In a for-profit healthcare system, such as the one we have now, private insurance companies only insure people with whom they can earn a profit. Therefore, they will not insure high-risk customers.

In such a situation the high-risk patie
nts will be forced into joining the high-risk pool provided by the government.

Since the low risk pool belongs to private industry and the high risk pool belongs to the government, this means the government will go even more broke while private industry gets richer.

Now i know Americans are mostly incapable of critical thought due to a horrible educational system among other reasons. But, isn’t there some way to to get this point across to the masses?

How is it that politicians are able to get away with saying that “Obamacare” is too expensive? Aren’t people making these arguments against them?

But it will not be just about Bush. It will also be about The Supreme Court: The Court in 2000 which stopped the democratic process by ordering Florida to stop counting the ballots; The Court which in 2010 (or was it late ’09?) gave our democracy away to foreign countries and as Obama said in his State of the Union address, even to our enemies,

After the 2000 court decision I remember visualizing the crack in The Liberty Bell which I was taken to see on a field trip as a child. The Liberty Bell’s crack, however, meant the opposite of what had just happened, though. My mother explained to me at the time that the bell cracked because people were so happy to have gained independance that they rang the bell so hard that it cracked. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but that’s what my mother told me and I like the story.

This time the crack is literal.

It should be pretty obvious to anyone with sense, that political party has little effect on the impact that corporations have on America’s government. So why not use that to our advantage, and stop blaming politicans, and focus blame on the CEO’s instead?

Before we even try to fix healthcare we need to fix the corporate influence problem. I don’t think many citizens, whether Republican or Democrat, would disagree with the notion that corporations have way too much power on Government.

So forget about social issues for a while- and all those things we differ on and just focus on this. Then, when corporate influence is where it should be, we will have a level playing field and can then make our society run the way WE THE PEOPLE want it to run, and not the way non human profit-driven corporations would have it.

By buying all this crap you will be fulfilling your patriot duty as a consumer. (You are not a citizen, just a consumer). As a result of all this new production in China, we will be dumb enough to buy the new devices with money we don’t have (credit) since we are dumb and unemployed here. This will increase the consumer credit bubble and eventually make it burst, making the “downturn’ even worse. But by then it will have a new name that sounds even nicer than a downturn.

Also, while all this excessive production damages the economy, it will also help to destroy the environment by reinventing technology (Television) which does not need reinvention, thus causing more toxic garbage and toxic waste, not to mention pollution from the factories.

Not to worry, though. You will soon be able to watch greenwashing commercials from BP and Shell in 3D describing how great they are doing talking about words that end in -ility.

Love it. Keep eating.

So I still support it because I think if they kill it now it will die a certain death come January and the election year bullshit.

And this still wouldn’t be the final bill. From what I understand it still has to go back to the house and then back to the senate again if this vote passes.

I think we have to learn the lesson from what happened in the clinton administration when they tried to reform healthcare. It died. People who were born during the clinton administration are now acting in porn movies to give you an idea of how long we might have to wait for another go at this.

Also- there’s the rarely discussed public health issue. If your neighbor has an infectious disease and doesn’t get treated for it, then you are more likely to get it. Diseases are social and they generally don’t discriminate based on wealth. Having everyone covered by health insurance benefits the health of everyone, not just the poor in this country who are often vilified.

I pay $550/month for insurance. I can’t afford it and pay the premiums using credit. Sure I could work for Starbucks and become an indentured servant to pay for it but I seem to remember from grade school that America is supposed to be a free country.

Although, yeah, being forced to pay for insurance isn’t exactly freedom, but then again neither is taxes. I think that angle is being overplayed. Everyone needs healthcare for the physical and fiscal health of this nation. Call it what you want and repackage it, but in the end, it is a tax and is not voluntary. But, it’s more fair than forcing sick people to die because they can’t get coverage and forcing healthy people to get sick because their community is sick and poor.

I could go on and on. Yeah, the bill sucks, but in it’s current form, I still support it.

If we blame the politicians, it gets us nowhere. Just about all of them are corporate sell-outs. It seems to me that the corporations (lobbyists) are strong arming these politicians pretty hard to get them to obey them over their constituents. Who knows what’s really going on? Are the corps. threatening politicians with something other than campaign funding? It certainly seems to be within the realm of possibility.

But then the American people are just as to blame as the pols- at least many millions of them are.

So yeah it’s easy and perhaps fair to blame the politicians and the American people, but Is there a common denominator?

Yes, The corporations are to blame. They’re behind all of the influencing of the politicians and the brainwashing of the American public through advertising, PR, bad TV shows, and fake news.

Corporations are to blame. Their influence is too powerful. Expecting the pols to loose this influence is like expecting inner city youth to get straight A’s and get 1200 SAT scores without changing their schools, parents, or environment.

The corporations- and I mean the ones being evil, which is not all of them- need to be stopped.

That’s the problem. (I think). So how can these huge things be stopped legally and ethically? There’s something to ponder.

I could be way off here- so feel free to disagree or say whatever you want in the comments. LIke I wrote up there. I’m just trying to figure it all out.

July 17th, 2007

Friends,

The mighty CNN, in a lengthy and sad online defense of their woe-begotten ‘Sicko’ story of last Monday ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpKoN40K7mA ), has admitted that they did indeed fudge at least two of the facts in their coverage of my film and have apologized for it:

1. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN: “To be clear, I got a number wrong in my original report, substituting the number 25, instead of 251.” — My Conversation with Michael Moore, July 11th, 2007 ( http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/blogs/paging.dr.gupta/2007/07/my-conversation-with-michael-moore.html ); and

2. CNN: “Moore is correct. Paul Keckley left Vanderbilt in late 2006.” — CNN’s Response to Michael Moore, July 15th, 2007 ( http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Movies/07/15/moore.gupta/index.html ).

