Mr. Moore is without doubt one of your country's true natural resources, far more important right now than any of the mineral or vegetable kind. He deserves all the support and help you can muster. You need him.

And to preempt the inevitable rightie trolls: Yes he makes money, and Al Gore does too. However, they make most of theirs' trying to help people and the planet . . . how do you earn your salary?

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for the campaign. He reminds me of those old coaches would be yelling for you to 'hustle' while they had big old bellys and were fat and lazy. Healthcare 'starts at home' and Micheal Moore is a walking/talking/moving-making example of the fat, lazy, out-of-shape American. He should be making posters for doctor's offices and schools on hypertension, cardiovascular disease, or bypass surgery!
We need a Universal Health Care system that is not based on employer payments or insurance companies. We need to eliminate insurance companies from the picture by eliminating malpractice lawsuit for doctors, lawyers, hospitals, etc (right not the insurance make money off of EVERYONE: patients, victims, lawyers, doctors, businesses, hospitals, drug companies....) We need to eliminate malpractice lawsuit and punish bad doctors by government oversite, sharing records, and review boards. We need to bring back physical education in all levels of schooling. We need to secure the borders so our universal health care system is not milked dry by illegals. We need to allow more 'time off' for parents when they have children- or to take care of an eldery parent. We need to have universal care for the eldery who can't live alone anymore and don't have funds for retirement homes. We need to freeze taxes for retired people and not tax social security income. We need to ban adverts for prescription drugs. We need to hold drug companies criminally liable for bad drugs, unethical tests, or price gouging.

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Of course, we all should take care of ourselves as best we can. But even so PEOPLE GET SICK!!! They get cancer when they're young, they have genes that increase their risks, they get hit by a bus, they have children with devastating and expensive birth defects, etc etc etc. We all get old and eventually die if something didn't carry us off first.

So you don't have to be a saint or a fitness nut or whatever to notice that there's got to be a better, more effective, more equitable and affordable way to keep us healthy and treat our illnesses that the so-called health care system we now have.

Albrechtkrausse is correct that the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies are getting rich while a lot of us don't have and cannot afford decent health care.
It's a scandal. If Moore's movie can move the political and social process along to a better system HURRAY for HIM!

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Moore seems pretty down-to-earth. Maher not so much.

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Thanks for the post. It's a comic (and tragic) relief from the sociopathic war news played to the tune of pandering politicians.

One comment resonated with me and led to this observation: insurers are like bankers; they fund all sides of a conflict for their own profit (sociopathic warmongers).

I'm for universal health care but it does not a socialistic dark side. How do you build in incentives that reward not getting sick? I've observed the strange phenomenon of someone insured to the max who seems to want to use his benefits so they don't go to waste.

The way out of the dilemma is to get our priorities straight: people are more important than money. The legal mandate that privileges the stockholder class and drives the speculative money bubble must be returned to protecting the public good, as the constitution intended.

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The pharmaceutical lobby is the most powerful lobby in Washington, and their industry is probably responsible for more death and destruction than the arms industry, when all the deaths are tallied up.

Why is their lobby so powerful? Because they have so much money, thanks to a hijacked patent system and a corrupt FDA. If you look at the ownership (see yahoo finance major drugs manufacturers) you will find they are controlled by the very same banks and funds that control the arms industry, the oil industry, big agribusiness concerns, and so on.

The only way you can make a higher profit margin than Big Pharma does is to deal in illegal drugs and weapons. Notice how the country is being flooded with heroin, while Afghanistan poppy production is skyrocketing? The drug business is the drug business, regardless of legality.

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I can hardly wait to see the reactions of Big Pharma, Big Insurance, and Big Medicine to Moore's latest effort. They'll almost certainly hit him everything in their considerable arsenal of lies, dirty tricks, and accusations. They'll almost certainly attempt to blackmail Congress by threatening to withhold monetary support and kickbacks, and they'll very definitely embark on a vigorous public relations campaign, replete with lies, ommissions, and obfuscations, designed to bamboozle the public and turn us against the idea of universal health care. This is why it's so important to watch a movie like "Sicko" in order to see the truth behind the rapacious greed of the "health care" industry.

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We have the best Healthcare system in the world. We have a Healthcare Insurance problem.

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Joshua

Thanks for posting the clip. I was especially intrigued by-

- Moore's statement about bi-partisan positive comments about the movie

- Mahar's comment about SICKO being the tipping point for visibility on the Health Care Reform issue

THIS WILL BE THE DOMESTIC ISSUE THAT WILL ELECT OUR NEXT PRESIDENT

But the War in Iraq overshadows all

Dr. Rick Lippin
http://medicalcrises.blogspot.com

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