americans in the process.