The Disgrace that is our Healthcare System

I just caught Sicko on cable. That was the 2007 Michael Moore documentary on the state of our healthcare system. I hadn't seen it for a few years, but the outrage I felt then came screaming back to me. The way our HMOs try so very hard to either deny treatment or to refuse to allow new patients based on preexisting conditions. I watched how, during the early days of the Clinton administration, Hillary fought and lost when the drug companies and the HMOs bombarded Congress with a broadside that brought it all down. Then, years later, when she ran for the Senate SHE took almost eight hundred grand from those very interests. I watched patients getting dumped in skid row with hospital gowns and no shoes when they couldn't pay their hospital bills. I watched denials of treatment that resulted in death on two occasions - one a sweet toddler with a throat infection and a man with kidney cancer. Both of these could have been saved with timely treatment. And, in these two examples, the people HAD health insurance. A kidney transplant, even though the family had found a perfect match, was deemed 'experimental' and denied, along with many of the drug treatments recommended by their doctor. In the case of the toddler, her mother had no car and called an ambulence which took them to the nearest emergency room. But she had coverage at another hospital which refused to pay for her treatment at a different facility. The emergency room where she was waiting refused treatment without up front payment; she was told to drive the baby to her hospital, all of which was impossible. She tried desperately but could find no one to give her a ride until it was too late.

I listened to former HMO workers whose jobs required them to go over a person's health history with a fine-toothed comb, to find anything, anything at all, so they could be kicked out of the plan altogether. When a surgery was indicated, in the case of a woman with cervical cancer, her records were sent to a special unit which did the fine-toothed-comb thing, and denied the surgery because they discovered on her application that she had had a yeast infection once, years ago, that was cured easily. By now I was completely pissed, and was so engrossed that I was wondering out loud just how many more of these atrocities Moore could unearth.

Then there were the trips to Canada, the UK and France, where healthcare is free - no copays, no insurance, no proof of anything. In england the 'cashier' hands OUT money to patients who've been treated to make sure they get home safely. I listened to the right-wing in the US warning us about the horrors of socialized medicine: how you can't choose a doctor, you have to wait months to be seen, how the clinics are dingy and dirty and the care is abysmal. None of it was true. Their treatment seemed to be superior to ours in every way, including life span and infant mortality. One worker in an English emergency room laughed when Moore asked him how much they charge for treatment. No one had ever asked him that before. In France there are doctors driving all over Paris every night making housecalls forchristsakes.

In the lead-up to the passage of the Medicare Prescription Drug Plan, the story of how our Congress was bought and paid for by HMOs and the drug companies was so appalling that I can't believe there wasn't a huge public outcry resulting in trials, impeachments and convictions. The celebrations after President Bush signed the bill were enough to make you puke. In case you've forgotten, Medicare is forbidden, by the plan, to negotiate with the drug companies for lower prices. In other words, those lovely drug companies can charge patients ANYTHING THEY WISH. Wasn't that a lovely gift from the government of the United States to the drug companies and their brokers, the HMOs!

Our healthcare system in the United States is a crime. I don't know what the answer is, because our government is really in the back pockets of some 35,000 lobbyists. Just listen today to those goddamned Repulicans scream and cry about the pitfalls of socialized medicine. Our government has the most vulnerable of us too frightened, poor and demoralized to do anything but accept the status quo. No one seems capable of doing anything to change it. Why aren't there massive protests and cries for the heads of all those who profit so appallingly at the expense of the sick, old and dying? When asked if he thought something like the French system would ever exist in the U.S. a middle aged French physician's answer was a curt "no!" and he walked off, barely able to contain his disgust for the American system. I agree.

The last part of the movie went off the rails when Moore did a lot of grandstanding, especially with the Cuba trip. But there was enough truth in much of that documentary to make me feel sick to my stomach. I think I'll treat my nausea at home with a little diet Coke rather than hit an emergency room. It would cost me $250 and I'd likely have to wait seven or eight hours.