There is still triumph left in this world, and Michael Moore delivers a documentary about the healthcare industry that leaves the mind reeling and stinging.
(SALEM, Ore.) - As Americans die in increasing numbers through the greed of hospitals, healthcare organizations and insurance companies, it adds insult to injury to learn that our lifespan in the states is less than many third world countries.
As our nation struggles in a desperate search for answers, those at the root of the problem do nothing to help. They should be more than embarrassed, and we should be more than angry.
Billions of dollars are flowing into the pockets of the richest CEO's and shareholders pockets as Americans die needless and avoidable deaths. All because our national priorities are exclusively money driven.
As our country descends the ladder of health, enter Michael Moore and "Sicko."
When I watched this documentary for the first time, I was forced to think about my own recent situation in Afghanistan, where I covered the war for two months last winter with a hernia belt holding me together.
I just read a passage about a Las Vegas Vietnam Vet named Mike; "a man with a razor blade scar and a sharp sense of humor," who was found dead in a ditch along the railroad tracks, dead from a gastrointestinal hemorrhage.
Author Matthew O’Brien of "Beneath the Neon" concludes that paragraph with, "I guess he never had hernia surgery. No insurance, no hospital bed."
That is how America treats its vets. They die in agony on the roadside because they don't have health insurance.
So there I was last November, on the verge of shipping overseas to cover my first war. I had to receive a thousand dollars worth of shots, and I had a severe hernia in what one nurse called “the lower 40.”
I understand lower hernias are fairly dangerous. If it goes, the owner usually goes with it, unless a hospital is very close by. Of course it would also have to be a hospital that accepted a patient without insurance, and those seem to be disappearing in this country.
I tried to work out a plan with my local hospital in Salem; they said they would be happy to arrange the surgery, as long as I could pay the bill on the spot for it. Everyone packs a few thousand bucks around, right? It isn’t like the economy is sagging or anything like that.
Besides, it is hard and expensive to own and operate your own groundbreaking media business, the only independent Internet news site in America, and some expenses like the $1,000+ a month insurance premium are just not on the radar right now. Certainly some will fault me, we are all supposed to be able to pay our own way, but the costs for a hernia surgery are out of line in this country.
I think that attitude about money and health care that I found at Salem, Oregon's hospital, is exactly what Moore is talking about in Sicko. We have dropped to a point where healthcare is only a business in this country; the heart was removed from it long ago.
That is not to say that there aren’t dedicated professionals because there are, but far more seem to be in it for the pay and the golfing.
I went to the war carrying about 120 pounds of gear. The kidney belt worked remarkably well, and I was able to always tighten it just a little more when necessary to put my hernia back inside the old lower stomach wall.
So at the end of my story about hernias and war, a $15 kidney belt from Ebay was the saving grace. I had far better things to say about that Internet commerce group at the time than my local hospital, that’s for sure.
At the time, I was the only staff reporter from any Oregon media organization who was covering, or willing to cover the troops. A reporter affiliated with KGW was in another part of Afghanistan at the time covering Canadian military operations. It seemed important to at least 900 Oregon families.
I admit that when I approached the hospital I naively thought they would be easy to work with, since I was heading out to cover the 900 Oregon combat troops in Afghanistan.
I figured I would get the surgery and make payments, it seemed reasonable at the time. But that is not the reality of people without insurance in the U.S.A. Instead, I was simply told “no.” Even though I was heading to a combat zone, Salem Hospital could not even consider letting me get the surgery and deal with payment later.
I thought about this hospital one day when I tried to jump aboard an Army CH-47 helicopter at Gardez, Afghanistan, loaded with Afghan combat soldiers on a mission. I didn’t have the strength or stamina to make that last step up the load ramp with all my gear. Two soldiers saw what was going on and they quickly helped me get my stuff aboard. I think I did very well overall, covering a war with a bulging hernia in my abdomen.
I tried to figure out why Moore’s disputed new movie made me so emotional, almost distraught, and then I connected the things I am writing about right now. My own misery at war with a hernia, the denial of the surgery, and the general fear of dying in combat, it all takes a toll; but the story about the Vietnam vet dying because he couldn’t have a routine surgery for a hernia was the true catalyst.
It is noteworthy that Sicko is not a George W. Bush bash-a-thon. It is a movie that grabs your heart and does things that you would never imagine.
What everybody who goes to war looksforward to; a family welcome home partyThe health management organizations like Kaiser Permanente are Moore’s enemies, and the pharmaceutical groups that are raping America in terms of costs, especially our senior citizens. Moore has the courage to call it what it is.
I take it his detractors on this one are all in favor of HMO’s and the pharmaceutical companies.
There is still triumph left in this world, and Michael Moore delivers a documentary about the healthcare industry that leaves the mind reeling and stinging.
In the end, Moore writes a $12,000.00 check to the man who maintains the largest anti-Michael Moore Website in America. It seems the man’s wife is gravely ill, and he had to choose between her health and his anti-Moore Website. He chose his wife.
Michael Moore said that didn’t seem fair or right, and then anonymously gave him the funds to get that anti-Michael Moore Website back on the air.
Top that.
Moore's 'Sicko' Rings Close to Home for This ReporterSalem-News.com