So, Michael Moore’s got a new movie coming out, which means it’s time for another round of “Naturally, I generally abhor Moore’s methods, but this time he made a really good movie.” I have no idea why it’s mandatory to condemn Moore to praise him, but at this point in time, it’s pretty much the cliche when reviewing his movies. Which is why I liked Ezra’s review of Sicko—he doesn’t play the usually-Moore-annoys-me card in order to gain some credibility to give the movie a good review. He also has a stellar read on Moore’s role in the national discourse:
In this, it fits well with the Michael Moore oeuvre, which has always been more complex and incisive than either critics or supporters gave him credit for. Moore has routinely explored the dark edges of the country that don’t fit with his, or our, conception of what America is. Roger and Me, his breakthrough film on the decline of American manufacturing and the abandonment of Rust Belt economies, asked how we could allow a once-proud city like Flint, Michigan, to collapse in on itself, and how we could permit those most culpable to blithely ignore its demise. Bowling for Columbine was about our casual acceptance of violence and fear as permanent residents in our towns and neighborhoods. And Fahrenheit 9/11 was about our peculiar willingness to tacitly accept our leaders’ relentless dishonesty.
One of the sadder examples of how anti-Michael Moore revisionism has taken hold in the common wisdom has got to be the way people misremember Bowling for Columbine. Example:
And while “Sicko” is, in my view, the most persuasive and least aggravating of all of Moore’s movies, it still bears many of the frustrating Moore earmarks — most notably, a deliberately simplistic desire to render everything in black-and-white terms, as if he didn’t trust his audience enough to follow him into some of the far more complex gray areas.
Reading that sentence made my eyebrow shoot up. Sure, Fahrenheit 9/11 was pretty black-and-white in the way that it painted the Shrub as an irredeemable villain, but that’s a fair assessment of the man. But the idea that Moore doesn’t paint in gray is more a product of conservative-fueled revisionism than of remembering Moore’s movies accurately, because Bowling for Columbine was a rather complex look at the place of violence in the American character. It’s remembered as an anti-gun control screed, but seriously, watch it again. It’s anything but—if you’ll remember, he even noted that Canada has lax gun control like the U.S., but nowhere near the violence. The movie ended up gently condemning the liberal affection for gun control a a solution to our violence problems. And in a short period of time, he managed to point to a large number of factors that feed our violence-driven culture. It’s been a couple years since I’ve seen it, but off the top of my head, I remember:
- American imperialism and the military fetishizing that has erupted in the wake of much government and Hollywood propaganda to support imperialism.
- The history of American racism and the way that white people project our own violent history onto black people and assume they are dangerous.
- Alienation. I was particularly impressed with Matt Stone’s interview about the Columbine killings and his observation about how high school is romanticized in our culture, when it’s actually kind of hellish, and how this feeds teenage alienation to the point it can become murderous.
- Media sensationalism. It’s deeply amusing to me that people treat Moore like he’s some kind of alarmist when he’s actually an astute critic of media alarmism, the real kind, where the media makes a big fuss over issues that aren’t actually that important in the grand scheme of things. Surely I’m not the only one who recalls the part of Bowling where Moore pointed out that the media makes crime in America seem much more rampant than it is, which perversely feeds the paranoia that leads to so much unnecessary violence.
I got the impression watching the movie that Moore probably did set out to make a movie promoting gun control and then ended up, in the course of his research, realizing that gun control was a band-aid solution to a much deeper problem. While he still gave gun nuts hell—which they totally deserve for their resistance to even common sense measures that fall far short of interfering with legitimate gun trade—he also skewered the black-and-white thinking that posits that gun control is the solution to the problem. And for his efforts, he gets slurred as a black-and-white thinker, by the very black-and-white thinkers who can’t even handle a tiny bit of criticism of the NRA for engaging in sleazy tactics like holding conventions in cities that have experienced mass shootings recently.
But I do think liberals who dislike Moore so strongly are genuine in their distaste and not just trotting it out to appear fair’n'balanced. And I think that Ezra’s review points to why—the overarching theme of Moore’s career has been an attack on American exceptionalism, a disease that infects both the left and the right in this country. Granted, the right suffers from the disease far more, but the belief that America is somehow better or at least different and can’t be held up to the same standards as other countries is endemic. It’s why so many usually intelligent liberal types fell into the trap of supporting the invasion of Iraq, when it should have been clear from the beginning what a bad idea it was—they just believed, in their heart of hearts, that America could succeed at this task that would be impossible for anyone else. Maybe the Marshall Plan’s effectiveness has deluded us into believing we have powers we don’t, or maybe it’s just that exceptionalism is drilled into our heads from the first day we crack open a history book in school. But Moore’s repetitive refrain that Americans would overcome a lot of our problems by learning a little humility grates on a fundamental and widely shared belief, which goes a long way towards explaining why critics particularly don’t like the way Moore sandbags people and takes them down a few notches. It’s a representation of what he’s doing to our cherished belief in our superiority.
The problem is Moore’s right. American exceptionalism is our nation’s tragic flaw and until we set out to fix it, we’re going to continue to make one avoidable blunder (like the Iraq war) after another.
289 Responses to “Hating on Michael Moore is a worn-out cliche”
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Excellent write-up Amanda. I think, though, the interview in Bowling for Columbine was with Matt Stone IIRC.
But the idea that Moore doesn’t paint in gray is more a product of conservative-fueled revisionism than of remembering Moore’s movies accurately,
Especially when it comes from the leading members of “there is only black and white” there is never any gray (unless we do it).
But how can one misremember “Bowling for Columbine,” or “Fahrenheit 9/11″ when it seems to be played ever 5 seconds on some cable channel somewhere for months at a time. Or are my sons just exceptionally good at ferretting it out (that and “Super Size Me”), because whenever they complain that there is nothing on, the tv always seems to fall on these two movies.
Except for this month “Dances with Wolves,” and “Braveheart,” are being played ad nauseum.
I think the back handed compliments are the only some moderates can feel safe in praising his films. The right has so demonized Moore that it is the only way they feel that they can maintain credibility.
Frankly I think all of it is a great compliment to Moore, back handed compliments and all. He really gets it, his pieces have substance and they move people — eveything the right hates.
For the record, it was Matt Stone, not Trey Parker.
I was particularly impressed with Trey Parker’s [actually Matt Stone’s] interview about the Columbine killings and his observation about how high school is romanticized in our culture, when it’s actually kind of hellish, and how this feeds teenage alienation to the point it can become murderous.
Not to negate this point, which is a very good one, but Trey Parker and Matt Stone are actually strong critics of Michael Moore, largely because of Bowling for Columbine.
Well, Moore says things we don’t want to hear. I think people latch onto what I believe are relatively minor flaws in his film-making because of that. Lord knows the folks on the right do.
BTW, I haven’t been reading Pandagon much lately, but I love the “Blaspheme!” button.
Fixed the error. Apologies to Stone. The South Park guys have bought some fairly long-lasting gratitude from me for their episode mocking Bill Donohue.
He goes after Hillary in his latest film, the reich wingers got nowhere to go with it…
he’s effectively portrayed Clinton as a Rockefeller Republican…
a hawkish fiscal moderate.
Another theme in “Columbine” was fear — what are we so afraid of and why are we so afraid of it — and how it drove people to think they needed guns for “protection.” He explored some of the same things Glassner explored in Culture of Fear, everything from being irrationally afraid of being murdered to the sort of stuff you see on the local news, e.g., “Are your socks killing you? Tune in at 11 for important information you can use to protect your family.”
More touches on the fear thing a bit in “Sicko,” too.
I’ve never understood why Michael Moore was derided by a friend of mine. I can’t even get specific information from him on why he hates MM so much.
Oddly, my friend is the only one I know who is vocally anti-Moore.
Not being fond of movies, I’ve only seen F-9/11, and found it interesting, but I understand it to be one man’s opinion, not Gospel Truth. *shrug*
We all come away with our own perceptions, in the end. What’s really important is the dialog it engenders, I believe.
Edie
I think that whole “anti michael moore thing” is part of a larger public liberal/public intellectual fear of being tarred with the same brush as activists and propagandists. I love Moore’s work and I found it very challenging an illuminating. Its hard to remember how, before 9/11, he was not really a household name. People who saw Roger and Me for the first time, when it came out, and not in a michael moore/docu/propaganda retrospective are actually a pretty small and select bunch. And they were a pretty small and select bunch because people who see documentaries are small and select, not necessariy elite–because documentaries don’t get a big distribution. What Moore was doing was revolutionary because *no one else was doing it.* You could see pro corporate propaganda on any channel of any tv and embedded in any movie but you couldn’t see the america moore was showing you unless you peered around the edges of bad tv news and saw what was lurking behind the endless parade of local disasters.
In fact that is what I think is moore’s genius. Not only that he demands, through his everyman, an answer to questions that are too crude and rude for liberal pundits to be asking but that he looks behind the news coverage to see what is left on the cutting room floor–e.g. his famous shot of bush looking frightened on 9/11.
That’s his genius, and that’s rare and uncomfortable for elites (whether right or left). I remember thinking while I was watching columbine that moore is probably a pretty aspergers type guy. He refuses to worry about how other people perceive him or his questions, he refuses to be embarrassed by things other people would literally rather die than do (ask to see someone knowing they are going to be refused). I think the success and respect accorded to, say,the crew of 60 minutes or bill moyers depends heavily on their complicity not in the politics of republicans or liberals but in their acceptance of the cultural norms of the notion of an elite and of elite storytelling.
Take Moyers or Koppel or anyone else of that stature. What is their work but a series of short propaganda films on a given topic. Why are they respected and Moore reviled? its not the liberality/progressiveness of the content its the culture of the content. Moyers, koppel et al are top down auteurs who represent themselves as elite daddy figures in control of the information they are offering you. If they accept one thing in their work its a kind of magisterial, polite, hierarchical view of things. They are polite and deferential to their subjects even as they embarrass them. They are polite and deferential to the notion of a hierarchy of knowledge an dmeaning in which some know more than others, some deserve to have their stories told more than others. Moore’s work demands that people who don’t know how they got where they got be given attention. Even nobodies like the “pets or meat” woman or the woman in the shelter protesting bush end up with screen time. And you have to work out how you feel about them and what is happening to them for yourself. My own feeling about moore’s work is that it would play *very well* to lower and working class people if they ever got a chance to see it and it plays very badly to a lot of upper class people because moore refuses to bow to the demands of gentility–the first demand, of course, is to not make waves.
Also, as an aside, I think that moore comes in for exactly the same kind of criticism that edwards does for the same reason–its convenient. That is: no one thinks of accusing any othe rfilmaker of making money off hi sfilms, or failing to care adequately about all the viewpoints shown in the film, or of structuring his films to get an emotional response. Why does moore? because the charge of “hypocrisy” that gets leveled from right to left always follows this well worn path. The right holds up an image of an egg head upper class intellectual lefty and says “but moore doesn’t fit that mold so he must be a fake/hypocrite” or they hold up an image of a poor person (legitimately a communist because poor people would vote communisgt if they could) and they say “well moore doesn’t fit that mold because he’s rich now so he’s a hypocrite” and they hope that the charge of fat hypocrite just kind of blinds people to actually listening to what moore is trying to do (and doing) in his films. And it works especially when liberal elites get embarrassed by the ways Moore doesn’t kowtow to them and doesn’t make their knowledge and their progressivism define his and they attack him too.
aimai
To call Moore’s films “simplistic” or “biased” is to miss an essential element of them: the man’s a populist who understands how to appeal to an audience in a movie theatre.
Your average filmgoer ain’t gonna check out Sicko because it offers a reasoned, balanced view of the health care system, taking into consideration the views of the opposition, any more than they’ll go to Die Hard 4 if Bruce Willis were to sit down and negotiate with the villains.
Moore’s saying, “Yippee-ki-yay, motherfuckers” as much as Willis is just before they kick ass.
Very astute and well written assessment, Amanda.
Also, Michael Moore is fat. That seems to piss a lot of people off, him having the audaciousness to enjoy white starches and rich, marbled cuts of meat.
I think the reason why some of the ‘left/liberals’ don’t like MM is because he’s just as hard on Democrats as Republicans, and in fact often portrays them as corporate stooges that vary little from one another. In other words, his rhetoric reminds them of Ralph Nader with a camera.
I won’t forgive him for the crap he spewed in 2000 on behalf of st ralph.
When Bill Clinton was president, I paid 99 dollars a month, for my part of my healthcare plan. Now, it’s 425 dollars.
’nuff said!
Nice analysis, Amanda. I just encountered this trend w/ a friend of mine who’s just as lefty as I am, but not nearly as much of a political junkie, who was “uncomfortable” with what Moore does, largely because of the right-wing propaganda about him.
“Trey Parker and Matt Stone are actually strong critics of Michael Moore, largely because of Bowling for Columbine.” I remember this, but does anyone know why? Stone is one of the only people who comes off *well* in “Bowling for Columbine.”
I actually like Moore’s movies and find them thought-provoking and complex. I never got the criticism of Bowling for Columbine because to me it was Moore asking what is it about American culture that results in greater gun violence than comparable nations and ultimately having no pat conclusion. In other words, guns are not the problem our culture is, but how to fix it is anyone’s guess really. I will definitely see Sicko when I get the opportunity.
That said, I don’t like Moore. During the 2004 campaign I went to a Michael Moore speech at my university. Though he is funny and thought-provoking in person, his public appearances are hardly examples of complex thinking- he panders to the audience and it’s annoying. At one point he went on a tirade about how in England people didn’t have to work jobs they hated but could be supported by the state for many months to “pursue their bliss” and how the U.S. should do the same. I almost fell out of my seat laughing as the crowd cheered like a bunch of sheep. I may support a social safety net so that employees do not have to tolerate exploitation because of insecurity, but there is no such thing as the society where everyone only does the work they enjoy. It’s the disconnect between his work and his public persona that irritates me.
I have not seen the movie yet. I will.
I confess to discussing previous Moore films in the “well, he is using the media like it was a sledge hammer” tone of faint praise. But you know what? He is not building a consensus, he’s demolishing a lie so what is wrong with a sledgehammer? I didn’t have any problems with The Ground Truth because the media were already serving up the war on Iraqis as newsburger, heavily laced with republican talking points. I gotta learn to like a thing for what it means to be or dislike it but not talk about it based on who I think is listening.
Michael Moore is a hero.
Think about it:
A guy uses his considerable media power to go up against a multibillion dollar industry with the expressed intent of destroying it. That’s bravery.
He’s not a gnat. He’s a genuine threat. He will change the terms of debate, given the current pre-earthquake conditions.
I would not be shocked if there was a plane or car accident. But I would be very sad.
Most–well, many–Americans have immunized themselves to documentaries, the way they don’t clench up when they see the feed-the-children ads on TV. They watch all those lovely nature documentaries and have learned to shut off their responses just about the time when the silky narrator talks about how these wonderful animals are losing their habitat and dying.
Moore doesn’t allow that comfort: too many change-ups, too many violations of documentary technique. He knows your expectations and works against them–and in that way he’s adversarial to the audience. (I find him similar to Spike Lee: lots of progressives hate them, even when there’s no ideological difference between them. Lee-and Moore–deliberately get in your face, and nobody likes that. Works, though.)
F911 was effective in that regard: most Bush supporters could watch a conventional documentary without raising an eyebrow or a bloos pressure point: they’d just reject it as soon as it starts. But there are too many surpises: they’d expect the main accusations but would NOT be ready for Wolfowitz’s comb–the fake Bonanza, pr the gum-chewing Britney Spears–nor would they expect the transformation of a ‘good’ interviewee at the beginning to a tragic figure at the end. Nor would they be prepared for tthe fact that the last part of the film was theh best piece of support-the-troops filmmaking the war had yet seen. You’re all set to hate Michael Moore–but what do you do when he suddenly turns into Ernie Pyle?
He doesn’t play fair–but playing fair allows people to ignore you.
Apparently, the fight between Moore and the South Park guys is about an agreement to do the cartoon in “Bowling for Columbine”. It’s not a political dispute; they aren’t really the sorts to hold nasty political grudges, believe it or not. They’re friendly with a lot of the people they lampoon/kill in Team America.
I got into quite a long argument with a friend of mine once about Bowling for Columbine. He genuinely thought it was a black-and-white anti-gun screed, thought that Moore had come to all his conclusions before even looking at the facts, and thought (for example) that the editing of Charlton Heston’s NRA speech intentionally misrepresented what he was saying.
I was really shocked, because I know this friend to be smart, thoughtful, and open to analyzing people’s arguments as they’re actually presented. I still wonder if we saw the same movie. Because what I saw was that Moore started out maybe thinking he’d make a black-and-white anti-gun screed, but as he looked at what was actually going on, it became a lot more complicated — and he portrayed the complication honestly. The funniest thing to me was that, if asked to summarize the conclusions of that film in one sentence, I’d say “Guns don’t kill people — fear kills people.”
I didn’t think Fahrenheit 9/11 was as strong — I thought there was plenty to knock Bush on, without making vast conspiracy implications that Moore really didn’t have the evidence for. I mean, there’s vast conspiracies, but different ones. However, the second part of the movie — about the families of fallen soldiers — was very strong, and I thought made his point a lot better: these people have promised to sacrifice their lives in the service of their country. Respect that and don’t abuse it.
And yeah, I’m going to go see Sicko as soon as I can.
The middle position is to be bought and paid for by the finanical interests.
Moore portrayed this objectively.
Thus he should be ridiculed.
Perhaps we can have a prosecutor indict Moore at election time to change perception of him?
Rove’s on the phone now…
Take Moyers or Koppel or anyone else of that stature. What is their work but a series of short propaganda films on a given topic. Why are they respected and Moore reviled?
aimai -
They aren’t. The right has long campaigned to get anything Moyers does taken off PBS, and not have PBS or CBP fund any more of his projects.
Koppel was also derided by Limbaugh, et. al, but because his program was on so late, they could ignore it a bit.
Your point taken about being elite father figures maybe why they have not had the amount and verve of vitriol spewed at them as Moore has. Moore is more of an “everyman,” and image they while deriding him as a fat slob also know that many of their listening base look the same way.
I think the anti-Moore hysteria started with his Oscar speech while the war was still popular. Although others have said the same and more, he’s remembered because he was among the first, and must be made an “example” to intimidate other war critics. (See also: Dixie Chicks.)
What gets blood pressure rising is often not what Moore says, but how he shows Bush and company speaking for themselves, like those long minutes of Bush reading “My Pet Goat” on 9/11. There was a moment in F911 that really said it all: when Bush announced the war on Iraq, he was shown sitting at his desk, with photos of Laura, Jenna and not-Jenna turned toward the camera. Do you keep your family photos where everyone can see them except you?
pbg -
I once quipped that Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly , et. al. should be arrested for impersonating doctors for they’ve done an excellent job immunizing them from the truth.
You know how they play the ole “liberal talk” isn’t maketable meme, but hypocitcally say that Hollywood is outside the market …
hmm I guess they can’t handle that “conservative” documentaries (white christian male fantasy land films) arern’t marketable.
I’ll never forget how much Pauline Kael hated “Roger & Me,” which contributed to my opinion of her as intelligent but basically addlebrained.
The everyman aspect is important, too. The Salon reviewer I linked really doesn’t like that Moore puts himself into a lot of shots. Since when is being a camera hog offensive by movie standards? It’s kind of the point, and big egos are hardly unknown in the industry. But Moore is not the standard issue movie star, but an everyman and he’s all too aware that his camera-hogging also functions as a populist argument, in that he’s saying that the everyman is important, too, and deserves consideration in our exceptionalist culture.
…who was “uncomfortableâ€? with what Moore does, largely because of the right-wing propaganda about him.
“I don’t agree with everything Michael Moore says, but…”
“Hillary Clinton is not my favorite person in the world, but…”
“Of course I support the troops, but…”
“I’m not a feminist, but…”
All of that propaganda does a job on people. After a while, they’re afraid to express their opinion without bowing in some way to the right-wing frame. I remember the “I’m not a feminst” thing starting when I was in high school (1980s).
Aimai’s right - the reaction to Moore has an awful lot to do with class. (You don’t have to have read Paul Fussell to know that Moore’s obesity screams “working class.”)
Moore’s a target because, frankly, he’s a hell of a lot more effective at framing these issues than the intellectual elites - and they resent it. It’s like Olympic ice skating - they’re much more appreciative of skaters who stick to traditional form, costumes and music than the ones who break the mold.
Just want congratulate you on an excellent and insightful post. I think you are on to something with your critique of American Exceptionalism. Like most popular delusions, it works in part because there is a kernel of truth at its core. The US is a unique experiment, given its orgins and subsequent history. Such uniqueness doesn’t translate into the US being exempt from the same realities that govern every other society in existence though.
Therein lies a second reason why Exceptionalism is such a popular fable. It amounts to a national entitlement . Under its banner, what would be clearly seen as crimes if perpetrated by any other state are not crimes when committed by the US. What would be seen as abject social and moral failures in any other country are re-interpreted as features rather than bugs in our own system. The health care debate is a splendid example. Our system is touted as superior to all others despite the fact that we spend more for less even as millions of our fellow citizens fall through the cracks. Freedom isn’t free you know.
This sense of exemption from reality percolates downward. A great many folks view their US identity as get out of jail free card from the prison house of history. It’s impossible to talk about the legacies of imperialism, racism, sexism, etc. without being confronted by the plaint that “All that’s ancient history. It has nothing to do with me.” Nowhere on earth, outside of the US, would such obvious piece of idiocy be taken seriously.
