The best movie of the year... I still can't believe it...

See, that's one of the contradictions in right-wing thinking that I don't get.

If you're pro-life -- I don't know if you are or you aren't, Wingman, I'm just thinking in generalities -- you should be pro-universal health care. Because I'm sure there are uninsured women who have had abortions rather than pay thousands of dollars for the birth of their child. One cause is helped by the other.

I dunno. I don't get it.

 

You're paying for it already, MW, in high insurance premiums.

 

Jones is bang on. There are problems with our health care system, mostly because the Feds withdrew their levels of agreed to funding. And in the case of Ontario, our dumbass Premier at the time, Mike Harris, practically gutted the provincial healthcare system, along with the educational system.

And for the last time, it's NOT government run, socialized medicine.

Every time someone posts that, I think, that person doesn't even know what the issues are

 

Uh ... I knew it would be expensive (my third child), no I wasn't surprised, and no, I wouldn't want the blue-light delivery special.

 

[

No, they don't believe healthcare should be a commodity anymore than public utitilies should be (Enron is a tribute to that bit of malarky)

I find it astonishing that some here don't realise that the USA is the ONLY Western Democracy without publicly funded health care and your system is still more expensive and far less effective than Germany, France, the Scandinavian countries and Canada--not to mention about two dozen other countries. That's the WHO speaking, not me.

 

I just don't see how any thinking person who is up on the news could say F 9/11 was riddled with errors. It was a precient, provacative piece of cinema and connected far more dots about the Bush cabal than most of the MSM has. You might not agree with the conclusions Moore reaches, but his sourcing is impressive.

http://michaelmoore.com/books-films/f911reader/index.php?id=16

 

It's completely inaccurate to say that F-9/11 has been debunked as a "bunch of lies." That's the standard talking point, but it's false.

Does Moore lie? It depends on what you think a lie is. Are articles of omission lies? There are several times in the movie when Moore throws out a number of facts, points out the coincidences, implies you should connect the dots, and perhaps doesn't present the whole picture. Some of it may be too simplistic, and he may intentionally leave some things out. But to say it's an outright lie is a stretch. And to say, "I don't know, there are 1,000 websites out there" isn't a very strong argument either.

Lest Junkie accuse me of being part of the cabal of "cool kids" who regularly demonize dissenting points of view, here is the wikipedia listing of the disputed parts of the film.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_9/11_controversy

 

When James Lee Witt ran FEMA under President Clinton it was the gold standard of disaster response. Bush appoints someone else, and then that person guts the agency by getting rid of all the mid-level managers. The ones who did most everything right.
And the government does lots of things right. The Interstate system is a crowning achievement, the Postal Service is a daily wonder, a parks system that is the best in the world, the system of locks and dams run by the Corps of Engineers. I could go on, but I won't.
But that kind of blanket statement, the Government fucks up everything, is patently wrong, and, perhaps, the idea that government is bad is the lasting legacy of the Bush Administration.
It makes me sad.
Back to healthcare and Moore's movie, Sicko.
I tried to download it, but I couldn't make the download work.
Anyway, I cover healthcare for living and it is always interesting to read what others think.
Mizzou's idea is already in place, at least partially. That old devil, the government, has a program called Community Match where if a doctors chooses to work in an underserved area, the local community will payoff his medical school loans. Lots of doctors take advantage, but a surprising number don't.
Healthcare costs don't actually have anything to do with tort reform. Doctors fuck up, and they get all arrogant and try to get out of it. Those doctors get punished.
I could tell some stories, some things I've actually covered, but not right now.

 

I just finished watching it and ..... wow. I'm not going to get into spoilers, but it is really good. I felt the full spectrum of emotions. Parts of it pissed me off and parts of it brought me to tears. Can't wait for more sj'ers to see it. I hope more people see this than saw F9/11.

I would hope this movie would spark change, but I'm very pessimistic.

 

The best possible care means the U.S. should have one of, if not the lowest infant mortality rates. Check those numbers and see if you still want to make that statement.

 

And how would the experiences and lessons learned by the government construction of the interstate system and the Corps apply to health care? I don't think there's much the government can learn there that would benefit in this discussion.

The USPS? Yeah, I can give you that one, although it's becoming less relavant by the day.

But what about the IRS, the Social Security Administration, Medicare, Medicaid, the intelligence community? Those bulky, inneficient bureaucrocies lead me to believe that the government isn't so proficient as we'd want.

Why would you call me a name in the middle of a good discussion? ;D