Sicko and the 2008 Election
Even before its national release this Friday, Michael Moore’s “Sicko” has contributed to a renewed debate on the U.S. health care system. The film focuses on Americans who do have health care coverage and shows in painful specifics how insurance and drug companies profit by withholding needed care.
Already the film has provoked elected officials, the media and ordinary people to again consider what America want from our health care system. As I left the New York City theater where the film previewed, a young African-American woman sitting behind me called her friend to ask, “Can you believe it, in France and Cuba people don’t pay for health care?”
With “Sicko”, Michael Moore has provided an opportunity to make health care a key issue in the 2008 Congressional and Presidential elections. But if progressives want to use this election to ask why the US ranks worse than most other developed nations on longevity, mortality, obesity and other measures of health, they will need to extend the discussion beyond health care.
In fact, most health researchers agree that improvements in health care can make only modest improvements in overall well-being. Every year, the decisions that food, tobacco, alcohol, automobile, and firearms industry executives make about advertising, pricing and opposition to government oversight contribute to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths and illnesses. In recent decades, chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer, heart disease and stroke, all associated with the unhealthy behaviors and environments that corporate America promotes, have become the main causes of death. In that same period, and especially since 2000, business interests have radically transformed the role of government, shifting resources from protection of public health to protection of profit.
One consequence has been an epidemic of obesity as the food industry spends billions to persuade Americans to eat and drink more high calorie, low nutrient products. A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine predicted that if current trends on obesity (and its consequence diabetes) continue, our children and grandchildren will have shorter life spans than we do.
To avoid this future will require redefining the relationship between business and government. And here “Sicko” offers important lessons for progressives. Moore doesn’t waste his precious time with his audience in wonkish prescriptions for health care reform. Rather, he asks basic questions: What do Americans want from their government? Who are we as a people? What lessons can we learn from other countries? By focusing on core values, Moore suggests a way that Americans can discuss these issues that goes beyond sound bites. By showing how profit distorts the health care system’s ability to meet people’s needs, he encourages people to consider alternatives. By emphasizing democracy as the solution to special interests, he roots the discussion in American ideals.
To expand this discussion to include the most fundamental causes of ill health, we need to ask some other questions: Do American’s want to turn over responsibility for their children’s health and nutrition to McDonald’s, Coke , RJ Reynolds and Budweiser? Do we want to entrust the care of our parents and grandparents to Merck and Pfizer, who promote drugs they know to have lethal side effects? Should Ford and General Motors be able to persuade the Senate to water down auto safety and pollution control regulations that are still weaker than those in Europe and Japan? Do we want a Supreme Court that values corporate profits more highly than public health?
If the answer to these questions is no, then voters will need to elect a new Congress and President in November 2008. Moore’s “Sicko” shows that it is possible to engage the American people in considering these questions. By making the well-being of Americans a central issue, progressives can put health on the ballot in 2008.
Nicholas Freudenberg is Distinguished Professor of Public Health at Hunter College, City University of New York and founder of Corporation and Health Watch ( www.corporationsandhealth.org). His e-mail is nfreuden@hunter.cuny.edu .
Great analysis, and yes, we already have a Supreme Court that places corporations over people. Unfortunately it will be up to us, one by one to get this message out. We will see no help from the mainsteam media.
I will be wearing my SiCKO scrub and carrying my handout flyers to the local opening of the movie. I will also talk with my local newspaper and TV stations about covering the event. I hope to see other nurses there. I’m trying to figure out how to connect with them.
We need to invest far more money into our public health system. We’re way behind other countries on that. And we need Medicare For All and Dennis Kucinich for President. Enough of the NeoCons and the DLC. They are destroying our country.
Thank you Nicholas Freudenberg.
Kathy Jones RN
Michael Moore was in Denver last Sunday. Over 500 of us rallied on the steps of the Colorado State Capitol in support of single payer universal health care. Check out www.feistyaphrodite.com for details. At the national level HR 676 is the bill which will do this.
My recommendation for action for those not hooked in with a health care reform group where they are, is to contact Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) at www.pdamerica.org
We are organizing around the country to flyer at the SiCKO screenings and encourage people to call their Congressional Representatives and ask them to co-sponsor HR 676.