Some years back, Columbia pictures put the face of Ida Lupino on the image of their Columbia logo as way of honoring her contribution to films as actor, director and producer. Having seen Sunset Boulevard, I think we might consider puting the face of Norma Desmond on the Statue of Liberty. Then new arrivals would have a clear idea of just what they are getting themselves into.
I like Michael Moore, have since he ran the Michigan Voice back in the day, but he does pick and choose his subjects in a way that’s a bit dishonest. I haven’t seen Sicko, but when he goes to Cuba to get treatment for Americans it’s conceivable that what they receive isn’t the treatment available for most Cubans. Likewise, the health care presented for Canadians might seem different if he wasn’t in London, Ontario, but in a poor, rural area. Also, the scene in Bowling for Columbine of the bank that gives you the free rifle for opening an account was from my home region, and he would have had to stage having them hand it to him across the counter. I don’t disagree with his broader points, for-pay health doesn’t make much sense, but he’ll twist things to give them more punch.
Basically, Moore is asking for a degree of honesty. Are denials of coverage, medical bankruptcy and the turfing out of sick peoplet onto the street bugs in the system or features?
If they’re bugs, why can’t they be fixed? And if they’re features, why aren’t the people opposed to changing things not explicitly defending them?
Britons are generally honest about the flaws of the NHS. Moore has the outsider’s naivety, but that shouldn’t be considered disingenuous. For many years, I helped look after American students studing over the summer in the UK, and one or two inevitably ended up in A&E: soccer injuries, drunken stumbles and other holiday accidents. They had the same jawdrop at the fact that no-one asked them to pay a penny: they were waiting the entire time afterwards for the bill to arrive.
Moore is effective because he looks at the human consequences, and that upsets the technocrats. Why are kids from poor parts of Detroit the target demographic for military recruiters? Yes, it’s arguing from anecdote. But humans are creatures of anecdote and narrative, and anecdotes are what spur grassroots action, not piecharts.
The Moore persona in the films is like a child who asks ‘why?’, and hasn’t had the child-like inquisitorial thing knocked out of him.
I saw “Sicko” yesterday and while a great deal of the film is personal stories of people who were denied coverage or had a loved one die because of lack of coverage, I think Moore wants the film to be a kickoff for a discussion about why we okay with this and why we are encouraged to despise (e.g., the French) or dismiss (e.g., the British) those who have what should a fundamental right.
Great stuff, Amanda. I view Michael Moore as no less than an American hero. And the “Blaspheme!” button is really funny.
Amanda, I think your discussion of ‘exceptionalism’ is at the root of the Moore-hatred and so much more that seems inexplicable outside your national borders.
As a relative outsider, but frequent visitor and sometime resident, I have always been amazed at the odd combination of xenophobia and exceptionalism that blinds so many Americans to the pain, suffering, chaos and death inflicted in their name - elsewhere in the world.
It stuns me how American administrations can support assasinations, death squads, totalitarian regimes, and the use of WMD’s as long as they support their geo-political goals. The American government has, throughout its history, engaged in exactly the kind of practices that they have rightly condemned as genocide and war-crimes on the part of their enemies.
Exceptionaiism allows America to dismiss its own transgressive behaviour as ‘justifiable’ in pursuit of a ‘worthy goal’ and, in the end, causes Americans to devalue lives elsewhere in the world.
It also causes the country to be blind to its own history. America was built on the genocide of the indiginous people, and on the ecomonic boon - and human tragedy - of slavery. Its economic miracle has been sustained by economic and military imperialism. And yet, America tells itself bedtime stories masquarading as history, and shelters itself from the knowledge of its international political and military involvement.
It as though any particular American moment exists in an ahistorical and geographical bubble.
- Iran is an evil rogue nation (but let’s not look to closely at what happened in 1953).
- Osama is an hitlerian madman (but let’s not ask who gave him his seed funding).
- Saddam was a crazy maniac with WMDs (but let’s forget who gave him the weapons and on whose behalf he used them).
- African-Americans seem awfully radical, angry and aggrieved (but where did that phrase ‘one acre and a mule’ ever come from anyway, and who the hell is Jim Crow?).
- The French are surrender monkeys and cowards and anti-American (and why do they have a little statue of liberty in Paris?)
It is dangerous for the sole remaining superpower to remain so incurious about the world, so afraid of introspection and self-examination, and so unwilling to see its own history - like those of all other nations - as complicated, morally ambiguous, and ethically comprimised.
In many way, America seems oddly adolescent - needing black and white answers to everything from abortion to geopolitics. I’ve often thought that the odd, enforced adolescence of the legal drinking age was a metaphor for the larger American problem. It’s as though America doesn’t want to grow up and accept responsibility for its own choices. It’s is an odd culture where a zygote is considered a human being but a 20-year old soldier can be refused a drink as a ‘minor’.
Ironically, it is Moore that is dismissed as ‘adolescent’ because, in contrast to the infantilism of FOX and CNN and ABC, he dares to ask adult questions: Why do Americans kill so many of their own citizens? Why are the health statistics in American so shamefully out of line with other developed nations? Is Cuba really such a danger to America?
I cringe every time I hear Moore’s flotilla to Guantanamo described as a ’stunt’. The ’stunt’ is the legal fiction used to create Gitmo in the first place. A ’stunt’ is the political justification used to authorize assassination attempts on Castro. A ’stunt’ is the use of campaign contributions to guarantee that health care providers make record profits while the quality and coverage of health care drops to record lows.
Maybe, if the MSM did their jobs - and talked honestly to the American polity about both their own present and their past - there would be no need for Michael Moore and his ’stunts’. Until that happens, we should be grateful for his unseemly lack of decorum.
Two major problems with this analysis. One, the healthcare wasn’t “free.” The American students just didn’t pay for it; the British taxpayers, for some crazy reason, decided to pay for healthcare for American students rich enough to do a term abroad. It’s very nice of the Brits, but it hardly makes the health care free.
Two, when we hear how great nationalized health care is, the examples are almost exclusively about emergency care. Part of the reason for this is that when Americans need health care in Europe, it’s usually emergency care. But the other reason is that it hides the disadvantages of nationalized health care, namely rationing and wait times. Feel free to google or seach the BBC website. Here are some numbers of randomly selected procedures and their wait times:
8 months for cataract surgery
11 months for hip replacement
12 months for a knee replacement
5 months to repair a slipped disc (ouch!)
5 months for hernia repair
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3749801.stm
There’s a video interview with Moore up at Democracy Now, if anyone is interested:
Here it is
In it, Amy Goodman asks MM if there is a common thread running through his work. He says there is one, and it focuses on how Americans are controlled– by both the government and the media– through fear.
In Columbine, it’s fear of the other.
In 911, it’s the same fear of the other only on a grander, international level. (If you watch them together, 911 plays like Columbine’s sequel.)
Sicko attempts to show Americans that other health care models can and do work. As Moore says in the interview, as much as people complain about the health care system in the States, we’ve been taught to fear attempts to change it even more.
I agree with him about Americans being controlled through fear and it’s depressing as hell. It explains America’s shift to the right in that if you don’t believe in a better future, if you think things are getting worse and worse, then the desire to revert, to go backwards, makes a lot of sense. I don’t just see this in conservatives, either. Even liberals seem to want to look back now, not as far back as conservatives want to go, mind you, but back to some time just before Bush.
Believe me, I know I’m generalizing in a big way here. I know plenty of optimistic individuals who are all for change. And I think Michael Moore is one of those optimists. Yes, he spotlights big problems but you’ll notice he always follows up by advocating action, by advocating change.
It’s a class issue. Moore makes no attempt to assume the appearance or diction of the middle class and claims his working class background with pride. Don’t you know working class folks are supposed to stick to their blue collar jobs and shut up?
Kevin,
With regards to your wait list, here is the thing. NONE of those things are life-threatening. In fact, I know plenty of people who opt not to get knee replacement surgeries and somehow are still having a pretty decent quality of life.
We have waiting lines here for health care. We have women in NYC waiting a year or more for a mammogram. We have people who are in the wrong HMOs who wait. We have people who are uninsured(me), who wait until as I said to a friend, “am dead before I go to the ER.
Far better to at least know that my knee is going to be replaced, than to never have it done. Eight months? I will take eight months over never any day.
Great analysis, Amanda. I get pretty tired of the “I normally don’t like Michael Moore, but…” line of criticism, and we’re definitely in another round of it now. On the plus side, at least it’s slightly better than “Michael Moore is fat, so…”
I believe the Parker/Stone beef with Moore had to do with the fact that the movie showed Matt Stone, then segued into a very South Park-like cartoon, leading folks to believe that Parker and Stone had done the cartoon, but they hadn’t.
kevin,
Moore addresses that issue in the interview. You should check it out.
“Maybe it’s just that exceptionalism is drilled into our heads from the first day we crack open a history book in school.”
That’s the most shocking part of the argument,imho, and it needs to be addressed. Probably there are different ages, styles, and generations reading and responding to Amanda’s piece. Our reactions to Michael Moore may be as varied as we are different from each other. (And we may be less categorizable than many believe.) But is that really true about having American exceptionalism drilled into us?
Just asking, because it didn’t happen to me. Confession: I was at private schools all along the way, right through university. What was drilled in to our heads was Question, Question, Question. Maybe this has less to do with the variety of school than with the decade one got one’s education in. Whatever… It needs investigating and it needs changing.
Mike? You listenin’?
Oh, for God’s sake, Kevin, no one is pretending that the health care was “free.” It’s just a question of what priorities do you place on spending your nation’s tax dollars. The United States has chosen to leave its citizens mostly on their own when it comes to health care, and some of us think that just stinks.
Kevin:
Sorry, buddy, but we have rationing for health care now. Except that there isn’t the slightest pretense that it’s rationed for anything but profit.
Kevin:
Sorry, buddy, but we have rationing for health care now. Except that there isn’t the slightest pretense that it’s rationed for anything but profit.
I find Moore far too comfortable going for the bullying in interviews, but…he shines light in a lot of places others aren’t going, and I’m willing to admit that there is frankly an element of middle class vs. working class prejudice over style in my reaction.
It seems to me that Moore gets dismissed as simplistic, black-and-white, and the like, in part because he work does two things, each of which implies a usual pairing that he doesn’t give it.
First, he says that there are real villains in the world, people making difficult situations worse for other people for petty, stupid, and/or immoral reasons. Second, he says that the difficult situations are complex, can’t be cured just by passing a law, and that the deep solutions are cultural, requiring a lot of people to change their ways of thinking and living. People see the villain side and figure that he must somehow really mean that removing or countering the villains is all it would take, and see the culture side and figure that he must somehow really mean that there’s no serious personal element or anyone who bears specific culpability.But no, he means that individuals and societies both matter.
Gayle, is this the quote you were talking about? I just searched for “wait” and this looks to be on point. One, I still think it’s a lie to say the healthcare is “free.” It’s not; it’s 100 percent supported by tax revenues. It would be like saying the Iraq War is free. We don’t get a bill each month, but, actually, you know, we do get the bill each month. Two, Moore admits that there can be long waits for procedures. He dismisses it as important, but at least he admits it is true.
Interesting; no one so far in this thread had the same reaction I’ve had to Moore, which was the same reaction as the person with whom I went to see Bowling for Columbine. That’s the only Moore movie I’ve ever seen, because I came away from it loathing him, not as a political figure or a polemicist, but as a filmmaker, for basically two reasons.
(1) Look, there is, at least in Bowling, a certain amount of willful dishonesty. I don’t think Moore is an out and out polemicist - I agree that Bowling wound up being a very interesting and complex movie that in my opinion intentionally didn’t try to answer the questions it really couldn’t - but he did seem, in service of crafting a more compelling narrative or dichotomy at certain points, to collapse complicated situations or mislead about context in the sort of way I might not care about in a fictional adaptation of a true story, but I can’t accept in a documentary once I’m aware of it. I have no trouble with a doc not trying to maintain some journalistic notion of “objectivity,” but it still has to be truthful, and I came away with the sense that Moore was perfectly willing to tell a little lie in service of what he perceived to be a bigger truth.
(2) He’s mean. This was the big one; I saw the movie in a theater full of my (then) fellow college classmates, the vast majority of whom were laughing their heads off throughout the movie while I sat there feeling vaguely embarrassed. He wanted the movie, serious as its subject matter is, to be funny (an impulse I understand) and aside from the silly cartoons and stuff, his method of being funny is letting the camera run on somebody until they say something really stupid and then cutting away; and since he pretty much only interviews people who aren’t remotely prepared for the kind of interview he’s going to subject them to, saying something stupid in front of the camera under pressure is pretty much guaranteed. We all cheered when he did this to a fairly odious Charlton Heston, but the same technique was at work throughout the movie, used on people who I just didn’t think deserved to be treated that way. Ferchrissakes, at one point he had me feeling sorry for the Michigan Militia types, but the example that sticks in my head was from the beginning of the film, during the section about the man who was hunting with his dog, which stepped on the trigger of a gun lying on the ground and thereby shot his owner. Moore interviews the local sherriff - who really had nothing to do with this incident - and just lets the interview keep going until the sheriff says something dumb and then that section of the film is over, with an appropriately timed pause for my fellow affluent intellectuals to laugh at the stupid small town sheriff. That moment is why I don’t like Michael Moore, because I just sat there feeling bad for the sheriff, who did nothing to deserve being used as a comic prop in this movie. I happen to have a low tolerance for embarrassment humor, which is part of it, but I just felt at that moment: “Michael Moore is an asshole,” and haven’t been able to get over it since.
Interesting; no one so far in this thread had the same reaction I’ve had to Moore, which was the same reaction as the person with whom I went to see Bowling for Columbine. That’s the only Moore movie I’ve ever seen, because I came away from it loathing him, not as a political figure or a polemicist, but as a filmmaker, for basically two reasons.
(1) Look, there is, at least in Bowling, a certain amount of willful dishonesty. I don’t think Moore is an out and out polemicist - I agree that Bowling wound up being a very interesting and complex movie that in my opinion intentionally didn’t try to answer the questions it really couldn’t - but he did seem, in service of crafting a more compelling narrative or dichotomy at certain points, to collapse complicated situations or mislead about context in the sort of way I might not care about in a fictional adaptation of a true story, but I can’t accept in a documentary once I’m aware of it. I have no trouble with a doc not trying to maintain some journalistic notion of “objectivity,” but it still has to be truthful, and I came away with the sense that Moore was perfectly willing to tell a little lie in service of what he perceived to be a bigger truth.
(2) He’s mean. This was the big one; I saw the movie in a theater full of my (then) fellow college classmates, the vast majority of whom were laughing their heads off throughout the movie while I sat there feeling vaguely embarrassed. He wanted the movie, serious as its subject matter is, to be funny (an impulse I understand) and aside from the silly cartoons and stuff, his method of being funny is letting the camera run on somebody until they say something really stupid and then cutting away; and since he pretty much only interviews people who aren’t remotely prepared for the kind of interview he’s going to subject them to, saying something stupid in front of the camera under pressure is pretty much guaranteed. We all cheered when he did this to a fairly odious Charlton Heston, but the same technique was at work throughout the movie, used on people who I just didn’t think deserved to be treated that way. Ferchrissakes, at one point he had me feeling sorry for the Michigan Militia types, but the example that sticks in my head was from the beginning of the film, during the section about the man who was hunting with his dog, which stepped on the trigger of a gun lying on the ground and thereby shot his owner. Moore interviews the local sherriff - who really had nothing to do with this incident - and just lets the interview keep going until the sheriff says something dumb and then that section of the film is over, with an appropriately timed pause for my fellow affluent intellectuals to laugh at the stupid small town sheriff. That moment is why I don’t like Michael Moore, because I just sat there feeling bad for the sheriff, who did nothing to deserve being used as a comic prop in this movie. I happen to have a low tolerance for embarrassment humor, which is part of it, but I just felt at that moment: “Michael Moore is an asshole,” and haven’t been able to get over it since.
the British taxpayers, for some crazy reason, decided to pay for healthcare for American students rich enough to do a term abroad. It’s very nice of the Brits, but it hardly makes the health care free.
The principle of ‘free at the point of delivery’ is only a problem if you think healthcare depends upon seeing a billing clerk with a clipboard before you see a doctor.
But the other reason is that it hides the disadvantages of nationalized health care, namely rationing and wait times. Feel free to google or seach the BBC website.
I really don’t need to be told about NHS waiting lists, thank you very much. Like I said, it’s about honesty, and waiting for care is a price worth most Britons consider worth paying for mobility of coverage and the whole not-going-bankrupt thing. Why? Because everyone’s in the same boat, and if that includes people visiting, then so be it. (Would the NHS be created from scratch today? Probably not: it’s a product of the 1940s. But the obvious model for the US isn’t the NHS: it’s the French system, where waiting lists are negligible.)
I’m yet to see someone who defends the US system as it stands today also defend the human consequences: routine denial of reimbursement, a culture of self-diagnosis, people chained to jobs, etc. And Moore’s suggesting that this isn’t some nasty side-effect: it’s a necessary consequence of the treatment.
I don’t hate Michael Moore, but I suppose I am the type of liberal who cringes at some of his claims, since that’s what I did in my review. But let me say this: my complaint (and many others) isn’t that he oversimplifies for effect — that’s a necessary evil in popular documentaries — it’s that he leaves himself vulnerable to easy dismissals. In a little note (dubious authenticity, but who knows) Moore left on my site, he indicated that’s part of his plan: sledgehammer the right and get the left quarreling over the nuances.
Which is, when you think about it, effective inasmuch as it shifts the terms of the debate from “what if we had socialized medicine” to “when we have socialized medicine, will we repeat the mistakes of its Cuban instantiation.” Is he this clever a propagandist? Not sure, but I wouldn’t put it past him.
I have no idea what happened to cause the double post; my apologies.
Bitter Scribe,
I refer you to my post above that quotes Moore: “And again, you know, everything is free.” It’s not difficult to refute this nonsense, so you can either defend Moore or agree with me that it’s not true.
I saw “Sicko” last night and was appalled to have it all laid out for me: the way the sick are fed to the rich in this country, the corruption that makes it possible, and the moral paralysis on the part of individuals in the industry and the bystanders who assume “that’s the way it has to be.”
Moore’s visits to other countries were interesting, although a little more focused on the upper end of the socioeconomic spectrum than I would’ve liked (except in Cuba). I had always heard that “socialized medicine” meant long waits for care, but who doesn’t have a long wait here? My SIL waited 6 weeks to have a huge lump removed from her breast, and she had insurance. She’d still be waiting if she were uninsured. And Moore cites states that these other countries have better overall health, longer life expectancies and lower infant-mortality rates.
As for this: 5 months to repair a slipped disc (ouch!), that seems pretty reasonable unless you’re dealing with paralysis. I slipped a disk in my neck two years ago, and the first step was six weeks of physical therapy and plenty o’ painkillers. They don’t just rush you into surgery because of the risks. Between that and the second and maybe third opinions before surgery, you’re looking at a couple months already. When my uninsured neighbor injured his back in a fall and could no longer work, he was just shit out of luck. Not even PT for him, just unemployment.
I’m sure there are flaws in the Canadian, British and other health plans that Moore glossed over, but just about anything has to be better than what we have now. Healthcare doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game. It can be, as it is in other countries, a collaborative project for the common good.
I’ll defend the US system in that it’s better than Moore’s ideal: Cuba.
Stats, duh. He cites stats.
Moore used prison and slave camp medicine to make a point and make money. I don’t mean when he went to Gitmo, but when he went to Havana. The country is a prison and slave labor camp. Whether it is a prison and slave labor camp with good health care services (i.e. the camp cares for its enslaved assets) or a prison and slave labor camp with good literacy programs (who cares if people are literate if reading what the government didn’t approve is illegal?)
Unlike the Cuban prisoners and slave workers whose sweat produced the services which Moore’s 9/11 volunteers used to get some health care, Moore will make money off of this film. A lot of money. How much of his profits will he set aside to fight the Cuban repression of free speech, free assembly, free press and free markets?
I don’t care if he makes a movie that says 2+2=4 or that the earth moves around the sun; he used slave labor as props and collaborated with Castro’s regime to get it done. To hell with him.
There are always flaws in any system. Yes, in Canada, there are shortages of some kinds of doctors, and sometimes waiting lists.
Here are two flaws we don’t have:
1) No one is denied the care they need.
2) No one goes bankrupt because of illness.
Eliminating those flaws seems worth the other, more minor ones.
I think The Editors isolated the Vast Right Wing Assholes’ sophisticated argument that one didn’t have to prove anything as long as s/he said that Michael Moore was fat.
I think it’s because it’s the only objective fa(c)t the right was ever able to provide ever in anything, so they like to revisit it often and keep it at the center of every gaseous ball of hooey they hurl. OR, they really believen one is all they need.
Not sure why the mushy middle clings to it. Maybe it’s instinctually a good idea: when navigating through choking balls of unsubstantiated gas, it’s sensible to grab the nearest solid just to be able to find one’s way out again.
What do I know? I’m still mystified at the mushy middle’s rule of thumb that they only provide right wing voices to bolster any argument or climb back into non existence. (EG, “Why even Rush on an Oxy/Cheetoh high endorsed what I’m about to say … ” — as if that’s the MOST esteemed support rather than the least. I’m getting the biggest fucking Up is Down headache again.
kevin:
That link is three years old and is misleading because the time given is average, even though the waiting time varies by hospital.
A better and more up to date resource is here. As you can see opthalmology appointments can vary between less than a week to 25 weeks. But very few hospitals (at this point) have waiting times greater than 30 weeks.
