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Sicko the Nation’s Health Care? See the Movie and Sign the Petition |
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This Friday, Michael Moore’s new documentary, “Sicko” opens in theaters nationwide.
The film peels back the curtain on our nation’s health care industry, revealing the plight of millions of Americans who either lack health insurance entirely or suffer because greedy insurance companies refuse to pay for their prescriptions and procedures. (To read our discussion of the film with Michael Moore, go here.)
The film has jump-started a national discussion on health care, and the time is ripe for change. Tell your senators and representative you’d like our country to have health care we can be proud of. Please sign the petition for quality, affordable health care.
All of the film’s 43 sneak preview screenings last weekend were sold out. And critics across the country are praising the film’s ability to inspire discussion about health care in America.
From The New York Times:
Concentrating on Americans who have insurance (after a witty, troubling acknowledgment of the millions who don’t), Mr. Moore talks to people who have been ensnared, sometimes fatally, in a for-profit bureaucracy and also to people who have made their livings within the system. The testimony is poignant and also infuriating, and none of it is likely to be surprising to anyone, Republican or Democrat, who has tried to see an out-of-plan specialist or dispute a payment.
And USA Today:
This is Moore’s biggest, best and most impassioned work. And while he probes a vitally serious subject and makes a case for widespread reform, he does so with lighthearted flourishes—large doses of humor, clever use of film footage and a catchy soundtrack. These assets, along with well-chosen interview subjects, make Sicko a film that will arouse surprise, outrage, sadness and heated discussion.
The message of Moore’s film is clear: we need real national health care policy, now.
You can help bring this message to Congress. Please sign the petition for quality, affordable health care today.
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Universal Health Care
A poem by David G. Hurlburt© 2004
Health care is our basic human right.
Now is the time to stand up and fight.
Put our money and our vote up on the line.
Get up on our feet and walk a picket line.
Dial a phone or write a letter,
Do it so every one will feel better.
Why should only rich have medical care?
And the poor should die don’t you care?
Get out of your chair and in to the street.
It is time for us all to vote with our feet.
Show and tell politicians, turn up the heat.
If we all fight together we can not be beat.
The Iraqis get universal health care,
The rules of war require that its there.
Prisoners in prison get medical care.
But not all Americans that’s just not fair?
What about the hard working poor?
They need medical care for sure?
The system is broken it profits the greedy.
Let us fix the system to serve the needy.
I have been involved in the drive for a “single payer” health care system and have become well aware of the clout and the money behind those who oppose this solution to a major scandal. The US has worse statistics than many poor countries. We are ranked somewhere near number 30 despite the fact that we spend far in excess of a TRILLION dollars on our health care. If the outrage does not burn your spirit yet you must be DEAD!!
It’s all about GREED. We have to unite to stop these thieves. I hope “Sicko” gets people motivated to band together and make badly needed changes.
I am glad to see the increased level of activism on the part of Labor Unions and it’s members with regards to Universal Health Care. Our Nation is 60 years behind the times of most modern civilized Nation. As the richest nation in the world we should have been one of the first nations in the world to provide Free , Equal, Quality Health Care for All.
If a poor country like Cuba can provide a level of free quality health care for all it’s citizens. We should be able to provide even better quality care for all free of charge as a right of citizenship. All we need to do is take the excess greed and profit out of the system by creating a single payer system ( paid for throug our taxes by the Federal government) Like the Medicare for all proposal presented by Representative Dennis Kucinich.
This sort of single payer system will assure that all American will recieve the same high quality health care that only the rich enjoy today.
Single-payer health insurance, that eliminates private for-profit insrance companies, is essential if an affordable national health system is to be created.
So-called “universal health insurance” does not eliminate the private for-profit
insurance companies. As such, it does not solve the health care problem.
Huge profit-inflation has resulted in keeping health insurance unaffordable for about 50 million. This system is killing thousands of people every year. It results in CEOs of these companies raking in millions in salaries and profit while people are dying for lack of health care.
Brothers and Sisters:
There is ONE and only one, candidate supporting Universal, Single Payer Health Care.
ONE who is saying we must get the Corporations OUT of the game in order for it to be viable.
