So Tim and I watched SiCKO the day before yesterday. I actually really wanted to see it, as I’ve seen clips of it online, and even though I’m not American, it does concern me to know how the health care system is over there.

And it seems absolutely ATROCIOUS. At one point, one of the Senators were doing his impassioned parliamentary speech on some sort of deregulation of drugs bill for senior citizens, said something along the lines of “I *love* my mother just as much as any of you love YOUR mothers!!!” And Tim pointed out, that he never said that he loved OUR mothers. And that’s kinda the crux of the mentality that drives private health care. Everyone is out for themselves (and their family) and not for each other.

The movie does seem to present the health care system of Canada, England, Cuba and France a little too positively, but there were practical time restraints for that. No health care system is perfect, but I strongly believe that universal health care is a gzillion times better than private health care. Good universal health care IS expensive mind you, and these countries (and Australia’s!) pay heaps of tax, depending on how much you earn. I have no problems with the idea of paying more tax if you earn more. It makes me happy to know that at least part of it is going to someone who needs it. Capitalist mentality would all be like “you should do whatever with what you earn! It’s YOURS!” That kinda ties in with what one of my clever economics friend told me recently. Lowering tax means that people would spend more money. Spending more money would mean that inflation goes up which means the interest rates for housing goes up. While this might be a simplification of the issue, it nonetheless sounds like a lose-lose situation.

I looked up what critics of the movie said and here’s two gems I found.

  1. SiCKO mentioned that in the WHO report of the quality of health care globally, America does amazing poorly. One critic said,

    “The WHO report doesn’t just rank health care systems according to how well they cure you when you’re sick. Indeed, 25% of the WHO report’s scoring is based on the “fairness” of a country’s health care financing as measured by how redistributionist - socialist - it is.”

    Oh noes! A criteria based on the FAIRNESS of how health care is distributed! That’s… bad? What do people have against socialism anyway? Why is the idea of helping someone in need such an oddly feared and hated idea? Does 1950s propaganda about communism and socialism still effective to this day? Jesus Christ, freaking out over a socialist criteria is not a problem with the criteria, but with your paranoia about socialism.

  2. One thing that SiCKO failed to mention was that in places with universal health care, one common down side is waiting time. For non-emergency dental work, my grandparents here had to wait months on the list. I hear horror stories on our news of patients dying because they had to wait too long. And that DOES freaking suck. That’s a problem with the availability of resources though at the institutionalised level It might freaking suck to have to wait for months/years for something but at least you would eventually get it. If you’re poor in a system with private health care… you’ll never get it. As claimed by this critic:

    “Browning tells the tale of Lindsay McCreith, a retired body shop owner from Ontario who was forced to wait four months for an MRI to determine whether he had a brain tumor. Banned by Canadian law from seeking private care, he finally got the MRI in Buffalo, New York, whereupon he discovered that the tumor was indeed real. But he still needed surgery. In Canada, he would have been required to wait six to eight months — by which time the tumor might have proved fatal. In the United States, he got surgery within a week.”

    Note the convenient use of the word “got”. If you’ve got PLENTY of money, of course private health care would be awesome. You’ll be set back however many tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars that you have lying around anyway, but hey no waiting! In a system with only a limited amount of resources, if you’ve made more money than the guy next to you, you DESERVE to get better more right? We’re all worth according to how much is in our bank account and stock portfolio right?

It seems to me that in a capitalistic system with private health care, there’s no intrinsic human rights, the market tells you how much you are worth and subsequently, what rights you get. That friggin’ sucks. Universal health care at least has its heart in the right place, although the practical lack of resources (money, trained professionals, etc) make it seem like an imperfect system with sometimes tragic results. As a system though, I don’t see how that’s possibly worse than private health insurance.

I think most people that see these sort of documentaries would generally come out pretty glum. What can WE do about it? We’re not in Parliament, making the decisions, or a CEO of an insurance company. But as that British guy in the movie said, what people have is the power to vote. Governments love to keep people apathetic, frightened, poor, demoralised and cynical about what change they themselves can make. That makes people easy to control. But if people are aware of the changes they can make, if they go vote for policies that would affect their lives, all this can change.

But then again… I say this with a liberal dose of sad idealism. There’s just too many people out there who ARE cynics of government, who work three jobs a week to keep a family together and food on the table. Why would they even BEGIN to care about things like health care when they barely know where to find the money to pay the week’s rent?

And completely off-topic: HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO TIM! He turned 22 today. :3