And for most people free is when you don’t pay upfront for the service. For example, I’d bet you’d think of the street that your house sits on as free, but its maintenance (even if it isn’t great, you can probably drive on it) is paid by taxes.
BusinessWeek has an interesting piece up on wait times for American patients:
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2007/tc20070621_716260.htm
“Despite spending lots more per capita on health care, the U.S. is often as bad or worse than other industrialized nations in wait times”
kevin Jun 24th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
I’ll defend the US system in that it’s better than Moore’s ideal: Cuba.
Utterly disingenuous and intellectually dishonest, Kevin.
1) Moore never says that Cuba is his or any one else’s “ideal”. What he asks is why a compartitively poor country can manage to so much on limited resources, and whether local and universal health delivery might not be a model the US could learn from (as it might from the other countries he visits).
2) I’m not sure what you mean by “better”. Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate than the US. Does that make it “better”. Once again, you miss the point. Moore isn’t arguing for the adoption of another country’s system. Instead, he is asking why America cannot provide reliable, affordable and universal health care for its citizens when every other developed country (and some, like Cuba that are not so ‘developed’) can.
Have you seen the film, Kevin?
Well every time they do good work like attacking the Scientologists, they turn around and do something stupid. They’re basically libertarians with a nihilistic streak.
As Roger Ebert noted in his review of Team America:
So yeah, sometimes Parker and Stone do good stuff. But mostly they’re fucking assholes. Michael Moore has a million times the moral authority they do, and does a million times more actual work in changing the world for the better than those wankers do.
Kevin,
You seem to have made it to the age at which you can use a computer without understanding that the word ‘free’ is often used to mean included, or pre-paid, like it does in the case of the British health care system.
For example, I’m a grad student, and I’ve often been known to say that the gym at my university is free. Clearly it is not free in the way you mean - it is simply included in the fees - but there is no additional optional charge for using the gym. I can go as often as I like, or never, and I pay the same amount. Restaurant condiments are another example of the same principle. I don’t pay extra if I take a couple ketchup packets, or save if I don’t. They are included in the price of my meal.
Come to think of it, I’m not sure I can think of anything that would meet your definition of free.
the point about using Cuba is this, in a country that we have created into a destitute nation with our blockade. (Side note, we can see how well THAT has worked out, Castro, still there last I looked) In a country that has realized the peak oil crisis, and has huge poverty rates, and lives under a despotic tyrant, they are still, and I repeat, still able to provide health care to their people, and to those who are sick here.
Moore was trying to shame! the U.S. government by using a country we have been at war with for over forty odd years, whose other human rights abuses are deplorable. It’s that American Exeptionalism. And if you don’t think Americans aren’t enslaved, I say our enslavery is one of choice, to credit cards, to jobs we despise, to consumerism. It’s that we choose to be enslaved, and the Cubans don’t. And at least, the Cubans get free health care.
Frankly, Moore’s decision to use Cuba was a brilliant creative decision. I am sure that if some small African nation with tryannical rulers had some decent health care, Moore would have taken his camera there.
The appeal of “South Park” has always mystified me. I’ve forced myself to sit through a couple of episodes, and the jokes fall into two categories: either utterly inane and pointless, or so obvious you can see them coming a mile off.
Dear kevin + Bruce:
Do you think it speaks well of the United States when a pesthole like Cuba can be shown to perform at least two vital national functions (health care and education) better than we do?
Or was there some other point you were trying to make?
Roger Ebert has the right of it in his comments about Parker and Stone. They’re not exactly what you’d call ‘right wing’ per se (although they’re close), but their usual stance - if you can call it that - is to attack anyone who actually believes in anything. It doesn’t matter what it is; it’s the belief that makes the mindset faggy and uncool. Thus people like Barbara Striesand and Rosie O’Donnell are portrayed as equal to/worse than out-and-out loons like Bill Donohue. Liberals are actual Nazis, don ‘cha know, but Bush is a lovable moron, a misunderstood nice guy, who - gosh darn it - means well, but he’s just a little dim.
“8 months for cataract surgery
11 months for hip replacement
12 months for a knee replacement
5 months to repair a slipped disc (ouch!)
5 months for hernia repair”
first off, these stats by themselves mean nothing. Say, for example, that a physician sees a person with deterioration in their hips and knows that within a year they’ll need surgery, so they schedule it. It takes 11 months to get the surgery done, but in the meantime it’s really no problem.
Nor is it different then my mom’s physician telling her that she needed open heart surgery at some point in the future, and then waiting 3 years before it got so advanced she was finally scheduled for it to be done. (a cynic might say the insurer would have been happy for her to die in the interum….although the surgeon who did the 3 hour procedure was probably very happy to collect his fee for 3 hours of work -$17,000. )
It always amazed me to see seniors in nursing homes get hip and knee replacements and then die within 90 days of surgery. They got their surgery, and got it fast. Did they need it, tho?
More USA tax dollars go to subsidized medicine and tax shelters for big Pharma in research now than the Brits spend per capita. Claiming it isn’t paid for, when overbilling and profiteering account for most of our costs, is an item not being asserted in the conversation.
There’s waiting lists in America too, this isn’t a supersized big mac order we’re talking about.
Would you rather wait for affordable care, or lose your house and bank account and car title over the cost of an average procedure that insurance loopholes out of coverage?
Someone needs to explain the operative procedure and costs for pulling troll’s head from ass. I’d do it for free, but kicking your ass rhetorically is all I can do at this time… if your head has a ringing sensation it’s from a boot to your backside. Come back up for air and stop to think while it’s happening, the tingling feeling will go away.
The silliness of Moore’s oeuvre is so self-evident that being able to spot it is not liberal or conservative either; it’s a basic intelligence test, like the ability to match square peg with square hole.
I’ve only seen Fahrenheit 9/11 and parts of Bowling for Columbine, but those drove me nuts. He was using the same tactics as right-wing raducals use to make their arguments and get people’s attention, and I think they’re intellectually dishonest even though they work. It sounds like maybe Fahrenheit 9/11 was the most egregious of his films in that way, though, so maybe I should give him another try.
The most hilarious bit of unintentional irony is that Moore’s critics–people like Christopher Hitchens, for God’s sake–go apoplectic at his supposed dishonesty.
Hilarious.
But is that really true about having American exceptionalism drilled into us?
Well, I still know the pledge of allegiance, myself.
but he did seem, in service of crafting a more compelling narrative or dichotomy at certain points, to collapse complicated situations or mislead about context in the sort of way I might not care about in a fictional adaptation of a true story, but I can’t accept in a documentary once I’m aware of it.
Tweaking genre conventions doesn’t bother me. If he was a journalist, that would be one thing, but his movies are more like filmed pranks than pieces of journalism. I think it’s dishonest of critics to pretend Moore is doing something he’s not so they can hold him up to a false standard and find him lacking when he was doing something else entirely.
He’s mean.
Thank the Disco Ball that someone is willing to push back. I didn’t feel sorry for the militia types, but then again, I live fairly close to the OKC federal building and still remember when it was bombed. The fact that he makes you feel sorry for some of his targets—when they don’t deserve it, for real—to my mind is just more evidence that he’s more subtle than you realized. He doesn’t have to humanize his targets, but he does. And gets shit for it from people who think he’s mean. I don’t remember the sheriff scene, but honestly, I don’t think that it’s the worst thing in the world to show people’s warts on camera.
Actually, I still hate Michael Moore for helping get Bush elected in the first place. And I don’t think I’ll ever forgive him for that.
I don’t get why Kevin thinks the whole “free” thing is such a gotcha–the whole “waiting” thing and “rationing” thing is equally a gotcha on the other side.
Look, if I pay taxes to the govenrment and get the health care I want and need or I pay premiums to the insurer to get the health care I want and need what is the difference to me in terms of cost? Depends on how the costs are being apportioned and who is doing the apportioning and that is a real world question–it could be more or it could be less in each system. The real question is: what do I get for my money and who else benefits. Under the US insurance scheme I get for my money what I have negotiated (and sometimes quite a bit less) with an insurance company. I can lose benfits, I can be cut off from benefits, I can cease to be insurable *regardless of how much money I have paid into the system.* The insurer can decide that something is not covered, or change its mind and stop covering some medication or treatment, and I have literally no recourse except suing. If some hospitals and doctors cease to take my insurers payments then I have to wait to see someone from a system they do cover. Or pay for the privilige of going out of coverage. And if I have no insurer? I can’t make any doctor treat me, or continue treatment, if I can’t afford to pay out of pocket.
So where in this system does “waiting” and “rationing” come in? Well, people with good insurance in some areas of the country where there are lots of specialists may not experience rationing or wait periods. People with no or bad insurance, or people from areas of the country that don’t support multiple teaching hospitals, generally have to wait for services or are denied services altogether. Under Kevin’s model of health care these people simply aren’t counted. After all, if you aren’t insured and no one will treat you you aren’t “waiting” for services you just aren’t getting them. And people who can’t afford a treatment? They aren’t “rationing” their health care, they just can’t afford it.
So in systems where everyone is entitled to health care and taxed accordingly sure its not “free” in a generic sense of the use of the word free. It certainly pays off handsomely for the tax paying citizen who needs the care, though. And similarly in our own system for the person who can’t gain access to health care in a timely manner (like the kid who died of an abscessed tooth because he didn’t qualify for regular dental care) the whole question of “rationing” or “waiting periods” just doesn’t come up. He didn’t have health insurance, he couldn’t get to a doctor, and he died. Good thing he didn’t come up on a statistic like “waited five months” for dentist because he *died at four months.*
Kevin, grow the f*ck up. If you don’t care about other people or their problems why post on a complex topic that revolves around other people and their problems? It is apparently above your pay grade to care about other people.
aimai
Well, my mother needs carpal tunnel surgery in both hands. Her primary care doctor said that she’s in imminent danger of having permanent nerve damage, and needs it as soon as possible to minimize the amount of damage done (not to eliminate it, but to minimize it). He approved a referral, and she scheduled an appointment with the only hand surgeon approved of in her HMO. She can’t get in for two months even for the initial appointment, never mind the surgery itself. This is with Aetna.
How is the waiting time in the Canadian system something we don’t have to deal with, again?
“Here are two flaws we don’t have:
1) No one is denied the care they need.
2) No one goes bankrupt because of illness.
Eliminating those flaws seems worth the other, more minor ones. ”
Most sane people would agree with you.
Unfortunately, the people being denied care and going bankrupt because of illness in this country are mostly confined to the lower and middle classes. Now, that problem is not-so-slowly seeping upward, and eventually it’s going to be impossible to ignore, but as long as enough of the electorate gets enough care to keep them on their feet, they’re not going to give a damn about the folks without.
I can’t remember how many conversations I’ve had with people who don’t think health care access is a problem, because “anyone can find a job with benefits.”
(I find him similar to Spike Lee: lots of progressives hate them, even when there’s no ideological difference between them. Lee-and Moore–deliberately get in your face, and nobody likes that. Works, though.)
I find them similar in another way as well: though both of them make overly broad (and often silly) public statements, the work itself is generally nuanced. The people who thought that Do The Right Thing would cause riots were just showing how idiotic they were.
I think it’s dishonest of critics to pretend Moore is doing something he’s not so they can hold him up to a false standard and find him lacking when he was doing something else entirely.
You can only say that if you believe that his films amount to pranks. So sure, if it’s not a documentary, criticisms of his documentaries as documentaries are irrelevant … but you’ve also denuded them of their power as documentaries. Most would like to have it both ways: when he’s on point and accurate, he speaks truth to power; when he’s on point and inaccurate, he’s a prankster. I’d prefer he be on point and accurate all the time, as opposed to those when an overreach is narratively compelling; subordinating accuracy to narrative in some instances threatens to discredit him in all. In short, then — and I realize I’m in the minority on this one — I’d rather his films be considered the serious indictments they are, rather than defended as pranks or dismissed as partisan rants.
You know, Kevin’s right — nothing in life is free. So I propose that we eliminate the following in his city:
Fire department
Police department
Streets & public works
Parks
Libraries
Public schools (everything from preschools to community colleges)
After all, if he wants to pay for all of the above out of his own pocket rather than pooling his money with the other residents of his city so they have more buying power, he’s perfectly free to do that.
Well, I don’t think a prank is necessarily unserious. The Yes Men are masters of the art of pulling off serious pranks. Call it reality-based performance art, if you want. I would say his movies are hard to categorize, which makes them all the more difficult for a lot of people to care about.
In short, then — and I realize I’m in the minority on this one — I’d rather his films be considered the serious indictments they are, rather than defended as pranks or dismissed as partisan rants.
I hate to break it to you, SEK, but no matter how he did the films, they would be dismissed as partisan rants. That’s how the MSM operates. How many people on the right were willing to watch The Fog of War?
And, really, there is no such thing as a “real” documentary. Doesn’t exist. All documentaries are constructed by the filmmakers. Even the Mayleses brothers manipulated their subjects to get the footage they wanted. You can wish that Moore would conceal his manipulation the way other documentarians do, but that’s a stylistic wish, not a real critique.
Re: “He’s mean.” Oh, boo fucking hoo. The truly hilarious thing about this particular bit of whining is that it usually comes from those who have no problem whatsoever with stomping all over other people whenever they damn well please. Not to pick on Parker and Stone - well…not much, heh, heh - but I vaugely recall reading some interview with Matt Stone concerning his beef with Bowling For Columbine, in which he had the unmitigated gall to say he and Parker didn’t want people to mistake the animated sequence from the film as their work, because they thought it was mean. Ri-iii-ight. And South Park is never mean spirited or nasty at all, is it?
I happen to have a low tolerance for embarrassment humor, which is part of it, but I just felt at that moment: “Michael Moore is an asshole,� and haven’t been able to get over it since.
Christ, you probably felt sorry for the frat boys in Borat, too.
Around here, I think you’ll find that letting people feed out just enough rope to hang themselves isn’t behavior that constitutes being an asshole. Moore didn’t force any of those people to say what they did. Their attitudes are real and have real consequences for the rest of us. I don’t have any problem with Moore bringing that stuff out into the open.
Sometimes there’s justification for taking a nuanced, balanced approach. But sometimes “balance” is used to give cover to ignorance and bigotry. Moore is just pulling that cover away.
I do some teaching of my craft a few weeks each summer, and I’ve been fortunate to teach people from all over the world. I’ve never failed to ask people from countries with UHC how they like it, and I’ve never had anyone say anything but good things about their country’s health care.
Last year I mentioned this to an American doc who was taking my class( a retired neurosurgeon…at age 50!) and he said, ‘yeah, sure, they’re happy because they’ve never been sick.’ And I replied to him, as someone that’s been unable to afford health insurance, ‘how happy will I be with my (non-existant) health care?’ That shut him up real quick.
My wife, who spent over 25 years in health care administration is a very vocal proponent of socialized medicine. She’s seen enough to know…..
A bunch of people upstream-ago:
Moore’s use of Cuba (fake)-outrages the right because of their knee-jerk cold war attack mode, but it’s such a direct assault on their phony moral “values” it packs a wallop. They’re more into policing sex than fostering life and health.
These allegedly (foetal) life loving deadbeats won’t give their fetuses basic utero health care. The schtick is that this lamentably unaffordable care is so platinum-diamond crusted out of reach there’s no point pouring it down where most of it might stick on the slut — I mean foeto-pod — because none gets to the baby.
Occam holds that the moral-values / “pro” life pose is more fake than Republican snap-on hair.
I started to dislike Moore after “Bowling For Columbine” because of the ridiculous equivication he made between what we were doing in Kossovo and the actions of the Columbine killers, because you know that had the country sat by and let the ethnic cleansing continue he would’ve damned the nation for that too. He won me back with “Fahrenheit 9/11″ though. I still can’t stand to listen to Amy Goodman anymore for nearly the same reason.
Kevin-
How long do you wait if you have inadequate health insurance or no health insurance at all?
Some memebers of my family, because they are self employed with no insurance (read farmers) suffer for months with out hope of even being on a waiting list.
One of the sadder examples of how anti-Michael Moore revisionism has taken hold in the common wisdom has got to be the way people misremember Bowling for Columbine.
Really the thing is I think the responses to Bowling for Columbine were not responses to the movie at all. I think they were responses to Moore’s “imaginary president/imaginary wmd/imaginary war” Oscar speech. As far as I’ve ever been able to tell, the anti-Moore hate train started at that moment. I’d not publicly heard one single peep about Moore’s message, methods, or integrity before he got up and made that speech. But from the very next morning and ever since, he has been the Liberal Antichrist.
I don’t think a prank is necessarily unserious.
Point taken.
I hate to break it to you, SEK, but no matter how he did the films, they would be dismissed as partisan rants.
You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know. However, there’s a difference between his films being partisan rants and merely being dismissed as such. There are, after all, many people who aren’t partisan hacks who might be convinced by this film: young independents who’ve never thought too much about health care; older, Reagan Republicans who pay half their retirement fund to HMOs; &c. The latter crowd’s increasingly powerful, and also the most likely to be irked by the bit at the Cuban hospital.
In other words, I don’t think he’s preaching solely to the converted.
And, really, there is no such thing as a “real� documentary. Doesn’t exist. All documentaries are constructed by the filmmakers. Even the Mayleses brothers manipulated their subjects to get the footage they wanted. You can wish that Moore would conceal his manipulation the way other documentarians do, but that’s a stylistic wish, not a real critique.
Yes, there is such a thing as a real documentary. All involve a principle of selectivity, but to reveal that principle and present all facts arising in light of it is one thing; to subordinate it to a larger purpose and fail to report contradictory evidence another. As I mentioned in my review, it may be because I taught literary journalism for five years that this bothers me so much, but really, the ethical bind described here isn’t all that complex: you stay upfront with your readers, present contradictory evidence when relevant, and they’re likely to believe your assessment of the situation; whereas if your principles of selection seem vague and you commit sins of omission, your reader’s not likely to believe much of anything you say.
“Some memebers of my family, because they are self employed with no insurance (read farmers) suffer for months with out hope of even being on a waiting list.”
My wife and I have been uninsured since we started our own business….we just happen to be in a field that doesn’t pay well. For me, it’s been 12 years and for her about 10. The last time we looked into health insurance we were qouted about $900 a month…this was about 5 years ago, and it was way beyond what we can pay.
Last year when I broke two teeth, I was able to get great care at a local dental college, although I had to ‘wait’! It was the first time I had seen a dentist in 12 years.
I haven’t yet seen a physician in 14 years, even tho at 46 I probably should get an annual battery of tests for preventative reasons. But since I can’t afford seeing a dr and getting all the tests, and since even if they found something that required medical treatment that I can’t afford, there’s really not much point in it.
Unfortunately, the people being denied care and going bankrupt because of illness in this country are mostly confined to the lower and middle classes.
Well, that’s why Moore doesn’t focus on the uninsured, because there’s more knee-jerkitude (’feckless’, ‘undeserving’) towards that group. It’s back to the Roger and Me theme: who decided that it was best to maximise profits and fuck the human and social consequences? The health ‘insurance’ market has collectively decided that the easiest way to maximise profits is through denial of coverage and reimbursement. If you accept the market-knows-best principle, then you have to take equal ownership of the consequences. And Moore is asking: should Americans accept the model that has been dictated to them? And if so, why?
Oh, YES. Yes, yes, YES.
In other words, I don’t think he’s preaching solely to the converted.
He’s not, which is why my Reagan-loving rock-ribbed Republican brother downloaded “Sicko” and watched it as soon as it showed up on the internet. He also bought “Fahrenheit 9/11.” My father, also a lifelong Republican and a faithful Rush Limbaugh listener, LOVES Michael Moore and his movies. He’s seen them all. He used to watch “TV Nation,” even.
Just because the outrage whores on Fox News scream about how awful Moore is doesn’t mean that conservatives aren’t watching his films. That’s why Fox has to scream louder and louder every time.
As I mentioned in my review, it may be because I taught literary journalism for five years that this bothers me so much, but really, the ethical bind described here isn’t all that complex: you stay upfront with your readers, present contradictory evidence when relevant, and they’re likely to believe your assessment of the situation; whereas if your principles of selection seem vague and you commit sins of omission, your reader’s not likely to believe much of anything you say.
Ah, see, this is the disconnect here: I come from a film background (both a bachelor’s and an MFA) and documentary film is different from print journalism. Film documentarians feel no requirement to be “ethical” in a journalistic sense. They are very aware that they are storytellers, not journalists, and that they are constructing a story, not presenting evidence.
When the Maysles made Gimme Shelter, they didn’t bother to interview the Hell’s Angel who stabbed James Meredith to get his side of the story, because his story wasn’t relevant to the film they were making. But if you were writing an article about Altamont, you probably would need to talk to that guy (if you could find him). Because, again, a written article is different than a film and has a different set of requirements.
My experience with Michael Moore was: first, I thought he was supposed to be funny. And then I realized he wasn’t always that funny, and that annoyed me. And ultimately I’ve realized that he isn’t always a great journalist, but that he’s the only person out there who will even touch certain subjects (gun violence, Bush lying, health care, decline of the industrial base, etc.) that veer from the MSM narratives. To that extent, Moore is absolutely necessary.
I know people who don’t like Moore, and have knee-jerk hostility to him. I always ask what, specifically is the problem, and I usually get mealy-mouthed responses accusing him of bias, being extreme, or being dishonest, but I never really hear anything very damning.