Nicholas Freudenberg brings up excellent points about our food and other environmental factors which affect our health. Scratch the surface just a little and you will find corporate complicity in much of the bad practices. The corporate model of profits before people is a systemic problem which needs a major 180 overhaul. Who better than “we the people” to organize to put people before profits. Let’s ask all candidates for office at whatever level in whichever party if they put “people before profits.” Ask them to back up their rhetoric with their track record and with specific future plans.
John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, spoke in Boulder last night. I liked his articulated guiding principle . . . we need to work towards having a stable, sustainable, and peaceful world for all children, everywhere.
Evi in Denver
you go, kathyodat!
freudenberg’s article is important. healthcare is a nexus of issues, only one of which is access to a doctor/hospital.
one issue that never gets addressed in discussion of healthcare, unlike food, smoking, access to medicine, pharmaceuticals, etc., is
ACCESS TO LEISURE TIME
exercise & planning a healthy diet require time. free time also reduces stress, another major factor in health, and also affords time for political participation (one reason why you don’t get it in the US.)
leisure time and stress free living also require stable jobs.
Speaking of firearms, our country’s love for violence is a MAJOR factor in the healthcare crisis. Of course, gun control is not a solution but a coverup at best but even without guns, violence would continue to exist as is the case in corporate hostile takeover of our government and our representation. In fact, the VA Tech tragedy pales in comparison to the massive fraud and deception credit card companies knowingly trick students into being the victims of.
Freudenberg (can be translated as “joyful village” from German( takes the next step after “sicko”.
From progressive political values point of view the next step after that is feducing the gap between the richest and poorest among us. For those intersted in exploring this alittle further you should look up the following articles by Dr. Stephen Bezruchka:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=4647
http://projects.is.asu.edu/pipermail/hpn/2001-January/002363.html
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/28/059.html
Freudenberg has taken the next step after “Sicko”. For those of you who might be interested in seeing the next step after Freudenberg you should read the following by Dr. Stephen Bezruchka:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=4647
The next step in the improvement of public health is economic equality–or narrowing the gap between the richest and poorest in our midst. This not from some political polemicist, but an emergency room MD with degrees and specialilzations in math, statistics, and physics. He is currently on the faculty of the Iniversity of Washington Medical School in Seattle.
Healthcare properly defined can be the wedge issue that allows Americans to break the yoke of corporate tyranny off of their necks by means political rather than violent confrontation.
“Moore’s “Sicko” shows that it is possible to engage the American people in considering these questions. By making the well-being of Americans a central issue, progressives can put health on the ballot in 2008.”
Alas, I don’t see the second sentence as following from the first. It is definitely possible to engage the American people with these questions. But the disconnect between the American people and the folks on the ballot is growing. I think the reason that the majority of Americans disapprove of both Bush and the Congress is that both institutions have sold themselves, like the whores that they are, to corporate special interests. Regular Americans like me know that neither major party gives a rat’s ass about us, but the two-party system is structured in such a way as to keep us from electing any viable alternatives. As long as our candidates are Corporate Elephant and Corporate Donkey, an individual who represents us instead of corporations won’t get elected. Our health care problems will continue unabated. The system will grind on apace. I’d like to believe otherwise, but I’m getting too old for self-deception.
Did any of you see Maria Bartiromo’s (she is a stock analyst for CNBC) interview with Michael Moore? They had to conduct the interview outside the Stock Exchange building because Bartiromo said CNBC “could not get permission in time for Moore.” (it was a ridiculously flimsy excuse ON CAMERA!) He was visibly irritated and pressed her on the issue, asking if anyone else had been denied entry into the building? She realized she was cornered and just passed over the issue. Tell any of your friends who watch CNBC stock analysis to stop. The stonewalling of Michael Moore already has begun by the MSM!
