"SiCKO" this Saturday: Sneak Preview Showings Scheduled- Page 2

[HDThoreau2]

Posted: 6/27/07 at 3:42pm

God Bless Fred Thompson:

We're hearing those phrases again; national health care, universal health care, socialized medicine. We're being told that government bureaucrats can take over our entire medical industry -- which by the way is the best and most complex in the world -- and make it better.

It used to be a lot easier to make the case for nationalizing health care before we actually started looking at the countries that have it. A lot of people don't seem to have noticed but, in recent years, the grand experiments in bureaucratic medicine are coming apart at the seams.

Nearest home, it was the Canadian Health Care system that lost its luster. Despite paying nearly half their incomes in taxes, and as much as 40 percent of each tax dollar on health care, many Canadian experts have recognized that their health care system’s in a state of crisis. The problem has been, simply, not enough health care facilities to serve the population -- leading to long and sometimes fatal delays while waiting for treatments. Many Canadians have started coming to the US for treatments that they just can't get at home.

Now, top officials of the British National Health Service, often held out as an example of the kind of socialized medicine America should adopt, have acknowledged that they have similar problems. One in eight National Health Service hospital patients has to wait more than a year for treatment. Thirty percent wait more than 30 weeks.

Think about it. This is what we're supposed to copy? The poorest Americans are getting far better service than that. And there's nothing about Americans that would make us any better able to run a government health care bureaucracy than the Canadians or the British. In fact, we've got less practice at that sort of thing than they do -- and we might be a lot worse at it.

[romantico]

Posted: 6/27/07 at 6:30pm

Thank You Tavis Smiley!!! You see HD, I can do this too! Doesn;t change the FACT that you are a LIAR and a COWARD!!! HD LIES!

When Michael Moore's film Sicko hits theaters this month I'm betting that there will be very little "shock and awe" among the movie-goers who make up this nation's estimated 47 million uninsured, especially people of color.

Email
Print
Comment
Just last month, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health reported that minority women have higher rates of chronic disease than white women, and black women in LA County have the highest mortality rate of any group. Pick any major U.S. state, city and county and the statistics are likely to be painfully familiar, with poverty and lack of health care and insurance among the headlining factors.

Some of the other barriers faced by people of color and residents of low-income communities include lack of health facilities nearby, the cost of care and prescriptions, and the lack of neighborhood-based resources and social support to engage in healthy behaviors. Race aside, add to that list unaffordable premiums and reduced benefits and you have a healthcare system that excludes 1 out of 5 Californians, many of whom are average working people.

Nationally, healthcare continues to rank among the American public's top concerns in opinion polls, it's already being tackled in the 2008 presidential race, and it's the very first issue highlighted in the bestselling book, Covenant with Black America, which outlines the top 10 issues facing African Americans. Ironically, on June 28th the day before Sicko's scheduled release, healthcare will be among the topics raised with the Democratic candidates during the All-American Presidential Forum to be broadcast live in primetime on PBS. The event with Republican candidates will be held in September.

Regardless of Moore's politics or his filmmaking process, many may see themselves reflected in the stories of everyday Americans who are struggling to pay more for less in return. In a way that's what these forums that I will have the opportunity to moderate are all about -- inclusion. The forums, which will also include questions posed by three journalists of color, will provide an unprecedented opportunity for diverse perspectives to be a part of the national dialogue.

The Covenant, which I had the privilege of editing, kicked off that dialogue with contributions from some of our nation's leading thinkers whose recommendations for mending our broken health care system include: Improving data collection and analysis at local, regional, state and national levels; creating universal access to quality healthcare and treatment; ensuring residents in low-income neighborhoods have decent places to engage in physical activity and purchase healthy food; strengthening regulations on hazardous toxic substances that have negative impacts on health and the environment; and, developing and implementing training for healthcare professionals to meet the needs of diverse patient populations.


The candidates may come to the table with some or none of these ideas, but at some point hopefully the words of an African proverb will ring true. "Disease and disasters come and go like rain, but health is like the sun that illuminates an entire village." In June, September and beyond, when it comes to healthcare and other critical issues I hope we can get beyond the politics to make way for the sunshine.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tavis-smiley/moving-healthcare-beyond-_b_53673.html

Hannity, Romney, and Other Right-Wingers Smear Away in Panic at 'Sicko'


Jay Diamond: Hannity, Romney, and Other Right-Wingers Smear Away in Panic at 'Sicko'
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Wed, 06/27/2007 - 4:25pm. Guest Contribution
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Jay Diamond


Do a search on "Hannity 'Sicko'" or "Romney 'Sicko'' on any search engine and you will find an assortment of You Tube excerpts of Sean Hannity recycling talking points off the panicked presses of the Heritage Foundation, CEI, AEI, Manhattan Institute, etc., bearing dire warnings of the health care terror Michael Moore and other evil progressives are preparing to inflict on America.