Case in point: Bowling for Columbine. Michael Moore’s interview with James Nichols is absolutely priceless and should not be missed by anybody. I don’t think there’s really anyway to capture the pockets of violent extremism hiding in the US quite as well. OTOH, his interview with Charlton Heston was crap. Sure it was easy to make Heston look bad, but it was also obvious that Heston is suffering from Alzheimer’s.
What bugs me about the press coverage about Moore is how dishonest it can be. At the Oscars, Moore stood up and called out the President when it was impolitic to do so. Part of the audience cheered loudly, there were scattered boos, but most of the audience remained quiet. But starting the very next day, there was all sorts of coverage which claimed that Moore had been booed off the stage. That simply didn’t happen!
The sad thing is that Moore is practically the only one covering issues like gun violence and/or the messed-up health care system. If the US had actual journalists any more, these topics would be covered in depth by a lot of people. Instead, we are fed a non-stop stream of infotainment. And it’s bad for the country.
If all Moore does is get people talking about health care, he’s done a great service. It’s not about getting it 100% right, it’s about opening up the parameters of the debate. We need even more extreme left wing voices in the debate to compensate for the hardcore right wing pushback that will inevitably happen. In a perfect world we could have a reasoned debate without recourse to framing, Overton Windows, and all the other crap. Of course, in that perfect world we’d already have single payer health care.
I haven’t seen Sicko and I probably won’t until it gets to DVD (small children–I haven’t been to a non-animated movie in ages), but I generally do like MM.
But my comment here is almost completely off topic. I just got back from visiting family in the UK and I was similarly floored about being able to get free healthcare. My youngest slammed his finger in a door and it got infected, so we took him in to a clinic to have it looked at. They did an x-ray, etc., but at no point did anyone ask how this was getting paid for. We had travel insurance that would cover it and I offered it to the lady at the reception desk, but they all said there was no need. Even though with my very pronounced southern accent, it was totally obvious that I am not British. And in addition to not having to pay for it, everyone there treated us as actual human beings. It was a really good experience and made for a nice change.
I get frustrated when one particular friend of mine repeats the right-wing media meme that Moore’s work is not documentary. As if it’s what - a fictional narrative? Moore is definitely op-ed, but it’s a hard look at reality, and that’s clearly documentary.
What I like most about SiCKO (no real spoilers here) is that he focuses on the problems of insured Americans instead of the uninsured. The uninsured would have made a great film, but that would not have appealed to the selfish side of us. The selish side of us gets scared when we see people just like us, with plenty of health insurance, getting screwed by the system and left bankrupt. In my opinion, Moore’s approach was aimed at conservatives and appears to be working. (See FOX’s review)
RE: the revisionism of Columbine:
The message of Columbine was that guns aren’t the problem, but that our culture is the problem. That should have appealed to NRA members everywhere, but most of them skipped the film and just believed what they read in the American Spectator.
One more comment:
When people compare the US system to the Canadian or British systems, don’t forget that we’re paying about double, per capita, on health care than those two countries. I’m sure that if Canada wanted to double their outlay on medicine they would eliminate the waiting periods instantly.
Sorry about the gushing gut reaction. But the problem of American exceptionalism in the left has long bothered and saddened me. “America is a unique experiment”. At what? slaughtering the native population and getting rich on slavery while telling themselves how much they stand up for freedom and equality? Sorry mates, Rome got there first.
Sometimes, my friends flip and start telling me how much America sucks compared to the rest of the world. Which is another form of exceptionalism - no, really, America is just like the rest of the world.
As for Moore, I agree he’s mean. I woulnd’t be able to do the things he does and I do cringe most of the time I’m not laughing. I’m glad he has more guts than me at embarrassing people. I really am.
And btw, I did see Roger and Me, late at night on Italian TV, and I went to see Bowling for Columbine because it was from “that impressive guy who did Roger and Me.” It is so amazingly rare to see somebody speak for and from a working class perspective.
(Damn this handle-amnesia for forgetting who approached this point earlier and the carpal tunnel preventng me from finding it again …)
The other subversive thing about Sicko is the stress socialized — I prefer to say available — health care places on disease prevention.
We’re eating ourselves sick and several industries rely on that to stay profitable.
Saying so makes corporations queasy. It directly endangers several huge profit areas, which get people coming and going. Why wean people off paying for daily gassy sugar water which enhances the flavor of junk food and temporarily makes it ingestible (though not easily DIgestible.)? You can roust people for profits for easing the discomfort of drinking and eating crap daily, for self-help psycho for feeling like shit doing so and over how it makes you look, and the medical cure for the physical pain the nat’l diet causes as well. Clean, potable water and testing the viability of the food supply is something people already paid for and widely available health care with integrity would be a natural threat to corporate Big (Free) Lunch.
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Two other points, actually. One, we generally see Cubans trying to escape from Cuba in rubber boats, paddling with makeshift paddles through shark-infested waters, to get the US. Oddly, we never see the reverse migration. Perhaps their education and healthcare system isn’t as wonderful as you suggest.
Two, nobody has brought up Castro’s treatment of homosexuals in Cuba: jail, torture, etc. I refer you to the movie “When Night Falls” if you don’t know the story. This is a strange omission, but if this were one of Pam’s posts I’m sure she would have brought it up.
Thanks for making my point for me. Michael Moore keeps repeating that health care in Britain is free. It’s clearly not, and neither are the services you list above. If you want to change the health care funding mechanism in the US, a first step might be having enough honesty to admit it’s not free just because you don’t get a bill each time you see the doctor.
Thanks for making my point for me. Michael Moore keeps repeating that health care in Britain is free. It’s clearly not, and neither are the services you list above.
Just checking, Kevin: what was the fee that you paid to the police the last time they came out to check and see if there really was an intruder?
How much does your library charge you when you check out a book?
When the city arrives to repair that pothole in the street in front of your house, how much do you have to pay them before they start the work?
That’s what Moore means when he says that health care in Britain is “free.” It’s free the same way that it’s free for you to call the police, or to check out a book from the library. And for you to pretend you don’t understand this extremely common usage of the word “free” is really making you look stupid.
I don’t feel like checking 105 comments to see if this is already here, but Mark Ames had some thoughts a few years ago on why the left has such a disdainful attitude towards Moore.
Chet -
Christ, you probably felt sorry for the frat boys in Borat, too.
Haven’t seen Borat, but my understanding is that the frat boys are pretty much responsible for making themselves look like massive assholes. Worth making a distinction, though: my physiological discomfort with watching people embarrass themselves (a.k.a. “why I change the channel all the time during sitcoms”) is unrelated to whether or not I think they’re good people, or what I think about the content of them embarrassing themselves. What I was trying to articulate was that part of my discomfort with Bowling came from that pre-existing attitude of mine; I thought Heston came off like an evil bastard, but I still didn’t enjoy watching it.
Around here, I think you’ll find that letting people feed out just enough rope to
hang themselves isn’t behavior that constitutes being an asshole. Moore didn’t force any of those people to say what they did. Their attitudes are real and have real consequences for the rest of us. I don’t have any problem with Moore bringing that stuff out into the open.
I’ve read probably 85% of the posts over the last four years, but thanks for the tip. My point was that much of the time in Bowling “letting people feed out just enough rope to hang themselves” didn’t seem to me like a tool of “bringing [real and consequential attitudes] our into the open”, but rather of salting his movie with comedic material for his audience that works on basically the same principle as the success of the Jerry Springer show: you gape at the exposed stupidity and you get to laugh at it while feeling superior. The audience I watched the movie with (students at a big time academic institution), which had an effect on my attitude about it, didn’t react as though, in Amanda’s words, Moore had humanized his subjects; they reacted as intellectual superiors mocking the stupid hicks. The fact is that if you put a camera on someone who’s unprepared for it, they’re going to say something dumb; this is why I was struck by, and made my point about, the sheriff. (I tried briefly to find some info on this scene online, and realized I misremembered the situation; the guy who got shot wasn’t hunting, he’d dressed his dog up in hunting gear and set a gun next to it without bothering to unload it.) The man whose dog essentially shot him behaved like a freaking idiot, and it’s a remarkable situation, but *this* guy being interviewed had nothing to do with the man’s idiocy, other than being the relevant law enforcement official for that community. He was put up on screen to look dumb for basically no reason other than that he was a convenient focus for our laughter. For what? For being insufficiently prepared to answer Michael Moore’s questions about some other guy’s reasons for thinking dressing his dog in a hunting outfit would be funny? It’s been years now since I saw the movie, but I don’t remember the sheriff spouting off any crazy/scary stuff that made him a worthy figure of ridicule. He was just asked to do an interview and then made a fool for his trouble, for being less prepared, less savvy, and from our perspective less intelligent than Michael Moore, and it left a bad taste in my mouth.
Again, I think Bowling wound up being a good movie and I appreicated that it didn’t go anywhere cliched or hackneyed in its conclusions; I was just personally turned off by it and haven’t wanted to watch a Moore movie since.
he even noted that Canada has lax gun control like the U.S.
Problem being, this is not actually true. Contra Moore, per capita gun ownership in Canada is about half of that of the US. Canada has a national gun registy — enforcement for existing weapons is lax in some provinces, but all new gun purchases go on the registry. And unless you’re a cop, you cannot keep a handgun in your home, your car, or carry it on your person at any time. If you want a handgun, fine — but you have to keep it locked up at the gun club or shooting range. The vast majority of Canadians who own guns are rural-dwelling shotgun and rifle owners.
Canadian cities tend to have crime rates that are almost identical to similar-sized US cities, and Canadian culture is extremely similar to US culture in most respects. The only meaningful difference is that there are vastly fewer handguns in urban areas, and vastly fewer gun deaths overall.
What Michael Moore said about Canadian gun ownerhsip in Bowling For Columbine was almost completely false.
I can’t stand Michael Moore. He makes good points in his movies, but also makes stuff up, which blows any credibility he has.
From way above, on Parker and Stone:
That’s exactly South Park’s appeal. I’ve been around a great deal of teenagers and young adults who sneer at anyone who cares too much about something. It must be empowering to be told that not only are people who believe in things not above them, but they’re even lower.
I should probably admit that I found Team America to be hilarious, even if I didn’t agree with its message.
Are you even reading the responses to you? No one is saying that healthcare in the UK is ‘free’ in the incredibly literal sense that you mean. The NHS is funded by taxpayers so yes, we are all contributing to it out of our monthly taxes, over the course of many years. And yes, dependent on income and other factors many people have to pay a fixed cost for any prescriptions (£6.65 last time I checked). But that isn’t even in the same universe as paying punitively high health insurance premiums (if you can afford it at all) and knowing even then that your insurance may not cover your medical bills if you require treatment.
The NHS isn’t perfect by any means but I am fortunate to know that if I need healthcare tomorrow I won’t need to remortgage or sell my house to pay for it because I am not - as an individual - responsible for the cost of my medical treatment. That is the point which you seem so determined to miss.
I have found that Democrats who complain about Moore are generally DLC type dems who view the Roosevelt Democrats, like Moore, as out of touch with reality.
To those who complain that Moore is ‘mean’ or sensationalist in his tactics, I’m with Finley Dunne: “It is the job of a reporter to comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable.”
For those who complain about waiting lists, I would point out that you could not save enough money during those waiting times to cover the procedures, unless your discretionary income is significantly above the national average — like 600 times more…
I have been fortunate that I have almost always had health insurance — and large plans at that. Even then, when my wife went through a breast cancer diagnoses we were out of pocket $18K — after insurance payments. Anyone who thinks our current system is beneficial to anyone other then corporations has not made use of it.
Well, hot damn! The Iraq War is free. Education is free. F-18s are free. I like your extremely common usage of the word free. (Actually, I don’t, because it’s the opposite of the actual meaning of the word.)
Roughly speaking, health care accounts for 1/6 of the US economy. So, to pay for all that free stuff, we’d have to raise taxes to the tune of maybe 2+ trillion a year. It would still be free, but it would cost more than $2 trill.
The US is a unique experiment, given its orgins and subsequent history.
So is New Zealand. So is Australia. So is the United Kingdom. So is the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
However, you don’t see attempts to justify torture by reference to the Treaty of Waitangi, Botony Bay, the Magna Carta or King Leopold’s War.
And, just asking, how fat is Moore on the spectrum of actual American weight? In the top decile? Somewhere on the 75% mark? Help me out here…
“I have found that Democrats who complain about Moore are generally DLC type dems who view the Roosevelt Democrats, like Moore, as out of touch with reality.”
I would think that Moore would even find plenty of fault with Roosevelt, so I dunno if I would label him as such.
Well, hot damn! The Iraq War is free. Education is free. F-18s are free. I like your extremely common usage of the word free. (Actually, I don’t, because it’s the opposite of the actual meaning of the word.)
So every time you take your kids to the library, you tell them, “Now, give Daddy a dollar for every book you check out, because my tax dollars paid for them and you need to pay me back”?
And, yes, public school education is free to the end user — the student. Is it free to the taxpayer? No. Is the taxpayer paying individually for each student? Of course not. You pay a lump sum to the government and it gets distributed out to all of the “free” services that you use.
Though I’m glad to see you’re coming over to our side on the ridiculous, pointless and insanely expensive Iraq war.
Roughly speaking, health care accounts for 1/6 of the US economy. So, to pay for all that free stuff, we’d have to raise taxes to the tune of maybe 2+ trillion a year. It would still be free, but it would cost more than $2 trill.
You don’t work in health care, do you? Do you have any idea how many people who work in health care are dedicated simply to trying to get insurance companies to pay healthcare providers? If your hospital accepts six kinds of insurance, you need to have at least 12 workers (if not more) who are solely dedicated to getting reimbursements from the insurance companies. Almost half — 40% — of our healthcare dollars go to overhead, not patient care.
We spend more than any other industrialized country and get less, with costs constantly rising. Why does this seem like a perfectly good system to you?
And what DJA says about Canadian gun control bolsters my other point. The linchpin, most effective stuff about Bowling, to me, was the twin stuff about Canada v. US and the escalating coverage of violence in the news v. the actual decline in violent activity. These both point strongly towards the whole US as Culture of Fear thing that other people have ably articulated on this thread. I think this is accurate and true stuff. But to find out that Moore misleads his audience about the nature of gun policy in Canada is basically to take the wind out of his/my sails; I still think Moore’s central concept is accurate, but by intentionally misleading the audience to, I guess, make his argument simpler/easier to outline, he damages his credibility. Someone less inclined than I am to get on board w/the culture of fear stuff who finds out that Canada isn’t the way Moore portrayed it might say “Oh, I guess all that stuff was BS, then.”
Also, I shouldn’t have said “mean”, because that’s not the right word. I like a lot of mean humor, and a lot of humor that makes me uncomfortable in the way I mentioned isn’t “mean”. I should’ve just stuck with “is an asshole”* You can disagree with me on that (or disagree with me on its import), I just thought I’d clarify my position.
*And yeah, I get that “is an asshole” can be necessary to the whole “Speaking truth to power” thing that Moore likes to do; my problem is that in Bowling I just felt like he was an asshole to his subjects all the time, both when they were figures of power and influence and when they weren’t.
Never said it was a perfectly good system. Said it was better than Cuba’s (despite what Michael Moore says). Said it wasn’t free (despite what Michael Moore says). Said that, if you have good health insurance, it’s better than anywhere else in the world.
The obvious downside of the US system is that not everyone is insured and that insurance is normally tied to your job. We hear these two facts constantly. I don’t deny them.
We never, ever, never, ever, never hear the downside of national health care. I thought I’d point of few things out that were downers.
The obvious downside of the US system is that not everyone is insured and that insurance is normally tied to your job. We hear these two facts constantly. I don’t deny them.
Actually, the obvious downside is that even those who themselves or have their employers pay exorbitant premiums oftentimes can’t translate their coverage into treatment. The film documents this in great detail, not to mention quite movingly. As someone who’s had cancer and tried to acquire private health insurance can tell you, the expense is prohibitive, such that without a job, I can’t even cover my most basic, preventative needs. This is not a rational system, nor is it about choice; it is an adversarial system in which middle-men (the insurance companies) do their damnedest to prevent their customers from receiving the services for which they pay.
My father, also a lifelong Republican and a faithful Rush Limbaugh listener, LOVES Michael Moore and his movies. He’s seen them all. He used to watch “TV Nation,� even.
Good point. When “TV Nation” was on, my nest of lifelong Republican family members watched it and loved it. He really speaks the populist language that conservatives feel entitled to. He’s a very real threat, which is why it behooves liberals not to get concern trolled into abandoning him.
“Said it wasn’t free (despite what Michael Moore says). Said that, if you have good health insurance, it’s better than anywhere else in the world.”
I think everyone realizes that ‘free’ doesn’t mean ‘free’, and if MM did say it that way it could and should have been better phrased. However,
Recently, Digby had a post ( http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/god-bless-usa-by-digby-i-dont-find.html ) that hit on MM’s movie as well as an article in the LA Times dealing with health care. Part of the post dealt with the idea of exceptionalism. From the post/LA Times article:
Now, the knee-jerk attitude that the U.S. is the best place on earth to be sick, fueled by the reputations of great institutions like the Mayo Clinic and by America’s leadership in drug and technology development, is beginning to be challenged by rigorous international comparisons. There is increasing evidence that, despite justified pride in individual institutions and medical breakthroughs, the world’s biggest medical spender isn’t buying its citizens the longest, healthiest lives in the world.
It’s not just moviemakers and comics saying so. The dire message that the U.S. healthcare system is, by some measures, an also-ran on the worldwide stage is being delivered by doctors, researchers — even insurance industry giants.
The United States recently ranked last among six industrialized nations on measures of safe and coordinated care, according to the Commonwealth Fund, although it spent the most per person.
COUNTRY AUSTRALIA CANADA GERMANY NEW ZEALAND BRITAIN U.S.
Overall ranking (2007) 3.5 5 2 3.5 1 6
Quality of care 4 6 2.5 2.5 1 5
Access 3 5 1 2 4 6
Efficiency 4 5 3 2 1 6
Equity 2 5 4 3 1 6
Healthy lives 1 3 2 4.5 4.5 6
Health expenditures
per capita (2004) $2,876* $3,165 $3,005* $2,083 $2,546 $6,102
Never said it was a perfectly good system. Said it was better than Cuba’s (despite what Michael Moore says).
As mentioned above, Cuba has a better infant mortality rate than the United States, and a higher immunization rate. You’re not at all embarrassed that a third-world dictatorship has better health outcomes for its population than the United States, one of the richest countries in the world?
Said it wasn’t free (despite what Michael Moore says).
As I’ve pointed out to you several times, you’re misunderstanding what “free” means in this context.
Said that, if you have good health insurance, it’s better than anywhere else in the world.
Actually, that’s not entirely true: if you have enough money to pay everything out of pocket, you can get terrific health care. Even “good” health insurance will try to pay for the barest minimum they can legally get away with paying. And if you had Blue Cross in California, they weren’t even willing to do that.
The people who go bankrupt because of health care are, for the most part, insured. The problem is that their insurance company drops them halfway through treatment and they have to try and scrape up the money to pay for it out of pocket. Blue Cross was caught dropping customers after they were diagnosed with serious illnesses, leaving them high and dry and with thousands of dollars in hospital bills that they were now responsible for.
This is what SiCKO is about. But you don’t want to hear it, because Moore hurt your fee-fees by pointing out that a third-world country like Cuba has better healthcare for the ordinary person than we do.
If kevin is arguing that high-quality, low-cost healthcare only comes with the suppression of political dissent in a totalitarian state, then he might at least have the honesty to state it outright, rather than insinuate it. Then we can laugh at him.
And I’ll return to my first point: does kevin think that the flaws of the US system are a price worth paying so that those with lots of money have access to the best healthcare?
It tooks us a while to get here, but you finally laid it out even more clearly than I had hoped: the average Cuban has it better than the average American. That’s exactly what I wanted you to say.
It tooks us a while to get here, but you finally laid it out even more clearly than I had hoped: the average Cuban has it better than the average American. That’s exactly what I wanted you to say.
Yes, by pointing out that the third-world dictatorship in Cuba has better healthcare than the richest democracy in the world, the United States, I was saying that Cuba is better overall than the United States. Boy, you got me there. You have the best reading comprehension skillz EVAH!
But, hey, we have Cuba beat by an entire 0.92 of a year in life expectancy. Whoo! We’re number 44! We’re number 44! U-S-A! U-S-A!
Exhibit A:
…a third-world country like Cuba has better healthcare for the ordinary person than we do.
Exhibit B:
…the average Cuban has it better than the average American.
Your Honor, I rest my case.
The fact is that if you put a camera on someone who’s unprepared for it, they’re going to say something dumb….
One evening in 1995, I was walking through Times Square with some college friends, and a producer pulled us aside and asked us if we’d be willing to do an on-the-street interview for a TV show. We said “uh…sure” and were escorted in front of a camera and introduced to one Michael Moore. He said to me, off-microphone, “Can I ask you a couple questions about [some then-current event that I can no longer recall]?” It was a subject I knew something about, so I nodded; the camera went on; and he asked me a completely random, ridiculous, nonsensical question that was designed solely to catch me off guard and make me look confused and idiotic.
That was the first time I’d ever heard of Michael Moore, and though I’ve seen all his movies, read his books, and considered myself a big fan of his ever since, I’ve never forgotten what’s at the root of lot of his filmmaking: The rather childish need to make people look stupid, whether or not 1) they actually are stupid or 2) they’ve done anything to deserve it.
At least to a softy like me, the bullying sometimes backfires. I don’t think I’d ever had a moment of sympathy for Charlton Heston until Moore came into his home and humiliated him. (I loved Bowling for Columbine–saw it twice, dragged several friends to it–but I had to look away at that part.)