That candidate is Dennis Kucinich. If you really want true Universal Health Care, and not some government program to fund the Corporate Health Interests at your expense, put your vote where it belongs.
Kucinich for President 2008
My best friend works full time at a specialty medical clinic. For her to have insurance for her family it would cost her over $800 per month OUT OF POCKET. And that does not include dental coverage. AND she would have a $500 deductible…what would be the point? She makes $14 per hour, how can she or anyone making an average salary afford that kind of cost? It’s ridiculous. These insurance companies charge outragious rates for coverage and then often don’t even pay out on claims.
Private insurance is a scam….we need to put a stop to it.
I am so thankful that a discussion may finally occur with the health care system. I am one of those millions without health care insurance. And what is so maddening is that I was a hard working State employee for 27 years and a loyal Union member. But when I retired I got hit with a dose of reality. That reality was the Health insurance bill. I tried for almost two years to carry it. But it finally became to much. For myself and my wife it was more than our house payment. And the coverage was less than I had than when I worked.
I have tried to get other coverage that I could afford. But because of my age I am always denied. I am also only 53 so it will be a long time until I can consider Medicare. So everyday I wake up and hope nothing goes wrong.
I don’t make much on my retirement check, but it is enough to get me by and be happy and that is all anyone really wants. But to deny me health care in the richest nation in the world is disgusting. I really hope something can be changed or this whole nation is in trouble. I firmly believe that the Insurance lobbies will break this nation and than run with the money if we don’t stand up to them soon.
Healthcare is by first and foremost in need of immediate attention to the people of this country whose tax dollars are being spent on Government officials who get the most generous in healthcare benefits. Our tax dollars are to be spent on us and our goods and services for us, not for the rich and wealthiest who only care about themselves and not the people of this country.
Our Tax dollars should be spent on a Healthcare System that will take care of the Middle Class and the Poor. We are the sones that slave many hours a day for the rich so give us back what we shelve out in taxes a healthcare system that we need deservedly. We are the only industrialized country that doesn’t have a National Healthcare System.
Its time we voted this government out and put one in that is ” of the people, by the people and for the people.”
Most everyone, beside lobbyists and doctors, who work can understand the need for Universal Health Care. Having been injured on the job I have had a first hand view of the failing, discriminatory,and heavily paper oriented system. My individual insurance once I was fired went from $400 a month up to $800 in a short time. What I saved for retirement rapidly went south. And because I was below 62, like Highspeed above, it is almost impossible to get insurance. My union also failed me and that’s another story but since I grew up in Chicago I still believe.
I am a 63 year old grandmother on Social Security Disability. After I lost my well-paid professional state employment with excellent health insurance coverage, I paid more and more for private health insurance. Although I have received Medicare since 2002, it covers only part of my medical bills, and I could no longer afford private supplemental health insurance when it reached $657 per month in 2004 just for myself . I pay out-of pocket hundreds of dollars in medical bills each month and am about to reach the so-called “donut hole” with 6 months to go in the year! If it weren’t for my family, I’d be out on the street, or dead. Single-payer is the only way to go–the Medicare Part D ripoff is an example of what happens when for-profit insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies dictate how our health care dollars are spent.
Even as a senior citizen, I have to take my family to Mexico for health care especially dental care as the dentists have a powerful lobby so they can charge huge prices even with dental insurance. As usual, as a working person, I am caught in the middle regarding medical care for my family. I make too much money for free medical care and not enough to afford it. There has to be some way to protect the working families from price gouging in the medical field regarding dental care and huge hospital bills @ $300.00 plus per day/\. This is a weeks pay for one day.
It’s terrible to see seniors in America being treated with such disregard. Let’s all sign the petition.
Canada’s taxes pay for EVERY citizen’s health care. Hmmm…what a novel idea…why didn’t the US think of that?!
The only way to achieve quality, affordable health care for everyone is to replace our for-profit system with a publicly financed, privately delivered Single Payer system. Incremental steps such as expanding public programs, expanding employer sponsored programs or giving everyone the Federal Employees program. This will not solve the real problem which is the high cost of health care. Our goal needs to be to end the administrative waste and use the money we are already spending on health care to cover everyone.
