The Frontline documentary Sick Around the World hosted by T.R. Reid is a must watch. A trip around the world to see how other nations manage to succeed with health care systems while we come in 38th. The documentary Sick Around the World
This was like short version of the Michael Moore movie Sicko without the propaganda, though it too arrives at the same conclusion.
Reid manages to get the issue down to four simple points that all successful health care plans must begin with. Though nations can still choose between private and public implementation.
Mandate health insurance payments from everyone (or tax increases to cover it).
Cover everyone no matter condition or income.
Mandate that health insurance be non profit.
Standardize cost of proceedures and drugs.
BANG! Everyone covered under a better system at half the price.
All we have to do is get his wrong headed notion that all human endeavor should be taken care of by the peck and call of the market. As we are finally finding out of late, the market is not the solution, it is the problem. We must move from a pure market health care system to a human health care system.
The base of our profit driven system has insurers piling on those already suffering most, punishing them for a bad tumble of the die. Don’t have enough to pay your bills because you don’t have enough insurance or have no insurance at all? Our answer… Then we will then take your car, your house, your childrens’ college fund and give you an added fkyou boot out the door you loser. A system that adds hurt to pain. It is unfair, cruel, uncivilized, unchristian, unAmerican and stupid.
The documentary has a running hook. Looking at five successful systems the host asks each the same question. "Has anyone in your country every gone bankrupt for a health bill?" The answers were universal, "Of course not." With an unspoken facial expressing the notion that they are a civilized society. And there’s the rub…
It’s what wearing a flag decal on your lapel means. We need not seek knowledge from other countries because we are smarter and better than everyone else. What any damn fererners do is just a bunch of crap that cannot even be discussed here, by either Republicans or Democrats. I also noticed that this documentary did not mention what is considered the nation with the best health care system of all, France. A politician – or even a PBS documentary it seems – saying something good about France will find themselves on the bad end of an American ugly stick