Personally, one of my favorite tactics of Moore’s is his occasional foray into Theater of the Absurd territory. The scene in Fahrenheit 9/11 of him driving around the Capitol in an ice cream truck and reading the Patriot Act over the loudspeaker was a gorgeous, surreal, elegantly inelegant reflection of the insanity of that moment in our history.
And as kevin also said, ‘I fuck goats’.
See, if we’re putting words into people’s mouths, you might as well go hog-wild.
After the ad hominem attacks have been exhausted we are still left with his ideas. One has to wonder whether virulent hate of Michael Moore is not a defense mechanism to ward off any examination of his ideas.
Let me see if I follow the logic. It is not the ideas that make the person but the person who invlidates the ideas.
That doesn’t sound right.
Which must be why you put it in their mouth.
See, if we’re putting words in other people’s mouths, it pays to go wild, rather than just being sneakily disingenuous. After all, you did say that you love nothing more than the sexual company of goats.
“It tooks us a while to get here, but you finally laid it out even more clearly than I had hoped: the average Cuban has it better than the average American. That’s exactly what I wanted you to say.”
that was about as inaccurate as mm saying that some countries have ‘free’ health care.
nice, you and mm, kindred soulds…
Kevin, I think you owe Amanda a couple bucks.
because the definition of free you keep using means that quite literally, nothing is free. Your definition renders the word utterly useless.
and since you are posting on this forum, for “free” but are in fact using valuable bandwidth that could be dedicated to a little kitten attempting to “attack” and thereby cuddling a large lop eared bunny, you owe her money.
The use of “free” here is “gratis.” which means “the provider, not the receiver, pays for it.” which is in fact, exactly the case. The state, as provider, pays for the health care, even if the only money they have comes from taxes.
Sicko was good. I saw the early screening in… can’t remember, small town in northern lower Michigan. It is easily the most black and white movie of his that I can remember seeing. I enjoyed it because the focus was on people who actually have health insurance in the U.S., and how the insurance companies actively try to fuck them over.
I did not enjoy it because, as it is so black and white, it’s easy to tear apart with nuance and pointing out the staggering exceptions to the rosy picture he paints. The bit about Cuba, at the end, while useful for the mini-narrative he has throughout the movie, epitomizes this, and the movie would have been far stronger without it.
The movie pretty much entirely passed over, with the exception of one funny phone incident, the standard Michael Moorish corporation confrontation- he wasn’t seen ambushing anyone, throughout the entire movie. It was almost purely testimonials.
Kevin, the healthcare in Britain may not be “free” but cheaper than what I’m paying now is good enough. Why should my monthly insurance check have a portion of it set aside for profits? By making it a non-profit system, you have already eliminated one cost right off the bat.
It tooks us a while to get here, but you finally laid it out even more clearly than I had hoped: the average Cuban has it better than the average American. That’s exactly what I wanted you to say.
Except that’s not what was said. You’re trying to pretend that people are saying the opposite of what we are, which is that it’s pathetic that even a shithole like Cuba does this one thing better than we do. If you can’t argue honestly, it’s because you’re wrong.
karpad: I’m not posting for free. Believe me, this hour is just as billable as the last five. This is just a short 45 second break from less interesting, but more lucrative, work.
Others: There have been multiple comments about how much better the Cuban health care, education system, lifespan, etc. etc. are than those in the US. If that’s not making a strong preferential comparison between Cuba and the US, I don’t know what is. I stand by my comment.
If you could demonstrate that a national health care system was more efficient, and less expensive overall, than our current system, and if you could convince the American people of the same, it’s hard to see why you wouldn’t have a political winner.
We never, ever, never, ever, never hear the downside of national health care.
What are you talking about? We never hear anything but the downside. Hence the need for Moore’s movie. I swear that if the occasional Canadian didn’t pipe up, I’d still believe that everybody north of Minnesota was booking wart removals 2 years in advance.
National health care is an American boogeyman. There’s possibly no less popular position in American politics (aside, perhaps, from privatizing Social Security.) Honestly I think it’s well beyond time that we heard about how national health care actually works. For my own part, I’m abundantly tired of being relentlessly misinformed about it - particularly by people like you.
Interesting point, DJA. I have to wonder if he was being deliberately obtuse or has the same general sense (being in the NRA, after all) that most gun owners are basically rural types here. I doubt that it’s true, because of the handgun issue, but certainly the political support against any kind of gun control comes from the paranoid redneck demographic. I wish he’d brought that up about handguns; most gun nuts in this country would probably be just fine under those rules, if they could abandon the silly fantasy about shooting some robber breaking into the house.
We never, ever, never, ever, never hear the downside of national health care.
Can you get through a single commenting without lying your ass off? We not only hear about the downsides constantly, we also get a heavy dose of lies about the downside. For instance, your entire premise of argumentation is basically a lie—bringing the specter of a tax raise without reminding people that they will not have to pay for health insurance. For most people, the savings will be in the hundreds of dollars a year immediately, and will probably go up from there.
No kevin, you LIED about it not being better than Cuba’s. When confronted with statistics about Cuban healthcare being demonstrably superior (infant mortality rates etc.), you disingenuously talk about the way that Cubans justifiably dislike Cuba FOR OTHER REASONS. Unless kevin really thinks that Cubans are fleeing BECAUSE OF THE HEALTHCARE. Blatantly lying when the facts go against you is why we don’t like proponents of “privatized medicine”.
If just ONCE, one of you had the balls to confront the fact that America pays more and gets less, except for the obscenely wealthy. If just ONCE, one of you would confront the FACTS, then maybe we could have a discussion. Instead we see constant lies and evasion. It’s like arguing with creationists, only our current opponents seem to think that they AREN’T guilty of “magical thinking”.
I do hope Sicko covers an aspect of the debate that doesn’t get much attention—how racism fuels the opposition to a national health care plan. Few people touch on this—Steve Gilliard did a few times—but a lot of the boogeyman arguments about “wait times” are coded appeals to racism. In sum, a lot of people are motivated by the fear that they’d have to share waiting rooms and hospital rooms with the poor, who are often of a darker hue than the not-poor, and thus the idea that the medical system will get overwhelmed by people seeking care is a way to say this without coming right out and saying it.
I would rather wait to get an elective procedure done (and these are elective procedures, since they’re not emergencies) than be unable to have them done at all because I am low-income and couldn’t possibly afford health insurance. There’s a reason we voted Tommy Douglas the “Greatest Canadian,” after all…
I don’t think I’m going to be seeing “Sicko,” despite really liking Moore’s movies; the US healthcare “system,” if it can be described as a system in fact, pisses me off to no end, and I really don’t want to stroke out in the theatre.
This is where you are very wrong. The only people who will be better off are those without insurance. The people whose insurance is paid for by the employer won’t be better off. And good luck telling senior citizens, who currently get a sweet medicare deal, they there is a new 2 trillion dollar a year tax increase. These two groups alone far outnumber the uninsured; hence the tough sell in national insurance.
But, if you have no job or no insurance, you will be better off with national health insurance. “Most people,” however, will NOT save hundreds of dollars a year, unless you are doing your math where national health insurance is “free.”
I’ll ask again, kevin, and it won’t deprive you of more than a few billable seconds:
Are the flaws of the US system a price worth paying?
Kevin: On what planet do we never hear the downside of national health care? Because I have never, and I do mean never, read an article or heard a news report about universal health care that does not invoke “but the wait lists are horrible in the UK/Canada”. And then there is your ridiculous semantic argument about the definition of “free”. Yep, never heard that one before. Or the one about Cuba being a dictatorship therefore we can never critically consider their education or healthcare system. Your whole argument is just recycled talking points from Faux News et al.
You are the definition of the black and white thinker Amanda was talking about in her post. So nice of you to prove her point so clearly.
Crap, it appears other made the point before I hit refresh.
I’m not posting for free. Believe me, this hour is just as billable as the last five. This is just a short 45 second break from less interesting, but more lucrative, work.
And that “break from billable work” is that money going to Amanda? If not, you are stealing from Amanda, by using her resources without paying for it. Your own personal opportunity costs are irrelevant to that discussion, the same as you choosing to go to burger king instead of McDonalds doesn’t mean you deserve your whopper without paying money.
“I’ll ask again, kevin, and it won’t deprive you of more than a few billable seconds:
Are the flaws of the US system a price worth paying?”
I would prefer keeping the current system and finding creative ways to insure the uninsured. It’s far wiser to keep what does work and improve what doesn’t. I’m not convinced that having the US goverment run our health care system is a good idea. Clearly, I think it’s a bad idea.
I’ll also point out that no current candidate from either party is suggesting that we nationalize health care. Michael Moore is suggesting just such a thing.
For anyone demanding a Canadian single payer system, I urge you to see an excellent movie called “The Barbarian Invasion.” Great film.
Whispers, that’s a great point. (It reminds me of criticisms of ANSWER back in 2002-3.) If there were a dozen other people putting the sort of effort Moore does into making and publicizing their coverage of crucial issues like health care and gun control, then we might have some slack space in which to quibble and pick and choose and all. But just as with too many people and important issues, Moore is what we’ve got. I think it’s important to give him some props and boosting because this stuff is just too important to let go unaddressed.
When we think about the flaws of our current health care system, think about the following. When all us baby boomers get old and are living with multiple chronic illnesses who is going to take care of us? Will we all have to spend ourselves into bankruptcy so that we can have medicaid and live in nursing homes? Are our daughters and sons (mainly daughters, as readers of this blog know) have to quit their jobs to live with us? Because, I’m here to tell you, most of us will need 24/7 care for some time (weeks months years) before we die and nobody is doing anything about this….
” I’m not convinced that having the US goverment run our health care system is a good idea. Clearly, I think it’s a bad idea.”
another disingenuous argument. yer really racking them up.
is medicare running the US health care system? obviously not, yet it’s an entirely effective and popular program made possible by the FAILURE of the private system to insure the elderly prior to its implementation. just try taking it away as it’s such a bad idea…..
Are the flaws of the US system a price worth paying?
To make this debate a little more clear, I think it’s important to remember that the plight of the uninsured is a feature, not a bug, to a lot of defenders of the current system. Like I said above, they like the fact that they can go to the doctor or hospital without having to rub shoulders with the poor and don’t really like the idea that national health care will change that fact. I mean, I love my doctor to death, etc., but I am often sort of weirded out by how his office screams “middle class privilege” from every corner. I’d drop dead of shock to see anyone who looks like they make as much money as I do, and certainly would die of shock to see anyone who makes less.
“there is a new 2 trillion dollar a year tax increase. ”
cite on the figure, please?
Amanda:
I do hope Sicko covers an aspect of the debate that doesn’t get much attention—how racism fuels the opposition to a national health care plan.
It doesn’t, but in a pragmatic way: it focuses on white, working-class families, the ones who pay into the system and get nothing in return. Ideologically sketchy, I confess; but politically effective, I hope.
” Like I said above, they like the fact that they can go to the doctor or hospital without having to rub shoulders with the poor and don’t really like the idea that national health care will change that fact.”
I don’t know if this the reason why some are against it…some probably are resistent to any change, some probably think the deal they currently have is better then what they’d be getting, etc., etc. I don’t know how the plight of the uninsured can be a feature because in the end, even the insured, are paying for those that aren’t.
kevin:
Do you honestly think that insurance companies haven’t already had those discussions? If they’d come up with a worthwhile solution that operated within a corporationist context, they’d have implemented it already. But they know just as well as we do that the only viable “creative way” to insure the uninsured is nationalized health insurance, but they also know just as well as we do that it’d put them out of business.
I mean, come on. When Big Pharma told you that nationalized health insurance is a Bad Thing™, didn’t it occur to you that they might have an ulterior motive (i.e., cynical self-preservation) for saying so?
When your ideology forces you to defend a clearly classist, often crypto-racist, sometimes sexist, and otherwise just generally predatory system such as health care in the US, you’ve already lost the argument.
See, this is what I dislike about libertarianism: it gives shallow, avaricious people the opportunity to use capitalism as an excuse not to give an acrobatic flying fuck about anyone less fortunate than themselves. It’s the exact opposite of altruism.
“I think the reason why some of the ‘left/liberals’ don’t like MM is because he’s just as hard on Democrats as Republicans, and in fact often portrays them as corporate stooges that vary little from one another.”
Actually, I don’t like him very much because his movies are getting duller and duller. Some good points are made in them, but it’s presented in such an obnoxious manner, IMO.
As I understand it, one of the points that the movie really hits is that the system doesn’t really work that well even for a lot of people who have insurance. Basically, if you get sick, it’s really easy to be bankrupted, sometimes literally, by your co-pays and uncovered expenses. And then, assuming your condition gets worse, it’s really easy to find yourself in a place where you’re too sick to work and too broke to pay COBRA. And then it’s really hard to get insurance again when you have a pre-existing condition, even if you improve enough to go back to work. People concentrate on the plight of uninsured people, as they should. But single payer would be better for a lot of sick people, even if they have insurance when they get sick.
And that’s especially true of unmarried people, which is part of the reason that single and divorced women make up so many of insurance companies’ casualties. If you’re married, you might be able to fall back on your spouse’s insurance if you’re too sick to work. But if it’s just you, you’re in trouble.
This site puts total US health care spending at $2.9 trillion by the year 2009.
http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml
Wikipedia puts the total US budget at $2.9 trillion by 2009.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget
One way to frame this is to say that having a single payer health care system would double the current US tax rate; viz. double the budget, double the taxes needed to fund it. It’s more complicated obviously, but it’s a huge number no matter how you look at it.
Congratulations on one of the most concise, and precise, critiques of so-called libertarianism I have ever read.“One way to frame this is to say that having a single payer health care system would double the current US tax rate;”
no. that’s not even remotely honest, nor a valid conclusion based on what you presented.
Why not? If the US government pays all health care costs, and those costs are $2.9 trillion, how do they get that money other than from taxes?
What is your issue with this statement?
kevin:
You can write off a pretty significant part of that number from the get-go, since as Mnemosyne said, about 40% of health care costs in the US go towards propping up the health care system itself, not to actual patient care. And I don’t know how much of that figure is accounted for by exorbitant malpractice insurance rates necessitated by our litigious society. So call it $1.1 trillion.
It’s still less than we’ve already spent on GWB’s little ego-war in the Middle East.
Indeed. I was coming here to post that.
Moore spun the statistics so as to make gun ownership rates sound similar in both countries. He mentioned the U.S. has a gun for every person; he mentioned then that Canada has about 7 million guns and 10 million households, as if that’s equivalent. But that’s a quarter of the U.S. rate. The Canadian rate of handgun ownership, last time I checked, was about 1/10th the U.S. rate. As I recall, Canada passed tough gun-control laws after our own prominent school shooting — the Montreal Massacre of ‘89, to which North American feminists should need no introduction.
It was disingenuous of him to pretend gun control had nothing to do with it.
“It’s still less than we’ve already spent on GWB’s little ego-war in the Middle East.”
I don’t think $1.1 trillion is the accurate number, but you rightly point out the gigantic cost of the Iraq war. Any decent politician should be able to argue that spending the money in almost any other way would have been wiser. It’s not for nothing that Bush has a 25% approval rating.
“So call it $1.1 trillion.”
Hmm. You went from 2.9 to 1.1 rather quickly. I would agree that the administrative costs will be lower, but 40%? I need to see that documented somewhere.
There are a few reasons why the 2.9 trilion might actually go up rathar than down. First, people who had little or no coverage will now spend as if they had full coverage. Second, people who chose to ration their own care because of deducatibles or out of pocket expenses will now have no incentive to save money at all. They might as well go full monty on everything, since it won’t cost them any more money. Third, the overall aging of the population will be crushing to our health care expenses. But, this is going to happen with or without single payer.
Nice way to avoid the question.
It ignores how the profit motive is manifested in denial of coverage, limitation of coverage and the difficulty of keeping coverage intact when changing job. Most medical bankruptcies affect the insured.
If you’re only concerned with changing things for the uninsured, are the flaws for those who have insurance right now a price worth paying?
Yes, a larger pool has certain actuarial advantages. But a system that retains the employer tie and the pre-existing condition rule is a system that keeps people in jobs they don’t necessarily want and discourages the seeking of care at precisely the point at which treatment can be cheap and effective.
Not true. He’s endorsed HR 676, which would implement universal single-payer not-for-profit health insurance. If you don’t know the difference, that’s really your own problem. If you’re trying to conflate the two, that’s also your own problem.
I’ve got to see healthcare from both sides. Behind the scenes, the main difference between a British hospital and an American one is the accents. The receptions? Well, let’s just say the NHS isn’t so big on plush leather armchairs.
The politics of this should be simple: divide and conquer. Distinguish between the people who we want paid for healthcare (hint: most of them wear scrubs) and those we don’t (hint: most of them wear suits).
And there’s one issue that isn’t mentioned enough: the looming prospect of massive debt, or even the arduous process of dealing with that person on the phone who’s now telling you that you’re paying the bill when the person you spoke to before the appointment said you were covered… all that shit makes people sick. The term ’sick with worry’ is not a figure of art.
Well, let’s see. I live in a happy world where I’m on my partner’s insurance, and his employer pays all the premiums. So yeah, if health care was nationalized, we might start getting more money taken out of our paychecks in taxes, without having our outlay on insurance go down, since currently we spend nothing.
Except, wait. Most people have to pay a premium; their employers don’t foot the whole bill. My employer certainly doesn’t, and if I had chosen to get insurance through my job, my premiums would have doubled this year.
And oh, yeah. Benefits — for example, health insurance — are one of the things that people consider when they’re looking for a job. If job A offers a salary of $30,000 and job B offers a salary of $35,000, but A offers health insurance and B doesn’t, you should be looking at whether you can get that health insurance from elsewhere for that extra $5000. If health care got nationalized? That company offering job A is going to have to raise that salary in order to compete.
Please, kevin, if you’re going to argue, at least decide first from what basis you wish to proceed. You contend that the United States health care system is better than Cuba’s, but you don’t adduce any facts to support your position, trusting, so I imagine, that the mere utterance of the word “Cuba” will be enough to scare the pansy liberals into silence. (What info you do provide applies to Britain, not Cuba, and is out of date to boot, but, what the heck, right? Socialism is socialism, not so?)
Meanwhile, your fellow troll, Bruce/Crablaw, raises the possibility that Cuba’s people get better access to health care than do many Americans (along with the possibility that Cubans are more literate than Americans) only to shrug away that possibility: Cuba is a slave labor camp, he says, and therefore nothing that happens there matters. (A point of view which would sort rather oddly with any stated sympathy for Cubans, which may be why Bruce/Crablaw doesn’t bother wring his hands and deplore their plight. He demonstrates his good taste at least that far; credit where credit is due.) Oh, and before I forget—apparently the bare act of showing up in Cuba & filming stuff there is a grave moral crime, one that would dismiss the filmic work of a visitor to Cuba from any possible serious consideration. Which explains, at least, why there’s been no major influx of American documentarians into Cuba. Apparently they’d invaildate their own work simply by virtue of having shown up in Havana.
It’s not a strange omission, dude, in a thread which is supposed to be about health care.
(If it’s any comfort to you, kevin, we Americans now seem to be setting up torture facilities of our own, facilities that even straight people can get into. If that’s not the rectification of a major injustice, what is? Cubans may be so benighted as to favor queers as torture-fodder, but we Americans are wise enough even-handedly to disappear and torture enemy combatants, be they gay or straight. Surely that’s a promising step in the direction of greater parity in the treatment of persons of differing sexual orientations, and I wouldn’t expect you to be other than pleased.)
kevin is also disingeuously insisting on using his 2.9 trillion figure for costs.
When you don’t have insurance companies and their like trying to gut profits, and sending money to their shareholders, you think it’ll still cost the same?
I’m sure the Iraq War would cost a hell of a lot more if it were done solely with contracting Mercenary Corperations operating for profit, too.
Admittedly, the billion-dollar savings on clipboards would likely put a Chinese clipboard factory or two out of business, but I can cope with that.
kevin:
The issue is that you clearly haven’t thought about this for any more time than it took for your knee to jerk.
From the NCHC site you yourself cited:
These problems — and they are massive and systemic problems, not statistical anomalies or alarmist whipping-horses — are rampant because of the capitalist nature of the industry, not in spite of it. A nationalized system has to reduce waste and inefficiency, control prices, and cut administrative expenses, or it would never get off the ground in the first place.
Add Mnemosyne’s 40% in reflexive overhead to this necessary streamlining of the system, and you’ve already cut costs by at least half, if not almost two thirds. Reorienting the system away from profit and towards health care would reduce costs even further.
In a health care system that is oriented towards actually providing health care, rather than towards maximizing profits, none of these things are significant problems.
Again, we spend more on health care and get less for our money than any other country. It’s not a coincidence that we also have one of the most aggressively privatized health-care industries in the world.
I mean, come on. When Big Pharma told you that nationalized health insurance is a Bad Thing™, didn’t it occur to you that they might have an ulterior motive (i.e., cynical self-preservation) for saying so?
Dan -
When they demonize nationalized health insurance they use the term “socialized medicine” (queue sting and screaming in the background)
One way to frame this is to say that having a single payer health care system would double the current US tax rate;�
So the jump in taxes would be made up for in the lack of employer and employee monthly health insurance contributions PLUS a lack of a co-pay or deductable.
so wazz ur problem?
One way to frame this is to say that having a single payer health care system would double the current US tax rate; viz. double the budget, double the taxes needed to fund it. It’s more complicated obviously, but it’s a huge number no matter how you look at it.