The most expensive insurance and health care does not cover rare diseases adequately or at all. It’s too time-consuming for primary doctors. After years, decades (if one has that long) of disability and self search, one might get lucky and figure out where in this country to get the diagnosis, care, and treatment. Certainly primary care, or standard specialists don’t have that in their billable time codes. It all boils down to money. The key to being on the receiving end is that it’s best to be a cookie, so that cookie-cutter medicine works for you.
I personally spent 139 days on the picket line over health care back in ‘03 and ‘04—after my brothers and sisters and I gave up raises and other working conditions over the years to keep our benefits intact. No one understood all the things we gave up to save our health care over the years—and all the while many American companies had been steadily chipping away at the benefits of employees, whether union or not. Workers were increasingly informed that they didn’t deserve the affordable coverage once enjoyed by their parents and grandparents!
We have recently spent the last six months in negotiations, now three and a half years later, and the companies still are reluctant to make the necessary contributions to fund health care for all employees! They instead want to maintain the created second-tier of benefits for new-hires, with lower wages, no health care or pension contributions—and they wonder why they can’t get people to come to work! These are multi-billion dollar international companies, not mom-and-pop operations—not small businesses. And yet they try to behave as if they weren’t pandering to the CEO’s and stockholders at the expense of the workers.
It is our national shame that such inequality exists in our workplaces. It should be illegal to starve union members back to work with such unfair language—a poison pill we had to swallow to keep from starvation and bankruptcy in a prolonged strike. And this was over health care! How can a country so rich be so stingy and uncaring as to deny hard working people something so basic?
Why is it that we provide our President and Congressmen and women excellent health care benefits paid for by tax dollars, yet they continue to side with the drug and insurance companies? What is wrong with that picture? How would our politicians react if their health care coverage was threatened to be cancelled or denied? How unfair that they are not subjected to the same scrutiny by insurance companies, doctors and hospitals when they or a loved one needs critical care. If they were, it would definitely be a wake up call as to what many Americans are faced with today.
It’s time we pay attention to how our representatives are voting on this issue and who they are aligning themselves with - the people or who best lines their pockets.
Single Payer Health Care should be the working families national issue that brings all of the middle class together in one voice at the polls next election. We the people must make this issue the spark that ignites working families to come to the polls and vote for candidates that will work to fix the problem of greed in the Health Care system and the whole corporate world that we have today.
Above I have read that some feel that their union has let them down, I am here to say that most leaders in the labor movement are doing all that they can to fight everyday for the members who sometimes want someone else to do all the work and then reap the benefits. Having been working to change Health Care and fighting for preserving Pensions now for over six years, I have found that organized labor is one of the only groups that is willing to stand up the corporate America everyday and fight back their greed. Our founding fathers did not write a constitution that was set up for the rich, it was set up for all Americans. (do the research) We as Union Activist must work everyday to remind our members that we can make a difference if we vote for the proper candidates and issues and then hold the elected officials to what we put them into office for. We can do that by using the tools here on these web sites to contact them and let them know that we are watching. Please don’t point your finger at the “Union”, it’s the laws that have changed to make organized labor less effective. We must tell the government that we want the rights of organized labor restored to the place they were back in the post world war era. Only then can we compete on the same playing field with corporate america. Always remember, we will never be able to out spend the other side but, we can always out vote them if we work as the grassroots organization that we can be.
I had very good health care coverage while I was still employed, but once I became disabled everything changed. I had to go on Medicare and I was offered a supplementary plan which was OK. The biggest problem was that my family was covered through my employer, and I had to take out a separate policy for them which cost a lot more money and was not the best coverage. My husband needs to take very expensive medicine (at a cost of a few thousand dollars a month) and according to this policy, we had to pay up front and submit the bills to the insurance company and hopefully get reimbursed for some of it later. Because of this, he went off his treatment. A few months later, he was finally able to get better coverage from his employer, which initially was so expensive we couldn’t afford it. The bottom line is that we ended up paying $500 a month instead of the $100 a month I used to pay. Even worse is not knowing just what is covered, and spending hours on the phone trying to resolve unexpected medical expenses, and dealing with the bureaucracy and the “catch-22″ of the medical insurance nightmare. I have never in my life been under so much stress!!!, and being disabled has had such a negative impact on my overall health and well being, I feel I have already lost years of my life.