Homework 25- Sicko Response

Response to Sicko, Michael Moore, 2007.

Précis-

The American healthcare system is very flawed. There are a lot of people that don’t even have healthcare in America. And the one’s that are fortunate enough to have healthcare often don’t get the full coverage that they need. The capitalist, money hungry, healthcare providers, along with the government, which refuses to change the system, cause these problems. In fact, it was the government that created these problems in the first place. Whenever universal healthcare is proposed, it is written off as “too socialist”, but it turns out that many of our existing programs are socialist, like the police department. There are many other countries with better healthcare systems then America,  and a lot of them have universal healthcare. The American healthcare system needs to be changed.

Michael Moore’s Evidence:

1.    America is ranked 37^th in healthcare, behind Canada, England, and France.

2.   The healthcare industry spent over $100,000,000 to stop Hillary Clinton’s proposals for universal healthcare.

1. The first piece of evidence is supporting the argument that America has fallen behind in healthcare because American healthcare is about HMOs (Health Maintenance Organization) making a profit. It cited three countries that have universal healthcare. Universal healthcare is considered to be about helping the people over everything else because they have no HMOS competing for profit. This evidence is important because it backed the argument saying countries without these companies competing for profit have better healthcare then America.

2. This piece of evidence is important because it shows an outstanding amount of money that the healthcare companies are investing to keep healthcare the way it is. It shows that these companies are spending a lot unnecessary money to stop something that could put them out of business.

Is his evidence true?

Evidence: America is ranked 37^th in healthcare, behind Canada, England, and France.

This evidence is absolutely true. America is ranked 37^th in “Overall
health system performance” by the World Health Organization. Canada is ranked 30^th, England is ranked 18^th, and France has the best overall health system performance in the world. This evidence is from the complete list of healthcare rankings, at http://www.photius.com/rankings/world_health_systems.html.

My response:

Why don’t we have universal healthcare? It doesn’t make much sense at this point to not have it. Universal healthcare will improve the life of a lot of people with little cost to all. Looking from a utilitarian point of view, not having a socialized healthcare system is unthinkable. Even looking from a Canadian point of view not having a socialized healthcare system is unthinkable. American’s have to stop being greedy expletives and start looking at the big picture. If we’re supposed to be the best country in the world why is our health system ranked 37^th?  It’s clear that there is a correlation between countries that have universal healthcare and countries that have a lower ranking then us. What are we doing with this system that is shifted towards profit? This shouldn’t be a country where you have to decide between paying more then $50,000 to reattach a more useful finger or to pay $12,000 to attach the less useful finger just because you can afford it. I think the most important idea from this movie was that it would be easy to change the American healthcare system to something that’s “for the people”. 

One thing I didn’t like about this movie was that Michael Moore didn’t leave much open to interpretation. Everything was biased. It was either Michael Moore’s idea or wrong. Like in Food Inc. (2008), at least the filmmakers showed the opposing viewpoint.

This film was about one of the most controversial topics in illness and dying. It was very persuasive in showing how America’s healthcare system is flawed. This movie made me aggravated that people are making money off of peoples illnesses. But even more it aggravated me because people are dying due to the greed of some. We should be doing everything we can to prevent illness and dying.