Er, Kevin - I know you’re not really interested in facts, but consider this:
“The authors also compared health spending in OECD countries with waiting lists to spending in those without lists. “Health spending in the twelve countries with waiting lists averaged $2,366 per capita,” the authors say, “while in the seven countries without waiting lists, it averaged $2,696—both much less than U.S. spending of $5,267 per capita.”
Let’s do a few guesses, shall we? At a rough estimate, this means the US is spending about $1.6 trillion on health care at present. If this was bought into line with spending in other countries, say at around $3,500 per capita just to be generous, this would be around $1.1 trillion - a saving of half a trillion. Let’s say that you’d have to spend that $1.1 trillion through the government - you’re already spending around 40% of 1.6 trillion through the government now - say around 0.6 trillion.
This would mean that, at a rough guess, taxes would go up by $0.5 trillion per year - while saving $1 trillion forked out annually to health insurance companies - and with better results if overseas experience is any guide.
Me, I’d be happy to take that deal. A better example would be to include some private spending (especially for electives and alternatives) still, but the principle is the same. There’s a hell of a lot being sucked off in insurance company profits and inefficiencies due to doing it all private.
“Add Mnemosyne’s 40% in reflexive overhead to this necessary streamlining of the system, and you’ve already cut costs by at least half, if not almost two thirds.”
I’ve asked this before, but I’ll repeat it. Where does this 40% figure come from?
Kevin:
If socialized medicine costs so much, why does Cuba get demonstrably better outcomes for ONE TENTH the outlay of the US.
If “Only the uninsured” will be better off why is the ENTIRE FUCKING PREMISE OF THE MOVIE UNDER DISCUSSION, that the insured are getting fucked by the current system.
Why does the US pay almost DOUBLE per capita on healthcare than any other nation, yet have such poor outcomes across the board.
Why, with so many models of socialized medicine to choose from can’t you provide a SINGLE EXAMPLE that pays as much per capita as you claim the US would HAVE to pay?
You’re either lying or incredibly stupid. I vote both.
“If the US government pays all health care costs, and those costs are $2.9 trillion, how do they get that money other than from taxes?”
Because you are assuming that the gvt. would collect taxes and pay at a 1:1 ratio, which is a false assumption. I also assume that figure represents total health care costs, including what’s now being paid by medicare. Your framing also assumes that the costs will remain the same, even tho uhc would eliminate a huge amount of overhead and ‘profit’ in the insurance system,
You can also try to frame such a program’s premiums as ‘taxes’, because that’s the sort of shit that dishonet people do. But that rhetorical sleight of hand means little to me whether i pay unaffordable premiums to scumbag insurace companies for ‘health care’ i don’t have, or a fraction of that amount in ‘taxes’ to the gvt to get the guarantee of coverage and a higher standard of care afforded citizens of more progressive countries.
“I’ve asked this before, but I’ll repeat it. Where does this 40% figure come from?”
You mean unlike that 2 trillion dollars you pulled out of your ass?
The $2.9 trillion came from this site, not from my ass:
http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml
There are a few reasons why the 2.9 trilion might actually go up rathar than down. First, people who had little or no coverage will now spend as if they had full coverage. Second, people who chose to ration their own care because of deducatibles or out of pocket expenses will now have no incentive to save money at all. They might as well go full monty on everything, since it won’t cost them any more money. Third, the overall aging of the population will be crushing to our health care expenses. But, this is going to happen with or without single payer.
What you fail to mention or understand here is that “full monty” you mentioned here is a switch in priorities from “sick care” which costs major buck to “wellness care” which costs less.
Ever heard that old saying “a stitch in time saves nine?” It’s bout the cost of prevention or immediate diagnosis and how small that is versus the cost of waiting.
Health care outcomes AND costs are lower when people see an actual health care provider on a refular basis than “rationing” their health care and seeing the doctor only for emergencies or when a problem arises - because in stances like breast cancer, by the time YOU become aware of it without benefit of doctor, mammography, etc. you chances at survival are significantly lowered.
What might look to you as saving money on the front end is actually costing EVERYONE more at the back end.
“First, people who had little or no coverage will now spend as if they had full coverage.’
WAIT. I THOUGHT UHC WOULD LEAD TO ‘RATIONING’?”
‘Second, people who chose to ration their own care because of deducatibles or out of pocket expenses will now have no incentive to save money at all.”
Wait! UHC would lead to rationing that doesn’t occur now, except when it does!
” They might as well go full monty on everything, since it won’t cost them any more money.”
UHC will lead to rationing, but everyone will go apeshit and go RATIONED FULL MONTY!!!!
Let’s see…
40% of $2,900,000,000,000 = $1,160,000,000,000 (And to be generous we’ll assume that 40% administrative cost is the only needless extra in that 2.9 billion.)
$1,160,000,000,000 divided by and average US population of 300,000,000 people…
So, an average of $3,867 per person per year.
$3,867 divided by 52 weeks = a flat tax of $74.37 a week for health care, with the actual number varying depending on each person’s income (assuming 2.9 billion and 40% are accurate figures) . And, of course, people who already have insurance won’t be paying that anymore, so they’ll save that money.
So, it’ll mostly be people who don’t currently have insurance who will end up payingmore.
Why, it’s almost as if UHC would function almost exactly like health insurance, just with everyone cover, everything guaranteed to be covered, and no chance of ever loosing coverage.
Ruby,
1. You might want to check your numbers. You assumed a 60 percent savings, not a 40 percent savings.
2. You might want to wait on running your numbers again until someone can document where the 40 percent number came from. From what I can tell, it just came from a random post somewhere in this thread.
This is possibly one of the vaguest statements ever but just for arguments sake…
Are they taking advantage of preventive health care like annual pap/pelvic/breast exams for women and prostate checks for men? How fucking selfish! We must do everything in our power to prevent routine health exams that could prevent the development of serious and more costly diseases.
Or do you mean they are spending the money they previously spent on healthcare on other things, like say rent or food or- heaven forfend- a few luxury goods. Those selfish bastards! You are right. If they can’t afford those things in our current system they should not be allowed them under a more humane system- they are obviously morally bankrupt.
See comments above because they apply equally here.
On savings: As of April 2007, personal savings as a percentage of disposable income was negative 1.3% (and growing; it was only -0.7% in March)- the lowest in the developed world. France had 11.6% (maybe because they have universal health care?). Personal income is also falling, while personal expenditures have increased- and it’s not because Americans have just gotten less responsible with their money. The cost of living is rising, more people are relying on credit just to make ends meet, and real wages have been declining. But you think people just aren’t being responsible enough with their money, so fuck ‘em.
And because I love personal anecdotes: my infant son got a stomach virus a few months ago and began projectile vomiting in the middle of the night. Since I was in the middle of the same thing (but much worse) we took him to the ER so he could be rehydrated. We saw a doctor for ten minutes, my son was given an anti-nausea med and we were sent home with some pedialyte. The cost for this visit: almost $900 ($75 at time of service, $550 for the ER, and $250 for the doctor) and that was with the 20% discount for being uninsured. We cannot save money because even relatively minor medical issues completely wipe out whatever additional we might have had. And I have a couple more stories where that came from. The thing is, it is still cheaper for us than purchasing insurance in our current single-payer system (for our family of three it would be $1000/month with a $5000 deductible, plus co-pays and only 70/30 coverage for most procedures).
So guess which system I would prefer?
I just read through this WHOLE thread.
And I have only one thing to say:
Kevin needs to be bunnied.
… -_-;
Needless to say I’ve had a long day.
until someone can document where the 40 percent number came from. From what I can tell, it just came from a random post somewhere in this thread
I’m inclined to say that at least 40% of hospital bills being unnecessary is true.
About a year and a half ago a wasp stung me and I had an allergic reaction and my father promptly draged me off to the emergence room.
I went in, put in my name, waited in the waiting room for a half an hour, a nurse called me back and took my vitals, I waited in the room for maybe 20 minuets, a doctor came in and spent less than 10 minuets with me, a nurse gave me a tetanus shot and some Benadryl tablets, and then I left.
The bill was $705 for the hospital visit plus a $186 physician bill. And I don’t have insurance. (I applied for some hospital program and after looking at my W2’s for the last few years they “wrote off” the hospital bill. The physician bill I paid.)
A few months ago I notice a strange growth on my back, made an appointment with a dermatologist (a specialist) with private practice.
I had one appointment with him to look at it, another for him to cut it off, he sent it in for tests (it was, of all things a bizarre allergic reaction to a bug bite), and I went back once more to get the stitches out. It cost, all together, less than $300.
If hospitals don’t charge far more than necessary, than why on earth did getting a bee sting looked at cost more than 3 times what it cost to have a specialist perform minor surgery!?
What price do you out on fear?
It’s like the argument about the rich/poor gap widening. It’s bad, but IMO it’s nothing compared to the vast increase in uncertainty for the working and middle classes of America, and health care has an enormous part in this.
The vast and growing number of people who are afraid to get sick, afraid to have that rash looked at or convince themselves that that tightness in the chest is just muscular tension–it’s changing America.
I’ve said it before, that a liberal is a conservative who’s dealt with a health insurance company.
I don’t know how old you are kevin, but do you know what it’s like to work hard all your life, get a nice house and money socked away to send the kids to decent colleges–and know that you could lose it all–ALL of it, if just one of your family gets sick? And that’s with health insurance? Do you know how much that changes peoples lives? Their view of America? The dynamic with their kids?
I will bet you cash money that, among people who have actually gone a round with the health care industry, if you were to say that in return for doubling the tax rate, you’d get universal coverage that would cover absolutely everything and could never be dropped, they’d go for it.
And they’d go for it for the same reason people supported the Patriot Act.
Because they want to stop living in fear.
I like Michael Moore, and I always get irritated when people slam him for being “biased.” EVERYONE is biased. That is a redundant statement. Anyone willing to put forth the money and effort to put together a documentary obviously has a point to make.
I disagree that a lot of our violence problems couldn’t be controlled by stricter gun control. Making something incredibly hard to obtain does not stop everyone, but it stops a great deal of people. Using the argument that people will stab/strangle/poison when they can’t shoot is a red herring; the fatality rate of bullet wounds is far higher than any other method of violence, and it takes a lot less courage to pull a trigger from across the way than to get up close and personal and watch someone die.
So, no, stricter gun laws are not a panacea, but they are a salve. Getting to the root of any major social disease takes a lot of time and trial and error, but treating the symptoms will make us strong enough to fight another day. That being said, we could solve even MORE of our problems by eliminating poverty, which is one of the reasons I’m in the Edwards camp now. Wow, this post went off track fast.
Studies on admin puts the cost closer to 30pc of per capita expenditure, but that’s still way above anything else in the G7, and an order of magnitude greater than Medicare.
The point is this: as premiums rise, and coverage declines, could the money be better spent than, say, to ensure that the CEOs of insurance corporations get multi-million dollar bonuses because ‘that’s what the market demands’?
And are the failures of the current system for the insured a price worth paying for its continuance? Is the care good enough to make just it a sad side-effect that you’re stuck in a shitty job for the healthcare, or you’re uncovered when you change jobs, or that the deductible structure encourages people to put off treatment for conditions when they’re less serious?
Kevin;
When I moved from California to Canada, I started the new job making the same salary as my old job (Math worked out to $15/h with a 40h week). After taxes, I made $60/month less in Canada. However, Insurance down in California started at $75/month for the Blue Cross/Blue Shield HMO plan.
In free market terms, I pay $15 less a month for a health insurance plan with:
-No deductible and no coverage maximums.
-No “coverage Networks” telling me which doctor I needed to see; I can use any clinic, any emergency room, or any doctor in the province.
-No risk of ever losing that coverage if I lost my job, or having to pay the employer’s half for continued COBRA benefits.
-Optometrist fees covered.
-Cheaper pharmaceuticals.
And just like down in the states, we have employer offered benefits that include Vision, Dental, and even lower rates on Pharmaceuticals… Hell,ours even includes Chiropractic, Acupuncture and Massage and Travel Insurance for the same price as the US dental/vision package.
And yes, there is a downside. I do live in a region where there are not enough doctors, and no emergency room. A co-worker severely broke his ankle a few weeks back, and the ambulance had to take him to another city, an hour and a half away. Yet he still had his surgery the next day, and is now back up and walking again.
Me, I twisted my ankle while living in the states, and wound up paying over $1000 out of pocket on medical fees because I couldn’t afford to pay the increased share of my insurance at my previous job, while also taking a pay hit from unemployment. Only generous parents and a new job in California saved me from bankruptcy; I was living that close to the margin at that time. But at least there wasn’t any wait.
I would have to be a fucking moron to want to take the American system over the Canadian system.
Whereas kevin would have us believe, completely contrary to all available evidence that having a single-payer system would double costs.
This is because kevin is an idiot.
Here’s the “mythical” 40 percent:
Of course, that article is from 1991 and naturally healthcare costs have only gone down in the intervening 16 years. Right, Kevin?
But the New England Journal of Medicine says I’m wrong: in 1999, “administration accounted for 31.0 percent of health care expenditures in the United States”. So, clearly, since they say that overhead costs are a mere 30% of our healthcare costs and not 40%, that proves that Michael Moore is fat. Or something. I’ve kind of lost the thread of what Kevin is trying to argue.
If the US government pays all health care costs, and those costs are $2.9 trillion, how do they get that money other than from taxes?
Well, shit, right off the bat I can see one major false assumption that invalidates your argument - the assumption that the same amount of health care would cost the same under a national health care system as under the system we have now.
Why on Earth would they be the same? Why would it cost the government as much to, say, run their own government hospitals as I might pay at a private for-profit hospital?
The idea that national health care in the US would cost nearly 3 trillion dollars is just a bullshit figure, and you should be embarassed for even saying it. It’s a forgone conclusion that a single-payer system providing the same level of care is cheaper than the system we have. I don’t think there’s anybody informed that could possibly dispute that conclusion.
Since my link to the 40 percent figure is in moderation, I’ll tell a bad insurance story, since we’re reached that point in the thread:
Last year, my boss received a letter from a collections agency demanding payment for a CAT scan that her daughter had received two days after she was born that the insurance company said they didn’t have to pay for. She panicked a little and paid the collections agency so her credit wouldn’t be damaged.
A week later, she got a letter from the insurance company saying that they’d granted her appeal and would pay the hospital for the CAT scan. When she called to tell them that she’d paid the collection agency, they told her that they could only pay the hospital directly and she’d have to get her money back from the collection agency. Or, she could wait until the insurance company paid the hospital, who would inform the collection agency, who might remember to refund her the money.
The kicker? At this point, her daughter was FOUR years old. That’s right, the insurance company had been dicking her around for four full years trying to get out of paying for that damn CAT scan.
(I advised her to dispute the charge on her credit card that she’d paid the collection agency with and let the credit card company fight it out for her. I left that job, so I don’t know what the outcome was. I suspect she’s still dealing with it as her daughter’s fifth birthday rapidly approaches.)
One of the big problems with the NHS is that successive governments have moved it further and further away from it’s original ethos. The idea of the NHS was “healthcare free at the point of demand” which we don’t really have. Eye tests only recently became free, dentists appointments and dental treatment isn’t at all free unless you’re in special circumstances and when you pick up a prescription every single item costs you £6.85.
There’s also the problem that more and more of the NHS is being sold off and privatised. It’s a disgrace and it’s killing the NHS. The Welsh Assembly has scrapped prescription charges. There was also an attempt made within the Scottish Parliament to scrap prescription charges by the Scottish Socialist Party, but it was voted down by nearly all of the major parties. I think the only two other parties to back the bill were the greens and the SNP, plus a couple of independents.
Fingers again workingslower than brain (I said on C&L a few days ago that I need to find a better brain to keyboard interface because fingers are not working so well)
ANY way that should read:
Health care outcomes are better AND costs are lower . . .
Anyway I’m waiting for Kevin to wake up and post to see if his response is predicable . . .
Shawn: “I can’t stand Michael Moore. He makes good points in his movies, but also makes stuff up, which blows any credibility he has.”
Then you can’t stand anyone, including yourself, for we all make “stuff up.”
I took Bowling with Columbine as more of a food for thought to make your own conclusions than a black and white spoon fed opinion. I do think he made some very good points in it. The interview with Charlton Heston was amusing. Listening to Moore ask him if he had ever been confronted with a crime, violence or a reason to use his guns set him into a stammering fest. The points made about the media driven crime paranoia were right on and I do think it was something he found while really digging into the subject.
I was discussing that movie with my SO recently. He said he didn’t like the portion where he went into a Kmart showing how easy it was to buy a gun like Kmart was evil. But I asked him what portion of that part of the movie was misrepresented or dishonest. He admitted that no, nothing Moore presented in the Kmart section was misrepresented. It just is what it is. It IS easy to buy a gun in a discount store. Take that as a good or bad thing based on your personal opinions.
What I really took away from Bowling that stuck was how much trumped up fear the media feeds everyone. It really permanently changed my bullshit detector in relation to the mainstream media.
Who here thinks that kevin’s deep concerns about lower taxes don’t extend to saving money by immediately withdrawing all troops from Iraq?
I thought so.
This isn’t about the savings. This is about begrudging the poor decent medical care.
The quibbling over numbers is a distraction from the real issue. Americans pay more than other countries for medical care and receive less care, because a huge percentage of what we pay goes to profits. Basic common sense dictates that if you don’t have to pay extra for something (extra being the money going into the pockets of the stockholders and CEOs of insurance companies), you pay less for it. But Edwards’ plan has a solution to get around the whiners who think that the “free market” will always provide lower costs—in his plan, insurance companies have to compete with Medicaid. The idea is that they get their chance to show what they can do and odds are they’ll fail miserable and lose out to the more efficient government-run plan.
But Kevin showed his cards. The issue is that people like him (and he made a big fuss out of how much money he makes) should simply not have to share resources with the lower classes. I’d love to see the racist sneer on his face when he’s discussing this with friends.
In Dorothy Roberts’ book Killing the Black Body (for book club discussion next week!), she recounts an interview she saw with a white woman on TV who admitted that she relied on welfare to get by. The woman wanted welfare cut anyway. Why? Well, because she couldn’t stand black women getting benefits.
Mentioning the tax hike without mentioning the enormous savings every year from not having to pay insurance is a bad faith argument. I’m a healthy single woman who pays probably the absolute minimum in health care costs every year, and I stand to save over $2,000 a year in health care payments under a universal plan. If my taxes go up even a significant amount, I’d still probably save money. Needless to say, people with children or actual health care issues would save even more.
But if taxes seem to be going up precariously high, luckily Bush sliced up marginal taxes and the estate tax, so we can get plenty of money by just restoring those taxes to reasonably progressive levels. Also, abandoning adventure wars is a good place to start saving money.
Absolutely correct. This is one of the overall problems in the country — ‘I’ve got mine, screw you’. We expect military costs to be a shared burden; we expect state and national infrastructure to be a shared burden. Why not health care?
An additional argument can be made that by having a single payer, national heath care, system you would spur economic growth as companies do not have to bear the cost alone. I seem to recall that a few of months ago Honda announced it would build to new hybrid manufacturing plants in Canada instead of the US. Though the labor costs were higher in Canada, the stability of health care costs allowed them to carry their investment further. GM has made some whispers about supporting a national health system, as have other major US manufacturers.
An additional argument can be made that by having a single payer, national heath care, system you would spur economic growth as companies do not have to bear the cost alone. I seem to recall that a few of months ago Honda announced it would build to new hybrid manufacturing plants in Canada instead of the US. Though the labor costs were higher in Canada, the stability of health care costs allowed them to carry their investment further. GM has made some whispers about supporting a national health system, as have other major US manufacturers.
Which also helps explain why GM and Chrysler build cars in Canada instead of the US (When looking for a new car I read the stickers - one of the reasons I bought a Honda Accord was BECAUSE it was built here in the USA, keeping my countrymen and women employed) . . . a company that does not have to pay health care costs in the blue collar sector maintains jobs and helps the overall GDP …
But you won’t hear that from republicans/conservatives/libertarians and their arguments against “socialized medicine.” (queue organ sting and screaming in the background)
I”m at work and my old research is at home, but I’ll add to the chorus of people who are (rightly) pointing out that regular access to preventative and maintenance care significantly lowers health care costs in the long run. Far fewer health issues get to the “emergency” state without being discovered and treated.
Also, we already have “free health care” here. It’s called “the public hospital emergency room”, and it’s extremely ineffective as well as extremely expensive.
I have done master’s level research on the VA health system, the only existant “socialized” system in the US, and was surprised (it went against my assumptions) that the VA system, despite being consistently underfunded for more than a decade, is by and large the best healthcare available in many fields in the US (these include diabetes care, blind care, heart care, PTSD and other mental illness care, and addictions). The VA has produced several innovations that are being adopted in the private sector, including the DIGMA concept (drop-in group medical appointment), and the low vision VICTORS program which individually tailors medical devices to veterans who have some vision and want to continue leading independent lives.
Kevin, I’m going to re-emphasize a point several people have made here, just so you have to see it again: The Cuban healthcare system has comparable results to the US system despite, not because it is a poor nation with a dictatorial leadership and has been under an embargo for over 40 years. Several aspects of their health care system account for this, including:
1) The training of doctors and nurses is free (paid for largely by foreign governments sending promising students to train in Cuban medical schools) and available to all qualified students, leading to an abundance of well trained medical professionals
2) Doctors and nurses are distributed into every neighborhood, not just the wealthiest, and routinely make housecalls, which has two important side effects. First, it ensures that people in the early stages of an illness, who simply don’t feel well enough to go anywhere, even to the doctor, seek care, and second, it allows the physician to tie environmental factors to the person’s ailment.
