Sicko
I watched Sicko last night and, once again, found myself simply staggered at the American health system. The whole notion of running a health system based on the profits of insurance companies rather than the well being of patients strikes me as unbelievably dumb.
With the costs of operations being so high it seems obvious that, in any system run for profit, the temptation will always be to cut corners, and that - in the same way as insurance companies attempt to refuse claims when your house is burgled - that this same logic will eventually be applied to your health care. Turning down a claim is a way of maximizing profits and will eventually become too tempting to resist.
And, whenever I read Republicans attempting to defend this insane system, it always seems to come down to why should they pay for poor people's treatment. As if turning one's back on the poor and infirm is actually some kind of higher moral purpose.
Not that this health care comes cheaply. Americans currently spend more on health care than any other country on Earth.
And yet:
The World Health Organization's ratings of health care system performance among 191 member nations, published in 2000, ranked Canada 30th and the U.S. 37th, and the overall health of Canadians 35th and Americans 72nd.Right wingers have somehow managed to stigmatize national health systems as "socialised medicine", as if attaching the word socialism to anything immediately renders it useless.
But the facts speak for themselves. Leaving aside the obvious horror stories that Moore managed to uncover, the simple fact is that - despite spending more than any other nation - the overall health of Americans is ranked 72nd in the world.
In a country that can put men on the moon that fact alone should render the current system unacceptable.
2 comments:
The Republican dream is one where everybody pays for what they "get". The consider this to be "fair" (never mind that only those with the money get to choose what is "fair" when paying for the labor that creates the wealth in the first place). This "fairness" is one of the unspoken agendas of the Republican party in almost every policy: healthcare, infrastructure (Republicans are very into tollroads), education (vouchers), everything. I think you'll find that even among Republicans motivated by religion rather than money (or, perhaps, in addition to money) that there is still a feeling of "fairplay", but substituting righteous belief for money.
Of course, this isnt the true reason for the sheer criminal greed, graft and cronyism of Congress, the Administration and the Insurance Lobby, but rather helps explain why the rank-and-file go along with the system even though it is so obviously to their own detriment.
Dave, The stupidity behind the rank and file buying into this bullshit really sickens me. They are presupposing that their current financial status will always remain unchanged. When, the one thing that a serious illness does is wipe out one's ability to earn.
They should surely realise that the reason we wish to act collectively when it comes to the issue of medicine is because none of us know when illness may strike any one of us.
I find such shortsightedness quite baffling.
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