Furthermore, CNN confirmed that all of our statistics in “Sicko” are the correct numbers from the sources we cited. Although CNN still prefers to use older World Health Organization statistics, we will stick to using this year’s Bush administration stats and more recent U.N. data. (In “Sicko,” we consistently use only U.N. Human Development Statistics unless it’s for studies they don’t do or have recent numbers for.) CNN did apologize for these two factual errors, but no apology seems to be coming for the rest of their errors. These days, to get the mainstream media to admit they were wrong is rare; to get them to admit it twice, as they have with “Sicko,” I guess should be considered a whopping victory. Will they eventually apologize for the rest, or for their reporting on the war? Will the Cubs win the World Series this year?

So the truce has been signed, the peace pipe has been smoked. And the public is left with a much more cautious and wary eye when it comes to CNN. To be fair, this is what happens when you have to grind out “news” 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with a staff you have shrunk through layoffs over the years (like all the broadcast networks have done). You end up rushed and having interns do your research. You have robots replace live camera operators. And, if you’re CNN, you are constantly dodging the accusation that you are “too liberal.” So when you do a piece on someone like me, you have to make sure you add superfluous and standard ad hominems attacking me simply to prove that you are NOT too liberal. I get it.

Until the last month or so, I have not appeared on a single national TV show for nearly 2 and 1/2 years. After the attacks I had to endure three years ago, from a media intent on questioning my patriotism because I dared to speak out against the war when none in the media would, I decided I had had enough and would simply concentrate on making my next film. I had no desire to participate in networks that were complicit in the war because of their refusal the challenge the commander in chief.

I have to admit, though, I do feel kinda bad taking it all out on Wolf Blitzer. It’s not like he’s the official representative of the mainstream media. I mean, he’s from Buffalo, for crying out loud! He said to me at the end of the show last week to please come back on “anytime you want.” I will take him up on that offer and appear again with him tomorrow (Wednesday). I’m not expecting a dozen roses or make-up sex — I only want a promise that there will be no more distorted distractions so we can have a decent discussion about the REAL issues like why 18,000 Americans die every year because they don’t have a health insurance card. More than 300 of them died this week. As Ehrlichman said to Nixon in “Sicko”: “The less care they give ‘em, the more money they (the insurance companies) make.”

THAT’S the only thing we should be talking about. How profit and greed are killing our fellow Americans. How profit and private insurance have to be removed from our health care system. CNN should join me in asking why our 9/11 rescue workers aren’t receiving medical care. Somebody should send a crew to Canada to find out why they live longer than we do, and why no Canadian has ever gone bankrupt because of medical bills. And all of the media should start saying how much it costs to go to a doctor in these other top industrialized countries: Nothing. Zip. It’s FREE. Don’t patronize Americans by saying, “Well, it’s not free — they pay for it with taxes!” Yes, we know that. Just like we know that we drive down a city street for FREE — even though we paid for that street with our taxes. The street is FREE, the book at the library is FREE, if your house catches on fire, the fire department will come and put it out for FREE, and if someone snatches your purse, the police officer will chase down the culprit and bring your purse back to you — AND HE WON’T CHARGE YOU A DIME FROM THAT PURSE!

These are all free services, collectively socialized and paid for with our tax dollars. To argue that health care — a life and death issue for many — should not be considered in the same league is ludicrous and archaic. And trust me, once you add up what you pay for out-of-pocket in premiums, deductibles, co-pays, overpriced medicines, and treatments that aren’t covered (not to mention all the other things we pay for like college education, day care and other services that many countries provide for at little or no cost), we, as Americans, are paying far more than the Canadians or Brits or French are paying in taxes. We just don’t call these things taxes, but that’s exactly what they are.

See you all when I’m back on CNN tomorrow — where the discussion will be not be about whose statistics are right, but rather about the guy without insurance who died while I was writing this letter.

Yours,
Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com

http://www.michaelmoore.com/

P.S. Oh… I forgot to tell you about Paris Hilton. Apparently cooped up for too long at home since getting out of jail, she decided to head out for a night on the town. But where does she go? Clubbing? Cruising down the Strip? No! She and her sister decide to go see “Sicko.” ( http://mail.ywww.tmz.com/2007/07/10/paris-loses-sis-in-pap-crush/ ). Now THAT’S news! So, no more bad words about Paris Hilton!

Biologists are still grappling with the implications of this new view of cell death—not passive extinguishment, like a candle flickering out when you cover it with a glass, but an active biochemical event triggered by “reperfusion,” the resumption of oxygen supply. The research takes them deep into the machinery of the cell, to the tiny membrane-enclosed structures known as mitochondria where cellular fuel is oxidized to provide energy. Mitochondria control the process known as apoptosis, the programmed death of abnormal cells that is the body’s primary defense against cancer. “It looks to us,” says Becker, “as if the cellular surveillance mechanism cannot tell the difference between a cancer cell and a cell being reperfused with oxygen. Something throws the switch that makes the cell die.”

With this realization came another: that standard emergency-room procedure has it exactly backward. When someone collapses on the street of cardiac arrest, if he’s lucky he will receive immediate CPR, maintaining circulation until he can be revived in the hospital. But the rest will have gone 10 or 15 minutes or more without a heartbeat by the time they reach the emergency department. And then what happens? “We give them oxygen,” Becker says. “We jolt the heart with the paddles, we pump in epinephrine to force it to beat, so it’s taking up more oxygen.” Blood-starved heart muscle is suddenly flooded with oxygen, precisely the situation that leads to cell death. Instead, Becker says, we should aim to reduce oxygen uptake, slow metabolism and adjust the blood chemistry for gradual and safe reperfusion.

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