3) The focus of care is on preventative and maintenance care, which is easily demonstrated to be far less expensive than reactive and emergency care as a primary health method.
The Cuban system falls down in several areas. It cannot afford the latest and greatest bells and whistles machines, so the “heroic measures” which we do in the US for the wealthiest few simply don’t happen. It is an underfunded system, so there are no luxuries in the hospitals. Patients are expected to bring their own sheets, for instance, and nightclothes. However, despite its deficiencies, it has outcomes comparable to the richest country in the world. That is significant.
If the US ever does adopt a one payer system, I would like very much if the house call model were incorporated into it (perhaps with Nurse Practioners instead of or supplementing GPs and DOs), as I think it would serve multiple purposes.
The bottom line ($$) is that a single payer system would cost significantly less (not going to play the exact numbers game here) both due to eliminating the exorbitant middle man (the insurance companies) and by concentrating our efforts on the front end of medicine vs. the hind end.
Health care outcomes are better AND costs are lower when people see an actual health care provider on a regular basis than “rationing� their health care and seeing the doctor only for emergencies or when a problem arises.
Just one example that showed up in the news recently: the US spent $80 billion for diabetes care in 2005. The nut graf:
But, of course, Kevin would rather pay thousands of dollars for urgent care for a poor diabetic who has to have a leg amputated than pay a couple of hundred to get preventive care for that same diabetic that would mean that drastic measures wouldn’t be needed.
Because that’s the funniest part — Kevin seems to be under the impression that his tax dollars are not currently going towards healthcare. They are. Why he’s not insisting that his tax dollars be spent more efficiently is a fascinating question.
[snark] but Mnemosyne, Kevin’s ideology says that Socialized Medicine is bad, and expensive, and curbs freedom. Surely you can’t expect him to accept facts that counter that! [/snark]
(Sorry about the lack of html codes; I’m not very good at them.)
kevin said: “There are a few reasons why the 2.9 trilion might actually go up rathar than down. First, people who had little or no coverage will now spend as if they had full coverage. Second, people who chose to ration their own care because of deducatibles or out of pocket expenses will now have no incentive to save money at all. They might as well go full monty on everything, since it won’t cost them any more money. Third, the overall aging of the population will be crushing to our health care expenses. But, this is going to happen with or without single payer. ”
This is an almost verbatim Republican talking point list. This is the list that insurance companies ALWAYS put out as reasons against UHC, because they see their profits draining away (I worked in insurance for 13 years). And it is totally, completely, FALSE.
False, because this country is NOT full of Munchhausen syndrome sufferers. False, because regular preventative care appropriate to age and sex LOWERS health-care overall by catching problems when they’re small and treatable instead of in full-blown crisis. False, because the people who claim this are judging the situation based on what THEY WOULD DO.
Since kevin is so worried about his taxes going up and healthcare costing so much, here’s a solution that should be right up his alley. It’s cheap, and it will pay for itself within a few weeks of instituting it. Ready?
Issue every physician a .38 caliber pistol and a box of cartridges. Every patient who comes in who cannot pay for treatment will be shot between the eyes. The body will then be shipped off to the local pet food factory (for a price, of course!), and the money received for the body will be reinvested in cartridges. Think of the money saved on funeral costs alone! And all the hungry kitties and puppies that can now eat for just pennies on the dollar!
/snark
What kevin really means above is what every person who opposes UHC really means:
Please hurry and die, because you’re costing me money.
I just wish they’d be honest about it, for once.
moore isn’t the issue, but the powers that be want him to be.
he’s asking questions, a heretic to those who hold the strings. he’s DANGEROUS because someone might listen, think, and start asking too…
the issues are the QUESTIONS, the sudden tug on the leash that gains our “master’s” attention when we turn our head from their divine being or dig our feet in and balk wanting to know why we are going to “the house of pain”.
those in power don’t like questions. they demand compliance and servitude.
we need more heretics.
WE NEED MORE HERETICS!
New Republican Slogan On Health-Care Issues:
We’re the Party of Life! (Except When It Costs Us Money)
Mnemosyne: We can have preventive care no matter how we fund the health care system. That’s a text book red herring.
odanu: I never said Socialized Medicine was expensive, but I do believe it curbs freedom*. Whether we want an inexpensive system that curbs freedom, or an expensive system that doesn’t insure everyone** is the proper terms of the debate.
* examples of curbing freedom would be Canadians crossing the border when they need an MRI or CAT Scan, Brits waiting 6-9 months for necessary surgeries, and Cubans flying doctors in from Spain when they need surgery. (Well, not everyone gets a mail order doctor from Spain…)
** rather than scrapping the current system that is largely funded by business and switching to a single payer that is 100 taxpayer funded, we can keep the features that work in the current system and find creative ways to insure the uninsured.
Mhorag: You are the next Jonathan Swift.
Mnemosyne: We can have preventive care no matter how we fund the health care system. That’s a text book red herring.
How? Insurance companies have no incentive to provide preventive care because they know that they’ll only have their patients for a couple of years before either the patient or the patient’s employer changes insurance. In fact, they have a disincentive, because the new insurance company will benefit from the money that the previous insurance company spent to improve the patient’s health. Better to deny as much coverage as possible (not incidentally saving the insurance company as much money as possible) and pass the problem along to the next insurer.
odanu: I never said Socialized Medicine was expensive, but I do believe it curbs freedom*.
Yes, because there are no curbs on freedom whatsoever when an insurance company tells you that you can no longer see your doctor because they don’t take your insurance, or when they restrict what medications you can be prescribed because they’re not on their formulary.
Oh, wait, I forgot — it’s only “curbing freedom” when the government does it. When a corporation dictates what healthcare their clients are allowed, it’s “the free market,” even when the clients have no other options.
Funny how Kevin has made comment after comment but has still ignored the $64,000 Question.
One of his comments seemed to indicate he’s an attorney. If that’s correct, it makes sense … I work with attorneys and they are notorious for aggressively misrepresenting what other people have said … and have a propensity for ignoring simple questions.
The thing Kevin doesn’t understand is, we’re all inter-connected, whether he wants to admit it or not. Including insured and uninsured.
But it’s not curbing freedom when Americans cross the border to Canada to get affordable drugs or when Americans go without CAT Scans because they can’t afford them or go bankrupt because the 20% co-pay on a CAT Scan is more than they can pay? It’s a real travesty than only some Cubans can afford to fly doctors in from Spain but totally awesome that only some Americans can afford surgery? (I’m actually confused in general about why it’s unfreedom when doctors migrate.)
One of the points of Moore’s movie, as I understand it, is that the system doesn’t work for many people who have insurance. I just don’t know how to get that through your head. It’s not just that there are people who don’t have insurance. It’s that having insurance doesn’t guarantee you’ll get adequate, affordable care.
The American system is profoundly broken in ways that go way beyond the problem of the uninsured.
Back to Michael Moore, it amazes me that many on the right think that those of us who lean to the left immediately take MM as our front man. How many times have you heard” so, you agree with Michael Moore’s view?”
Listen to guy’s like Hannity and Oreilly et al,( Oreilly” …people are sick of Iraq because they want to watch Anna nicole and American Idol”) who on the one hand exault the American public and call the left elitist yet in the same stroke infantilize that same public as more concerned with pop culture and uninformed. They then use Moore’s movie to frame their opposing talking points and as the view of the entire left. These guys don’t believe I actually have the ability to hold two opposing views in my head at the same time. I’m able to internally debate the questions. Imagine!
Moore’s movies are not so much documentary as they are propaganda pieces and full of bite size portions of the debate. But I don’t need anyone speaking for me, I’ll let my vote do that.
There are plenty of real examples where Moore’s a bit loose witht the facts. I think not agknowledging that is a problem.
That said, people who call him things like “the Limbaugh of the Left” are just plain exageratting. He makes polemic, and he does it well. I guess a lot of folks just want to pretend that political discourse should always be high-and-mighty rationalist discussions. It’d be great if things worked that way, but it ain’t real life.
Kevin, how is it “freedom” to pay for insurance every paycheck, only to find that an accident or disease makes you unable to work and is denied by that insurance? How is it “freedom” that we pay twice as much as other companies for poorer care. The key failure of libertarianism is its failure to realize that corporations wield real coercive economic power as governments also wield power, and that corporate power, like government power, must be subject to checks and balances and transparent to those it serves (the customers).
You keep asserting that the US has the best health care in the world. I would like to see one cite from one reputable peer reviewed source for that. I won’t hold my breath.
Well Kevin isn’t talking to me but if you scroll up you’ll see I said
Then when Kevin did wake up he wrote:
DING DING DING … we have a predictability winner!
My son has an appointment with our insurance apprived Pediactric Neurologist, the appiontment is in August, it was the first available, it was made in March!
So in a sense we are on a waiting list.
But please Kevin name these necessary surgeries that Brits wait for. And please make sure you place necessary and life saving into two separate groups.
While you did give a list and they were necessary, the only one that “might” be considered life saving was hip replacement. This is triage.
Clytemnestra, adding to your examples: In my family of four, we have several chronic conditions, including severe asthma (x3), ADD, arthritis, a TBI, migraines (x2), and chronic back pain. We got lucky in our primary care through finding DO’s (not MDs) who come from public health and run a small private office unaffiliated with any health organization. They definitely triage appointments. They save several appointments per day for urgent care, but if I want a standard yearly exam, I’m looking at about a month or so’s wait. My pediatrician cannot set med checks for the ADD medicine less than two months in advance. My asthma care is also generally on a wait, usually of about a month, unless it’s urgent care.
I have a family history of breast and skin cancers. Waits to get a mammogram are several months often, and to see a dermatologist for skin mapping are at least three months. My neurologist never sets an appointment for less than a month ahead. My husband had necessary (job relevent) surgery last spring. He worked for four months in excruciating pain before he was able to have his operation scheduled. We have what is considered “good” insurance in the US… but between our family’s various issues in 2006, we were out of pocket over $4000. I am still paying the bills.
Another thing that those who object to long waits don’t realize is that those waits are due to chronic underfunding, and are not necessary to the model. Elective surgeries currently are not available to many Americans. I know a young (30 year old) man who has been a construction worker his entire adult life. He has a fused disc in his back with requires surgery, but has only Medicaid for insurance, and it won’t pay for surgery. Interestingly, Medicaid will pay for Oxycodone — and this in a man who has a history of severe addiction to alcohol and pain pills. The US health care system is literally killing him.
Michael Moore’s “revelation” that LA hospitals are dumping homeless patients on skid row is no surprise to me. I work in a homeless service center, and nearly every day I see someone with a hospital bracelet and bag walking through my door in a daze, wondering how he or she is going to get back to the hospital to get prescriptions filled. The same is true of the mental hospital here.
Someone earlier in the thread attributed a lot of the objections to racism and classism. I’d say there’s a lot of truth in that. The whine I seem to be hearing is “why should I have to wait? I’m a special snowflake, and I’m better than those people.” Because those people (and most of the rest of us) already have to wait in the US system. So tell it like it is.
Have you all noticed that whenever a Libertarian shows up to defend the status quo with right-wing talking points and is then confronted with facts they never, ever actually address those facts? They just keep repeating the same points that have already been debunked, I guess taking the position that if you repeat it enough times people will believe it.
Kevin reminds me of the Brian troll from Chris Clarke’s February thread about Libertarianism. In fact, it was almost the exact same dialogue…
Yeah, I noticed, history_mom. I’m tempted, when I get home, to go through this thread, extract all of the facts and statistics, and put them together in one final challenge for Kevin to throw off the trappings of ideology and argue from the actual issues at hand.
Greensmile - “He is not building a consensus, he’s demolishing a lie so what is wrong with a sledgehammer?”
Beautifully put sir !
Good idea. It would be easier for me to reply to one summation rather then 20 or 30 separate posts. It has been hard to keep up.
As you write your summation, however, keep in mind that just because someone disagrees with you does not mean that the are blinded by ideology.
Kevin, you haven’t disagreed with anyone… you have merely made assertion after assertion and tied it to your ideology. People have presented dozens of facts, backed by dozens of peer reviewed studies and by government data bases, and you come back with unproveable and irrelevant anecdotes, then tie them into an ideology that show absolutely no advantage to anyone except the richest 1% of the country. That they have you shilling for them is a testament to their ability to make the Big Lie.
Was that really your summation?
“People have presented dozens of facts”
No they haven’t, unless you count the claims that Cuba has superior infant mortality rate.
“Dozens of peer reviewed studies and by government data bases.”
This is bullshit. And ya know it.
“you come back with unproveable and irrelevant anecdotes”
I rarely argue from anecdote. That would be you giving a litany of your family health situation. I won’t ask you to prove the unprovable, though. And stop projecting.
“then tie them into an ideology that show absolutely no advantage to anyone except the richest 1% of the country.”
Please. Something like 16% of Americans currently lack health insurance. That 16% has a great deal of turnover (that is, it’s a different 16% year to year). This means that 84% have coverage. “Top 1″ percent earns another bullshit.
Kevin: You really need to improve your reading comprehension. It is really bad faith to pretend that nobody has provided you with actual facts. I provided you with facts from the U.S. Department of Commerce, Mnemosyne provided you with facts from The New England Journal of Medicine and Medicalnews (among others), Odanu shared the results of her graduate level work on the VA, Mhorag shared her professional experience working in insurance for 13 years, and many of us have told you our experiences with being un/underinsured to demonstrate that the flaws in the system are by design not accident.
Yet you claim that these are just unprovable anecdotes. Our anecdotes support the facts we have provided- that is often how higher order thinkers explain data, by illustration.
Your responses, again, are by definition arguing from ideology since you have stubbornly refused to address any of the information we have provided and your facts have turned out not to mean what you want them to mean.
“It is really bad faith to pretend that nobody has provided you with actual facts.”
Well, it’s bad faith to change “we provided dozens of facts” to “pretending nobody provided you facts.” Dozens and nobody are not equivalents.
Thanks for the Dept. of Commerece link. I counted that one. It will take a few more to reach the dozens threshold, though. Mnemosyne grudgingly dug up an article that proved she had overstated the medical administrative costs by a third. I’ll put her fact in my column.
Odanu and Mhorag have made valuable contributions to the discussion. But, their contributions were anecdotal, not “facts” or “governement databases” or “peer reviewed journals.”
And Kevin, yet again you miss the point. SiCKO is designed specifically to show how people who are insured are let down by the US system. That’s most of us. I demonstrated with my own anecdote of one US family who is insured having in excess of $4000 in out of pocket expenses in a year.
If you wish to address the facts, you will have to demonstrate the following:
— show where Cuba’s infant mortality rate is not comparable to the US’s (I believe, according to WHO, that it’s actually slightly better, but I’m working from memory) … and while you’re at it, note that Cuba is just barely below the US in overall outcomes… while spending a small fraction of the cost per capita.
— show how it is more detrimental to wait for elective surgery than to be denied service altogether.
— show how a model predicated on preventative and maintenence care is more expensive than a model predicated on reactive and emergency care
— show how an economy of scale would increase costs to US taxpayers rather than decrease costs, especially with middlemen removed. Be sure to include your study of existing one payer US systems (VA and Military hospitals) in your analysis.
— show how treating low- and middle- income earners as effectively as higher wage earners is counterproductive or unnecessary for society.
–show how we can justify spending twice as much money per capita as any other industrialized nation for significantly worse results (or alternately, show that all the studies and data bases easily accessible on the web are lying and/or mistaken)
— show (with hard, verifiable facts) how the US health care system benefits the aggregate of US citizens, and not just the wealthiest.
I”m still not home, but these are the positions you’ll need to defend to avoid being correctly labelled as a shill for the insurance companies and an ideologue who cares nothing for the facts.
Yo KEVIN
HEY Keeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevvvvvvvvvvvvvvvviiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnn
Yooo Hoooo!
How ’bout you providing the specific details, numbers, surgeries and citations you were asked to provide.
Kevin, Just go fuck yourself. And get some reading comprehension classe.
And the features that don’t work for the insured? The employer tie, the pre-existing condition exemptions, the deductible structure that discourages preventative care? Are they bugs or features? Are they just things that people have to shut up, pay up and deal with?
Are they a price worth paying?
And thus kevin wins the Instapundit Cup for disingenuous use of statistics and putting words in others mouths.
Kevin: Interesting that you classify 13 years of professional experience as “anecdote”. At what point would you concede that someone is an expert in their field? 20 years? 30 years? Or are professionals only experts when they agree with you?
“history_mom
Jun 25th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Kevin: Interesting that you classify 13 years of professional experience as “anecdoteâ€?. At what point would you concede that someone is an expert in their field? 20 years? 30 years? Or are professionals only experts when they agree with you?”
The threshold for expert testimony is far less than even 13 years. Nevertheless, it’s still opinion testimony. Anecdote is perhaps too weak a term, I agree; however, fact or statistic is an even more inaccurate way to describe personal experience.
About a year and a half ago a wasp stung me and I had an allergic reaction and my father promptly draged me off to the emergence room.
A while back, I had a wasp sting me in the neck. Given that I had them give me allergic reactions before, my granny got me to the emergency room post-haste.
They checked me and put me on a table for an hour, with a nurse occasionally seeing whether anything happened. It didn’t. A doctor came around, poked for a bit, and then wrote some sort of prescription just in case.
It cost me nothing. The government compensated me for the drugs afterwards, too.
I don’t live in the US.
But Kevin showed his cards. The issue is that people like him (and he made a big fuss out of how much money he makes) should simply not have to share resources with the lower classes.
Read this, if you haven’t already.
kevin: Mhorag, you are the next Jonathon Swift.
Thank you, although I doubt I will ever manage a satire as biting as A Modest Proposal.
It is interesting to note, however, that Mr. Swift was writing in response to a situation comparable in many ways to the current one under discussion. The Irish were poverty-ridden and oppressed for no better reason than that they were Irish, just as our current health system creates poverty and oppression for no better reason than we dare to get sick!
With your current stance, all I can assume is that you are one of the fortunate few who a) has excellent insurance, b) has a large financial cushion, and c) has never been seriously injured or ill, d) known anyone who lost everything due to a serious injury or illness, or e) all of the above.
Otherwise, I think you would have a little more compassion for those caught in the American healthcare clusterfuck.
BTW, do you have a workable solution? Satire aside, I believe that a government-sponsored UHC program which covered pre-natal and well-baby care, immunizations, routine examines and tests appropriate to age and gender, treatment and drugs for acute illnesses and injuries which can be given in a doctor’s office or clinic (i.e., simple fracture, bronchitis, flu, removal of suspicious moles, etc.), surgeries for acute conditions such as appendicitis which require less than 4 days hospitalization, CONTRACEPTION and childbirth could be easily set-up and paid for through taxes.
Then people could purchase insurance policies specifically to cover catastrophic injuries or illnesses (hospitalizations longer than 4 days, cancer, stroke, etc.). These policies could cost less because the risk is spread out over a greater population, and these things affect a smaller percentage of the population. These policies would be voluntary and driven by the free market.
This I could support, as oppposed to currently paying $100 a month (plus what my employer is paying in) for a policy that does NOT cover most preventative care (yearly pelvic and mammogram is only covered because the Feds FORCED insurance companies to cover them for women 40 years old and older), immunizations or office fees, has a $1000 yearly deductible, $75 pharmaceutical yearly deductible, 80/20 coverage within network and 70/30 out of network, $15 co-pay for drugs after the deductible is met, covers surgery only if approved by the insurance company, covers tests only if approved by the insurance company … I’m paying $1,200 a year out-of-pocket just on the off chance that they might pay if I get sick, but I also have to come up with another $1000 per year before they will start paying, PLUS 20% of whatever is left from what they DO pay after they decide what to approve (if I’m in network) PLUS 100% of whatever they DON’T approve! So that’s a *minimum* of $2,200 a year I have to pay before I even qualify for coverage! The sad part is that this is considered a good policy. :{
I would be more than happy to give that $2,200 to the government if it meant I could go to the doctor’s office and not have to worry whether or not I have the money to pay the doctor and/or for drugs because payment is provided by the government-program! It sure as hell would be easier on my budget!
ROTFLMAO
Kevin’s column headline:
“How I, Kevin the Great, Beat Those Empty Headed Liberal Pandagonians with My Awesome Intellect and Powerful un-Arguable Stance Against Socialized Medicineâ€?
I’m still trying to figure out how Bill O’Reilly anagrams to Kevin.
Kevin, brick, thick
“The issue is that people like him (and he made a big fuss out of how much money he makes).”
When did I mention anything about how much money I make, let alone make a “big fuss”? There are plenty of good points to be made without making things up. Especially when people can fact check you by reading the thread.
kevin.
You haven’t answered the questions posed nor provided any supported rebuttals of you using comparable data of worth. The people arguing with you are not so stupid that they are going to miss the obvious: that you’ve tried to change the topic from the cited facts presented by quibbling about “anecdotal” vs. “opinion” vs. “expert” in the verbal exchanges. The very fact that you repeatedly won’t do so is rather damning: you can’t support the assertions, you can’t answer the questions. So you repeat the assertions, you ignore the questions and you try to continue the argument along the only road that you believe you are making progress on, which is trivial debates over semantics.
Oh, and kevin?
A one-payor system would also allow doctors to BE DOCTORS and not insurance experts. It would allow them to streamline their offices so they would need only 1-2 people to handle all the paperwork instead of 5 or 6 where half of them are dedicated to ONLY dealing with insurance.