JBPM: Your cynicism is understandable, but at the risk of offering a mere a pep talk, I’d like to encourage you to look at things another way. If you look back at all the other “impossible” challenges that activists have faced in our history–from the abolitionists, who were told again and again that the institution of slavery could never be brought down and it was hopeless to try, to the women’s suffrage movement when people were told that the partriarchal power structure would never permit women to vote and it was foolish to try to change the status quo, to the labor organizers who were told of the futility of demanding an eight-hour day and an end to child labor, to the civil rights activists who fought against tremendous odds to end racial segregation–you will see that instead of engaging in self-deception, these people were strengthened by the righteousness of the cause and driven to be the agents of change rather than to be passive defeatists who could give up when the work was too hard or the obstacles too great. If you need belief in success to back up your desire to change the status quo, choose the belief in the power of idealism to overcome tyranny in the way that Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King did, not the belief that (a la the Star Trek Borgs) “resistance is futile.” Inaction due to fear of failure is not an option because it helps to produce real failure.
The root cause of most of the troubles we face today is the entrenched corporate-imperialist duopoly. Those of us who are involved in the movement to establish a multiparty democratic system in this country know that the struggle is daunting, but that the price of failure is too great to simply throw up our hands and give up. Fight for Instant Runoff Voting; become a happy “spoiler” and keep spoiling their 2-party dictatorship until the duopolists are forced to compete for our second-choice votes just to keep their jobs; reenlist in the movement for social change; and vote for what you want, not for a “lesser evil.”
The only self-deception you have to worry about is the act of deceiving yourself into believing that just because change is difficult it is impossible. We can’t afford to be fatalistic, or lazy, or easily intimidated into surrendering to the status quo. The powers that be want you to feel powerless, frustrated and demoralized. Do not let them bully you into submission! Keep fighting!
The top Dem candidates in tonite’s debate were pushing “Universal Health Care” with private insurance, not Medicare for All. Need any more proof that they’re bought lock, stock and barrel? Do you want to continue living on the hope that the Dems will end the corporate/government collusion that is fascism?
http://ni4d.us/
Finally, someone else who has the foresight to mention Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). Thanks Bildad. The only mechanism we progressives have to push through a greater variety of political choices and debate is to realize IRV.
The barring of Michael Moore from the New York Stock Exchange is actually pretty funny because it draws attention to the dirty little secret of healthcare in this country. The insurance companies deal in a single commodity - cash - and these “institutional investors” are the ones who keep the filth on Wall Street afloat. To deprive them of this slush fund would cause the casino, stock market economy to collapse.
There is no debate and movie isn’t going to change anything.
I went to a show in liberal Madison, WI. There were 25 people in attendance. No tabling. No California nurses signing people up for lobbying.
Moore doesn’t mention HR676 in his movie.
At the end of the film there is no clear message telling the viewer what to do next.
Nader is right: Moore should plow profits from the film into organizing for HR 676. He won’t.
Moore should also treat the liberal left media as his place of choice to talk about the film, not Entertainment Weekly and Jay Leno.
Moore needs to help force a change in where people get their news and information from the corporations to the liberal left non profit institutions such as The Nation and Democracy Now!
Since he is not going to do this, the vast majority of the public will continue to have their opinions shaped by a corporation.
Therefore, nothing will change as a result of this movie in terms of people’s habits and thus, the actions of Congress.
In fact, a Republican is likely to be elected president (Dodd, Obama, Clinton and Biden sound like Republicans on health care, anyway).
Twenty years ago I suggested the school system I taught for remove the pop and snack machines from the building. My suggestion was met with disbelief and even ridicule. It was as though I’d said something un-american.
I am deeply saddened by the state of America’s health. Everywhere I go I see whole families of obese people. There was a time when a truly obese person was a rare sight. I’m afraid it is becomming the new norm.
But as long as everything is tied to the dollar, I see little hope. Schools still rely on the revenues from pop and snack machines to supplement their funds. Teachers in schools that have removed these machines are told to have fund raisers (candy sales?) to take up the slack. Just another non-instructional task to chip away at the school day.
It is a tangled web, and as the writer so eloquently stated, it will take a complete restructuring of our society.
I have seen “SiCKO” and it was extremely good. It was not as polarizing as Moore’s previous works, but I can assure everyone that it will be an eye-opener for every American. Eventually, some may claim that the documentery is biased but, again, actually, this is arguably his least polarizing film. Every human being should see this documentery as it is for all of us, regardless of who each person is.