But in all their truculent and fear-mongering invocations of the purported evils of "socialized medicine," there is curiously something that Romney, Hannity, and all the other American rightists consistently omit; and in that deliberate omission, there is an important lesson in the way America's hard right works their deceptions.

They never mention that there are more individuals right here in the United States who receive their health coverage on what you call "socialized medicine" than there are people in the entire country of France.

Add up all the people on Medicare and the Veterans Administration. Hey Sean, Hey Mitt, Did you forget about those interesting little nuggets -- Medicare and the VA? Or is it that you repeat the brainlessly transparent talking points your handlers stuff in your hands assuming nobody will realize that salient fact?

If right-wingers love the troops so much, why do they pick them specifically to be tormented with this horrible "socialized medicine"? Why do right-wingers hate our troops, to punish them in such an evil fashion, putting them at risk of the evil "socialized medicine"? Why, Why?

While we're at it, can you tell me something about what kind of health care we inflict on all the ardent right-wingers in Congress and the Senate? Yup, you guessed it. How come all the wonderful, "freedom" loving dedicated right-wingers in Congress -- every last one of 'em -- how come they don't give back their "socialized medicine" in indignant protest or at least self-preservation!? How noble they are to suffer so!

And "Mitt", I dare you to answer this: Do we see, in the day to day reality of the way Medicare works, any of the perils you guarantee in your polemics that would afflict the poor victims of public health care? We don't!

Medicare works fine and you know that. And the Medicare beneficiaries know that too. Compare it to any for profit HMO! And knowing this, you persistently repeat the lies, purposefully, as a scare tactic and rank propaganda. You deliberately set out to mislead people by repeating material falsehoods. Fine work there, very patriotic indeed. The founders would be so proud of you!

Our dead boys and girls in Iraq can rest in peace now knowing they died at age 18 to save Grandma from "socialized medicine" and to restore what to you is, no doubt, called "freedom."

Moreover, since you're so busy sounding the alarm sirens to "save" us from this "socialized medicine," then how is it you're not writing even one column describing the "horrors" of the already existing Medicare and demanding that the Congress and the president restore "freedom" to Americans by abolishing this blight of Medicare?

And why don't I see you or any of your Republican colleagues scampering for president also denouncing Medicare even as they inveigh against the godless assault of "socialized medicine"? Why are they and you silent in the battle to save America from Medicare and the VA!? How can that be, that you make terror speeches about "socialized medicine" and never even hint at the existence of Medicare and the VA right under our noses!!?

I'll tell ya how!! Because you, every single Republican in Congress, and the other Republicans vying for the '08 nomination, know the minute even one would be dumb enough to say they were going to "save" the millions of millions of moms and pops and grandmoms and grandpops all over America from this dastardly Medicare that is stealing their "freedom," it would be the end of them!

Don't believe me? What happened when Bush tried to play games with Social Security when he was feeling tumescent after his "mandate' that gave him all that "political capital"? Need a reminder? No one, not even the hardest line right-winger in Congress would dare to say he was going to abolish grandma's Medicare to save her from socialism!

You know better than to make that mistake. You know that if you dare to call Medicare what it is, what Republicans called it back in the mid 1960's when it was being debated, people would do two things: They would stop the rote association of socialism with everything evil and threatening in life, thereby ending the power over them of individuals such as yourself working malignant hidden agendas. Better still, never fall for that crap again.

That is why neither you, nor any Republican will ever associate Medicare or VA health care with your detested "socialized medicine." Because you know well that you can scare the spit out of them, trick, fool, and hustle them, with your dire invocations of "socialism" right up until the minute that somebody telling the truth shows up to remind them that they already HAVE "socialized medicine," they LOVE their "socialized medicine," and that you want to euchre them out of it!

How proud the founders must be looking down from Joe McCarthy's heaven. And how proud you must be right down here on earth? It's what we make it!

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/1106

CBS's 'Sicko' Spin
Americans Don't Want Single-Payer Health—Except They Do


http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3124

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 6/27/07 at 7:31pm

>> Nearest home, it was the Canadian Health Care system that lost its luster. Despite paying nearly half their incomes in taxes, and as much as 40 percent of each tax dollar on health care, many Canadian experts have recognized that their health care system’s in a state of crisis.

Right. And this no doubt comes from United Healthcare.

HD, try experiencing the system before trashing somehting you clearly have no clue about. Unlike you, I know first hand what the system is like and its benefits and drawbacks. Despite what you say, it is still light years better than what we have in the US. Dont talk to me about long lines and the expense when it costs some folks a quarter of their annual salary just to afford health care insurance in the US. Given the choice between that and the amount taken out in taxes in Canada, the Canadian system is still far cheaper.