Sicko, the movie

David and I went to see Sicko this evening.


Two thumbs up. Way up.



Since Ms. Duncan asked me to give my thoughts on this movie, I thought I would post a couple of my thoughts as I watched:

• The government spends a lot of time dissing lawyers - especially trial lawyers. Why? 'They' drive up malpractice costs. Or 'they' bring frivolous lawsuits. But quite frankly, in this movie (and in real life) the only noble people bitching about health care are lawyers. In the movie it is either plaintiff attorneys suing for the benefits of patients against health insurance companies or in the despicable case of the patients being dumped at the mission on skid row in LA - the City Attorney's office sent a lawyer down there to be nice to the poor woman who had been severely beaten. No doctor was in the room with the woman attending to her pain, but the city attorney asked the woman "are you in pain? Is there anything I can do for you?" Why are people so afraid of lawyers? One possible answer: lawyers can demand justice for those suffering in a very unjust situation, which is threatening to those who are profiting from a very unjust system.


• If anything, Michael Moore did not go far enough - the greed doesn't stop at insurance companies or hospitals. Heck, everybody knows about the doctors. It's the hidden and unexpected greed mongers that will really make you sick - he touched a bit on the pharmaceutical industry, but it doesn't stop there. Think about all the sycophants who produce the merchandise that gets sold in healthcare settings, anything from stethoscopes to swabs to bandages, etc. The mark-ups and bad business dealings are rampant in every setting. If you want to understand the scope of the problem, I suggest you read a few other blogs who document it on a daily basis. Start with Health Care Renewal, which is a bunch of doctors who publish stories about excess, waste, fraud, etc in the US health care system. They post, on average, about 3-5 stories a day.

I'm sure I'll have more thoughts about this movie as I get further away from it, but for now suffice it to say: if you live in this country and are at the mercy of this healthcare system, it should be required watching. And in the meantime, stay healthy.