I liked how Michael Moore filmed the last segment in Cuba, a nation that indeed many Americans find mysterious. I may surprise a few Americans that Cuba is actually a popular tourist destination in countries such as Canada, Spain, and in nations throughout the world for that matter. That the Cuban Government was nice enough to treat 9/11 first responders, but their own Goverment wouldn’t because they did nott have “insurance” (insurance - such a cruel concept! Mandated slow genocide of Americans by their own Government I say), I frankly found upsetting. Yet, I do not consider Cuba’s willingness to treat them as a PR move on their part, but rather I think the doctors in Cuba were respectful of the first responders’ courage to risk going to a land forbidden to them for medical help where their country would not give them the help. The Cuban doctors did all they could for them too - and did it well judging from the film. The doctors in Cuba treated them for humanitary reasons you see. The 9/11 first responders also visited a fire station in Havana as well and the Cuban firefighters gave their condolences to them for the 9/11 event.
Cubans have some of the highest life-spans in the Western Hemisphere. Their health care system rivals the United States in quality as well and completely free for every citizen of Cuba, as is in England, France, and Canada. Again, this fact may surprise many Americans especially how Cuba conducts its health care system. They like to demonize Fidel Castro, claiming that he treats Cubans like shit (I have no idea whatsover what gave Americans that inaccurate notion), even though the vast majority of Cubans respect Fidel Castro proportionaltely more than Americans respect George Bush Jr.
I liked the section that Moore did in France also. In the film, Moore points out that France has the highest quality health care system of all nations on Earth. In England, Moore points out that the British started a universal health care policy in their country shortly after World War 2 in order to meet the demands of its citizens after the war in which between 50,000 to 100,000 Britons were killed or severely injured during a period of eight months. In Canada, their health care system is completely free to their people as well and do it strictly for humanitary reasons. The Canadians believe that health care, paid completely by their Government, is the least their Government can do for its tax-paying citizens. What a concept!
Some Americans may claim something like “Europeans are taxed at least half their salaries for all of these amenities.” True…but so what Americans! Believe it or not, most people in Europe share the sentiment of who cares if people who live in Europe are taxed half their incomes or more. It is just different here than in the United States with political systems, education, health care etc. Again, most people don’t consider high taxes in exchange for free College and health care to be something awful. Throughout Europe, the general opinion is that being taken care of by the nation one pays taxes to is more important than being a millionaire. Does that make sense Americans? I am unable to say this more clear.
Fidel Castro - Soy feliz de ver que usted se siente mejor y yo le deseo una recuperación rápida.
Bildad,
I don’t see myself as cynical. Instead, I’m a frustrated idealist, a frustrated utopian. Instant Runoff Voting, Proportional Representation, and third (hell, second!) parties would all be welcome additions to our political toolkit.
But how many regular folks even know what IRV and PR are?
How do we go about getting the message out to regular people when the media are bought and sold by the same powers that don’t want us to have IRV and PR?
How do we go about reforming those same media when the elected officials we have are bought and sold by the same interests that own the media?
How do we elect a new kind of politician without IRV, PR, etc.?
See my problem here? It’s a Catch-22. The entire system is rotten to the core, but how do you go about changing an entire system? Where’s the fulcrum, where’s the leverage?
I don’t mean to sound pessimistic. Ok, I take that back. I AM pessmistic, and so I will necessarily sound that way. What I don’t want to sound is hopeless, because the only way to truly become hopeless is to give up hope, which I haven’t done.
But where is the MOVEMENT to end the Iraq War, to take on global warming, to work for single payer health care, etc.? Maybe it’s there and I don’t see it, but I don’t think so. Instead, most of us are too busy working our shit jobs and spending what little spare time we do have with our families to march in the streets.
And what good will marching do, if we decide to finally get up and do it? Millions marched against the invasion of Iraq and that stopped the invasion, didn’t it? All it did was show the rest of the world that the US is a burned-out firecracker that, once upon a time, put on one heck of a show.
I want to believe this film will begin to change things, I really do. I want to believe that my collecting signatures for IRV and PR at the local farmer’s market is going to change things, I really do. I want to believe that sponsoring teach-ins at my local liberal Christian church is going to change things, I really do. I want to believe that anything I do, and everything I keep doing, is going to change things, I really do.
But I can’t shake the depressing feeling that it really won’t. I’ll keep working at it anyway, in my own little way, but it seems like too little, too late.