‘Sicko’ raises legitimate points
Among all the bloopers and malapropisms emitted by President Bush, Michael Moore chose the single funniest to lead off his documentary film “Sicko.” Campaigning in 2004, Bush was talking about medical malpractice lawsuits.
“Too many good docs,” he warned in his fake-folksy drawl, “are getting out of the business. Too many OB/GYNs aren’t able to practice their love with women all across the country.”
How’s that again, Mr. President?
Deep into “Sesame Street” mode, lecturing adults like fourth-graders, Bush appeared oblivious to what he’d said.
It wasn’t so funny when Bush recently threatened to veto a Senate bill expanding the Children’s Health Insurance Program to cover more than 11 million additional kids. “People have access to health care in America,” he explained. “After all, you just go to an emergency room.”
In expressing Bush family values, the president will never top his mother’s remark to the effect that Hurricane Katrina refugees sleeping on cots in the Houston Astrodome were making out well because they “were underprivileged anyway.”
For sheer cluelessness, however, W’s “emergency room” remark comes close. Never mind the scenes in “Sicko” of sick and injured patients waiting for 18 hours to get treatment from exhausted, overworked doctors. Exactly how does George W. Bush think emergency room visits get paid for?
The standard Republican answer is to Moore is that he’s a fat guy. He also dresses badly, has no respect for his betters and takes cheap shots at easy targets like insurance companies that deny coverage to cancer patients because their applications neglected to mention yeast infections, or because no 22-year-old could possibly have cervical cancer regardless of test results, or because their policy says on page 42, note 13b, subsection iii, that patients born under the astrological sign of Gemini are ineligible under a full moon.
And have I mentioned that Moore, besides being a fat slob, is also very annoying? GOP presidential candidate Gov. Mike Huckabee thinks Moore should try prayer and fasting before talking about health issues.
News bulletin: Huckabee can eat bushels of celery and run two marathons every week. He’s still going to get old and sick.
And somebody’s going to have to pay the bill. If Huckabee’s lucky, it’ll be Medicare, America’s socialized health insurance for the elderly.
See, if you’re over 65, it’s almost like living in Canada or Great Britain, two countries with universal government health insurance. Could “Sicko” have found Canadians or Brits to complain about some aspect of their care? Certainly. Reforming national health is a perennial issue in British politics.
Could Moore have found anybody who’d prefer the American system? Not bloody likely. He had trouble convincing one Canadian carpenter with a surgically repaired hand that an American carpenter was given a choice: reattach his ring finger for $12,000 or his index finger for $60,000.
Cash.
In the emergency room, incidentally.
Fact is, with doctors, patients, hospitals and insurance companies locked in constant bureaucratic warfare, the U.S. system is terribly inefficient. The Brits get better medical outcomes on 40 percent of what Americans spend per capita. France does even better.
We recognize that these are universal human needs too crucial to be left to the vagaries of the marketplace.
That’s really all “Sicko” is trying to say.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Gene Lyons can be reached at [email protected].