This insurance BS hurts doctors, nurses, and other healthcare providers as well as patients.
Hey, did you guys notice that kevin is a lawyer? ‘Cause he seems to think that really matters.
Michael Moore gets flack for staging and intercutting scenes to make his subjects come off much worse than they did in real time on film. Like how Colbert and TDS play with the interview to mock their subjects (if anyone caught the better know a district from last week, Colbert did a hilarious, almost self-parodic riff on these tactics in that interview). That’s kind of a cardinal sin as far as “documentary theory” and non-narrative film history go, at least in this country. The truth is that plenty of other supposedly objective sources have done the same–the genius of Beth Littleford back in the day was her effectiveness in pointing out the extent to which such pieces formed the basis of Barbara Walters’ career. But my personal beef with Moore, based largely on this problem, is that he is just as underhanded as vintage B. Walters and probably even more obvious, but instead of interviewing celebrities he does it in works posing questions such as “why do liberals hate Bush so much?” This is a problem because the broader U.S. viewing public expects that simulacrum of objectivity when it views non-narrative material. You can bemoan their naivete all yo want, but the end result is that lots of people see Moore’s film, and get worked up. Then they read something revealing his distortive techniques, and dismiss him, and often ergo the liberal argument on whatever issue the movie addresses, and liberals themselves are then easily derided as just gullible saps swallowing this amateurish propaganda.
One can be populist and entertaining without resorting to such tactics. And, in the long run, one wins more converts on the issue if one tries to play it straight. That doesn’t necessarily mean including opposing view, although I’ve seldom seen an excellent persuasive documentary that refused to even address opposing views. But I vividly remember the first time I saw Morris’ Thin Blue Line and the genuine mind-blowing consequences that it revealed. It changed my opinion on the death penalty and the criminal justice system in this country, once and for all. Conversely, I knew as I watched F9/11 that it would change no one’s mind at a time when so many minds needed changing. And Michael Moore has about the biggest non-narrative platform outside of network news with which to address an audience, which only magnifies my frustration with him. Especially because has nothing to do with Moore’s powerful skill as a film maker, dramatist or story teller. It has everything to do with treating one’s audience like rational, sentient adults.
The best analogy I can make is to the lecture I sat through from a catholic church at my pre-Cana conferences in order to be married in a catholic church (to appease the parents who were mostly funding the event). When they said that people who used “natural family planning” methods as opposed to birth control were far less likely to get divroced than couples using the pill I snickered. When they put up a graph of a tall bar and a short bar signify each sub group I had to cover my mouth to keep from making a scene. When we left the place I told my wife that it was no wonder the church was dying and that I would never give it another dime of my money. Because any place who expected grown adults to be so gullible as to confuse a correlation and a cause so drastically was in fact lying to people and deliberately misinforming them in order to scare them and take their money. It’s an ugly thing to treat grown adults like stupid children, and it’s a tactic that works much better to acomplish evil than it does in the service of what is good.
Mnemosyne grudgingly dug up an article that proved she had overstated the medical administrative costs by a third. I’ll put her fact in my column.
You may need to check your math there, sweetie. The difference between 40% and 30% is not one-third.
And, no, posting two articles with different information doesn’t “prove” that I overstated. I posted two different estimates from two different sources. It’s interesting that you automatically latched onto the lower estimate without actually reading the articles to decide which estimate was more accurate.
It’s not? You stated that the correct number was 40, when actually it was 30.
30(1.33) = 40
The 33 refers to the percent you overstated the administrative cost. I taught my daughter basic percentage calculations when she was in junior high school.
Mnemosyne - don’t you liek how he knew how to attribute your motivation for posting the article. He’s good (and loose) with adverbs.
That’s kind of a cardinal sin as far as “documentary theory� and non-narrative film history go, at least in this country.
Um, not entirely. There is a “tradition” that documentaries are supposedly real life, but they’ve been faked and staged since Nanook of the North. The scenes in Grey Gardens are just as calculated to make Big Edie and Little Edie look as crazy as possible as anything in Fahrenheit 9/11 but because the Maylses kept on their veneer of “objectivity,” people completely bought their version even if it was at best exaggerated.
I think that part of Moore’s talent is that he’s able to break down that tradition and expose what’s always lain behind it, namely the filmmakers’ point of view and narrative choices. And I think that’s one of the reasons that “traditional” documentarians can’t stand him — he’s like the magician who gives away the secret to the tricks.
And The Thin Blue Line is no more objective than Fahrenheit 9/11. The only difference is that Errol Morris kept his mask on while Moore takes his off.
Clytemnestra… and he’s still focusing on trivia instead of accepting the challenge of backing his assertions. Hell, I even gave him a road map of assertions to argue, and he can’t do it.
Well you know odanu have I taught map reading to kids, maybe I can recommend a good series to him, since his k-12 education seems to be lacking.
The 33 refers to the percent you overstated the administrative cost. I taught my daughter basic percentage calculations when she was in junior high school.
It’s pretty easy to get the number you want when you’re looking at the wrong number.
The original article said that the ratio of medical expenditure to overhead was 60% to 40%.
The New England Journal of Medicine’s research felt it was more like 69% to 31%.
Most normal people when they hear “one-third” expect there to be a significant difference of at least 33 percentage points (ie one-third) between the numbers, not a difference of 10 percentage points.
But, please continue to argue about small numbers. It amuses me to watch you flail about at the outside edges of your argument because you know that your main argument has been demolished. I’m sure you also think that you’ve disproved the theory of evolution when you point out that it’s only a theory! Ha!
kevin:
I know that you won’t directly answer the question, but I’m going to ‘ave a go anyways.
One of Libertarianism’s ideological foundations is that a consumers’ choice — generally and especially in the market — must not be interfered with by the government. But what if the consumers’ choice is the government?
The American public has never, ever been given a chance at a straight-up, yes or no question on whether they want UHC or a single-payer system, or a Canadian/European model (or whatever). You don’t even need to change the laws, you just need a referendum. Market-driven choices are fine, if the market is permitted to choose. I can buy choose to buy a hybrid, or a Hummer, or not to own a car and ride on a bus that my taxes pay for. No free choice is permitted to the American health care consumers, blocked by from them by people saying “we can’t interfere with free choice”.
six-oh-seven-nine -
I’m making a bunch of “Kevin prod sticks”
want one?
poke poke poke
OH Kevitarian
Where’s the list of surgeries the Brits wait for I asked for? Remember I asked for it divided into two groups; “necessary” and “life saving.”
Um, not entirely. There is a “tradition� that documentaries are supposedly real life, but they’ve been faked and staged since Nanook of the North
That’s the point MNB was making
Clytemnestra:
Sure. And gimme a clue bat while you’re at it.
ooooh,, my “clue bats” are just big and thick … I never thought of adding spikes
gotta go back to the dungeon I guess and make one … I do have a mace … will that work?
It’s also one of the worst aspects of Free market ideology to define “Freedom” almost exclusively in terms of “Consumer choice”. Despite having less customer choice, I have more freedom In Canada:
I have more freedom to choose my doctor, regardless of income.
I have more freedom to hire talented individuals, even if they have sick family members that require “gold plated” insurance.
I have more freedom to start my own business, leave a job, or pursue continuing education, without worrying about losing my insurance.
I have more freedom to choose my medical treatment, since I don’t have an insurer telling me which ones they cover and which I have to pay for.
I have the freedom to see the doctor when I need to, not when I can afford to.
So yeah, I can choose between a $220/month PPO, a $75/month HMO, or a $35/month HMO with the doctors outsourced to Mexico. But if I can pay $60/month extra in taxes for a health plan that exceeds the coverage and is less restrictive than ANY of those plans, what’s the point of “consumer choice”?
Under socialized healthcare the uninsured and underinsured would receive full coverage, the overinsured would pay less, and even those with adequate insurance would receive better value for their money. Those wealthy enough to be Self-Insured (I.e. can pay for any problems out of pocket) are the only ones who lose out on the freedom provided from having millions of dollars in easily liquidated saving in case of emergency.
Why am I utterly surprised that a Pandagonian has a medieval weapon just lying around? At home, mind, but wholly unsurprised.
Left_Wing_Fox: How dare you suggest to Kevin that UHC could result in freedom when we are supposed to be happy with Freedom™ as defined by the corporations! The nerve of some people…
No maces here, but I do have a sword. Yes, a real one. Why do you ask?
and History_mom, I think we scared him away. It was no fair of us to fight with facts and logic and research. He took his toys with him and went home.
He probably ran out of billable hours.
From the person who’s been shoving support for Castro into the mouths of others. Irony abounds.
And, once more for good luck: are the failings of the US for-profit insurance system for those insured a price worth paying for its continued existence? All your quibbling just makes it look like you don’t want to answer.
If I were as selfish as Kevin, I would support the US healthcare system.
I’m not rich, I’m British. The big advantage to me of the US system is that Big Pharma can throw a huge amount of money at a drug in the hope of making a fortune off of it, and then the NHS, as the largest single drugs buyer in the world gets to negotiate a much more reasonable price than what you suckers have to pay.
Michael Moore: Can You Forgive Him? …
Since Sicko hit the screens, Moore is fast becoming to health care debate what Gore has been to the discussion of climate change. In a post at Pandagon today, Amanda Marcotte argues that hating on Michael Moore is a worn-out cliche—for liberals, she …
Six-oh-seven-nine
;-)
It’s rather inelegant but. . . Someday, when the boys are all grown, I would like to LARP - but until then I’ll just got to the range with my bow and arrow - not compound mind you, but an elegant recurve.
odanu
We were talking about prodding sticks for Kevin and somehow got on the topic of weaponry … oh yes, it was when Six-oh-seven-nine linked to a CLUE BAT a.k.a. morning star
So what kind of a sword do you have?
(better stop before I appear really, really geeky - though it’s probably already too late — it probably wouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that one of my heroines is Boudicca long before she became popular in the sub culture. . . . . yep, I just jumped over the geek cliff with that admission.)
Oh noes, not the FREE MARKETS!!! Here’s a hint: one of those things you listed above is not at all like the others. And the very fact that your ilk constantly bring up this “repression of free markets” in the same breath as the human rights violations in Cuba as if those things are equivalent at all really demonstrates that you and the likes of you could give a flying fuck about torture and repression of people. Oh no, it’s the lack of profit-making that really gets you hot and bothered.
Come to think of it, that’s the libertarian types’ beef with NHC, isn’t it? Who gives a fuck about those pesky uninsured poor? We must preserve the free markets, right?
Richard: Ah, but profit and R&D are actually two separate fields in the United States.
Much of the research into new lifesaving Pharmaceuticals comes through government grants through the National Institutes for Health (NIH) to University research programs, and will continue regardless of how much, or how little profit is made by the pharmaceutical companies. Much of the R&D done by the Pharmaceutical companies in in mass-producing those drugs, clinical trials, and creating various similar drugs based on the NIH research.
That’s not to say that no drugs are discovered by Big Pharma, but it’s important to realize that the Pharmaceutical industry will not stop creating new drugs if the US government is able to do the same bulk-pricing negotiations that the American VA and other nations engage in.
That said, I think the advertising related industries int he US would take a big hit once Big Pharma is no longer trying to sell directly to customers, HMOs and private practices. The amount of money spent on MARKETING drugs in the US is absolutely obscene, and is rarely noted in most discussions about the cost of pharmaceuticals.
Odanu, is it folded steel? I’ve got a katana, a bastard sword, and a fencing.
Kevin is funny, too bad I was away and missed this thread. Usually when people play gotcha they at least take a quote out of context, rather than make it up entirely. Good show Kevin - well played. If you are going to lie, lie big!
—
The South Park/Columbine stuff is interesting. IIRC Moore asked them to do a cartoon, the South Park guys refused, then Moore produced his own in a similar art style as if the South Park guys *had* done it. Kind of a no-no it artistic circles. But yes, it had nothing to do with politics, just possible misrepresentation.
Also South Park is awesome. People who think it is about making fun of anyone with an opinion need to pay more attention. That isn’t the point at all. Trey Parker and Matt Stone are not left or right wingers, they’ll make fun of anything stupid and any bloviating gasbag. And that is really the most honest approach.
Also here is what I would ask the participants in this thread who are not amazingly stupid: once someone shows they are willing to simply invent things to suit them, how does that not end the conversation right there?
What is the point in continuing exactly? I’m confused. You can’t have a serious discussion with someone who doesn’t argue in good faith.
See, I don’t get why an employer should provide something (health insurance) that should be a basic human right (health care). To me it’s evident that the Govt should garantee this. This is why this entire discussion is fascinating to me. Ah well, I’m probably brain washed by all this socialism around me.
It’s a fencing sword of Toledo steel with a handcrafted wooden guard and grip. Other than that, I don’t know much. We picked it up at a faire after it had gotten slightly rusted and the guard had been destroyed. A friend who is a craftsman made the new guard and grip for us.
I’ve definitely been guilty in the past of starting a comment “MM’s movies are far from perfect, but…� This was a great post though, and I’m inspired to rethink my stance. I think the most salient point for me is that by making that statement I’m really just pandering to the right. Thanks again Amanda!
BizzaroSuperman: I might consider South Park “awesome” if Parker and Stone showed any willingness to write a female celebrity onto their show without making her vagina into a main character/plot point. Somehow they manage to mock male celebrities in a myriad of non-sexual ways.
Because then they become somthing for our amusement
odanu - a sabre? or a foil?
Catarina: “See, I don’t get why an employer should provide something (health insurance) that should be a basic human right (health care). To me it’s evident that the Govt should garantee this. This is why this entire discussion is fascinating to me. Ah well, I’m probably brain washed by all this socialism around me.”
I kind of agree with Catarina. But I don’t see it as government providing the healthcare, I see it as all of us agreeing to make sure we all get good healthcare. Good old community concern and community responsibility. Good old “do unto others…” We become the payers, we become the ones who profit. No more middle man profitting from our ill health. No more middle man who limits our access to healthcare in order to profit even more. Possibly also reduced tolerance of those who don’t take care of themselves and of sources of ill health. No more excessive drug costs and no more use of unnecessary drugs.
Update on how many of us don’t have access to healthcare can be found here.
sabre, I think. I must confess ignorance
The biggest problem with socialized medicine is keeping the politicians out of it.
Suppose a national or state system were implemented, where residents can purchase coverage for a set price and receive benefits according to law. What will keep politicians from playing with the numbers to raid the money paid into the health care system to use it for other things?
Incidentally, socialized medicine was rejected in 2002 in the far right wing enclave of Oregon.
If people want to pursue their bliss, they had better have stockpiles of food, medicine, and housing.
And what happens to those who refuse to pay?
Mnemosyne:
First off, clearly Thin Blue Line isn’t objective. I suppose it wasn’t clear, but I brought that film up as a counter point specifically b/c it’s an activist film that was far more successful and spent gobs of screen time giving the villains a fair chance to explain themselves, and then puts the exculpatory evidence (the confession) right on the screen for the viewer to see without any manipulation at all. It’s an apples and oranges comparison of course, but so is a Mayles brothers’ verite. I think Thin Blue Line is a better choice, just because the authors are taking steps into the public sphere and commenting on news material that’s of public concern witha specific agenda for the issue they address. You’re right of course that there’s a tradition of staging and the Maylses and all that. I suppose I mean to be more specific and address the combination of both documentarian objectivity values and news objectivity values, and that the additive effect of essentially giving the finger to both of those conventions can be very disorienting to the average American audience.
But in any case, appealing to Maylsian precedent seems directly contradictory to the Rude Pundit argument that this is all populist rabble-rousing and not meant to be taken literally. My point, if after five paragraphs I can finally get here, is that such a defense is decidedly anti-populist and an awful activism strategy. It’s the film school interpretation specifically designed to root out the secret subtexts and subtleties that fly over the heads of all the poor schlubs. I see Amanda making a lot of the same defenses, but that’s basically at odds with Moore’s own public defenses of his work, his persona, as well as the larger mainline of Moore defense, as effectively covered by RP above. You can’t tell me that you expected F9/11 to result in all these huge American audiences were walking out of the theaters remarking how neo-Maylsesque Moore is.
But really, the shitty activism issue is what I was trying to point out above. Leaving aside the film school credentials of the work, F9/11 is a poor, failed piece of activism. As an aside, I would agrue Columbine is a better film on both counts, and that without F9/11 Moore wouldn’t be nearly as divisive (nor as relevant) a figure today. I vividly remember reading Moore and the Weinsteins talk about the film in the spring of 04 and jumping up and down in my desk chair. I counted down the days until the release and then braved the opening night crowds to see it. I had mistaken high hopes that the film was going to fill in a gap left by a moronic, scared press corps and a timid Dem nominee who was too scared to say anything about Abu Ghraib for chrissakes. Finally here was someone to tell it like it was and hopefully shake this country out of the crazy bender it was/is on. You can say that I wanted the movie to be something it wasn’t, but the movie itself purported to be something it wasn’t. I didn’t create that expectation out of thin air. And instead of getting the skillful dissection of BushCo lies that I hoped for and knew Moore was capable of, I got a lot of Moore’s egotism interjected into a story which had nothing to do with him (unlike Roger & Me or Columbine) and his blatantly misleading techniques. The same people who saw Moore as a phony believe the goddamn swift boat veterans for fucksakes. Maybe they’re all just Republican idiots, but yet the same folks voted for the Dems in droves last year so they were at least persuadable. At some point you have to admit that Moore made a shitty film and missed an opportunity to do something to actually help these people he claims to want to help in his movie. Meanwhile he got paid out the ass and I don’t remember many stories about him buying any body armor for all those 18 year old kids he made fools out of in his movie. There are a lot of us who haven’t gotten over all that, and I tend to disagree that we’re all just spouting a worn-out cliches when we knock him for it. He deserves a lot of the scorn he gets.
The biggest problem with socialized medicine is keeping the politicians out of it.
The biggest problem with socialism is keeping the politicians out of it. And the biggest problem with capitalism is keeping the business people out of it.
Now, capitalism is great when you have a working market - capitalists compete based on getting people to buy their product; service, quality and price. It’s bad when you get market failure - the problem with healthcare is that insurance profits come from denying medicine, not providing it. Socialism fails (often) because politicians and bureaucrats are not held accountable.
To Michael:
All the more reason not to vote in any person who tells you that government is bad for the people.
Flippancy aside, My personal opinion is that socialized institutions should exist as independent entities from the government; corporations where every bill holder owns one share of non-transferrable stock in the company, so that all issues of governance requiring shareholder votes will be done democratically by the customers served, as opposed to majority interests looking to game the company for profit, or foreign interests who are not serviced by the utility in question.
Regarding “If they don’t pay” the system has numerous safeguards there. In Canada, you have to register for health care when moving to the province, so that they know you intend to be a resident who wil pay provincial taxes. Those who don’t pay their provincial taxes are treated as any other tax dodger. Those who fail to register for the system are charged for services rendered, and treated like any other person who fails to pay their bills in a timely manner.
MSB, well put and right on the money in my opinion.
Moreover, I couldn’t disagree with Amanda’s point that liberals dislike Moore because he attacks the notion of American exceptionalism. I’m turned off by his movies because of his conjecture placed as fact and in the end, I just don’t trust what he’s telling me is the truth.
Canada has lax gun control?? Are you serious? Now and at the time of “Bowling for Columbine” guns were and are outlawed in Canada. Get your facts straight.
Allison Bricker: You’re full of shit.
http://www.cfc-cafc.gc.ca/factsheets/default_e.asp
Sicko…
Early reviews of the movie are coming out. Definitely read Ezra Klein’s take on it. And Amanda Marcotte’s. Also Mark Hoofnagle. And why Rob does not want to see it. Perhaps it is my upbringing, but the fact that one……
[…] Early reviews of the movie are coming out. Definitely read Ezra Klein’s take on it. And Amanda Marcotte’s. Also Mark Hoofnagle. And why Rob does not want to see it. […]
Like Kevin, I’m a lawyer. With $65K in student loans. I desperately want to have another baby, but Blue Cross California already costs us $550/month and if I want a plan that would cover pregnancy, it would cost $900/month. I’ve been trying for six months to pay off thousands of dollars in hospital bills (and I was insured!) for my last son, who was born six weeks early and stayed in NICU for five days. Even though I pay hundreds of dollars a month, the hospital still regularly threatens to sic a collection agency on us because we didn’t pay the whole thing in one lump sum.
End result? Our only option at this point is to sell our house to pay the student loans and medical bills and move to a cheaper part of the country because we simply cannot afford to live in our current city and raise our children too. My asshole deadbeat ex-husband (also a lawyer! aren’t we great?) won’t let us take my oldest son with us, so our choices are: (1) Continue to live in big city, in a 900sf house in a gang-torn neighborhood, and still see our son; or (2) Sell our house, pay the student loan and medical bills, move to a cheaper area and hopefully find a job with health insurance, and lose custody of the oldest except maybe for a summertime visit.
Nobody here is discussing the double whammy that the Gen-X-and-younger cohort is getting hit with: Exorbitantly high health care costs, combined with exorbitantly high student loan payments (particularly awful for those of us who would like to save money for our own children’s college educations), and real declining wage standards. I grew up poor, and became a fucking lawyer because I thought if I worked hard I would be able to give my kids the middle-class life that I didn’t have. Ha ha ha ha ha.
And…. topic? I love Michael Moore, having grown up in a part of Michigan even poorer than Flint. I love that he didn’t just run away and never look back, even if he is a wealthy guy now (which I don’t actually know, but assume probably is the case).