Health care: Going from broken to broke

[Zacha341]

IMO, this is one of the more clear, non-partisan articles [[absent of the standard dismissible so-called right wing 'talking points') on the subject of the proposed health care bill. For one it breaks down what is already occurring with Medicare [[current insolvency) yet proposed expansion, with cuts... especially crucial as the aging population [[baby boomers) ramps up for care etc. The article also points to underestimates of costs with a cost/ deficit break down summary at the end.

Part 1 of article:

"Only by using the crazy math of health care can a bill both "lower deficits" and enormously raise debt."

Health care: Going from broken to broke

By Shawn Tully, senior editor at large - March 12, 2010: 1:37 PM ET

http://money.cnn.com/2010/03/12/news...tune/index.htm

NEW YORK [[Fortune) -- A few nights ago in the historic Renaissance Grand Hotel in St. Louis, Mo., President Obama reassured a crowd of Senator Claire McCaskill supporters that health-care reform wouldn't just be good for their health, it would be good for the health of the country: "I said at the beginning of this thing we would not do anything that adds to our deficit," he said to the clapping audience. "This plan does not do anything to add to this deficit. And that's how we should be operating."

What he didn't discuss was what kind of accounting he was using to generate such applause lines. And the answer to that sheds new light on whether the nearly $900 billion measure really delivers the savings -- or, as many fear, does exactly the opposite.

The issue is critical, because America is hurtling towards a debt crisis. On March 5th, the Congressional Budget Office released a report stating that the federal debt will grow far faster than the president is predicting, reaching a staggering 90% of GDP by 2020. That's comparable to the load now crippling Greece. In a decade, says the CBO, one dollar in six of federal spending would go towards paying interest almost equaling expenditures on Medicare.

President Obama is claiming that his health-care plan will substantially lower future deficits. Naturally, it's the huge budget shortfalls that cause the debt problem by forcing the U.S. to borrow more and more money to bridge the gap between spending and revenues. For proof, he cites the CBO report from March 11 forecasting that the Senate bill -- the basis of the president's proposal -- will pare the deficit by $118 billion over the next decade.

That forecast, however, doesn't mean that what the CBO counts as lower deficits will lead to less debt, as taxpayers might expect. In fact, it appears that it would require the Treasury to borrow almost 40 cents of every dollar in new spending the bill requires.

How to lower a deficit and raise a debt
It's not an easy trick to reduce deficits and yet borrow more money. CBO does it because it has to. By law, the CBO is required to use "cash" or "unified budget" accounting. Under that system, the CBO projects all the new revenues and new expenses from the legislation it's requested to "score." If the extra revenues exceed the additional outlays, the bill is deemed to reduce deficits. That's the case with the health-care bill. The rub is that the measure gets a large portion of its revenues from new Social Security and Medicare taxes -- plus levies it collects upfront to pay for a long-term care entitlement program.

Counting those taxes as deficit reducers presents two problems. First, the extra revenues are mainly needed to pay for higher benefits in the future. Second, they cannot be used to fund the lavish subsidies, tax credits for small employers, and other spending the bill mandates. "The law is clear," says Donald Moran, a former Reagan Administration budget official who runs a Washington, DC-based health-care consulting and research firm. "Revenues from those entitlement taxes must go into their trust funds. That money is not available to pay for the spending commitments of the health-care bill."

So let's use the definition of "deficits" that most Americans follow in their own budgets: Any time you increase spending -- on buying a two-story colonial or taking a vacation at Club Med -- and you need to borrow to pay for it, you're running a deficit. For families, the best way to measure those deficits is the amount it adds to what they owe on their credit cards, car loans or home equity lines.

Now apply the same standards to the health-care bill. If it really reduces deficits, it should lower the federal debt. It does the opposite. How? First, it doesn't raise nearly enough revenues to pay for itself. Second, it vastly understates future costs.

Fixing the Doc Fix
Let's start with the second issue. A law dating from 1987 sets strict limits on total physician payments for Medicare. The main mechanism for restraining costs is a formula that lowers the fees Medicare pays for everything from angioplasties to checkups. But since 2002, Congress has been postponing those cuts and allowing modest increases in reimbursements instead. The official budget assumes that Congress made the cuts every year, and hence starts with a far lower spending number. But that's fiction. Each year, Congress passes what it calls the "Doc Fix," which today requires spending about $25 billion a year more than the budget projects.

The House included the "Doc Fix" in the bill it presented in July, but not the Senate. And now it's reappeared -- but in a different piece of legislation. The administration estimates that the Doc Fix will cost $371 billion over 10 years. Yet the CBO doesn't talk about that cost when it comes to health care -- because it can't. It's not in the bill it's scoring.

"The bill has many changes in Medicare, but this is the only one Obama wants to do separately," says James Capretta, who served in the Office of Management and Budget under President George W. Bush. "It's an attempt to hold the official cost below $1 trillion, when it's really far higher."

See Pt 2 in following post.......

[Zacha341]

Part 2 of article:

Health care: Going from broken to broke

By Shawn Tully, senior editor at large - March 12, 2010: 1:37 PM ET

http://money.cnn.com/2010/03/12/news...tune/index.htm

Messing with a lock box
The White House is also counting on three sources of revenue that, in fact, cannot be used to pay for the bill's spending: A new entitlement, Social Security taxes, and higher Medicare levies. The new entitlement is the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program, or CLASS Act. The CLASS Act is a long-term care plan for people who can't perform basic daily tasks such as feeding themselves. Over the next 10 years, the CLASS Act mainly collects payroll contributions from new enrollees, and pays only small amounts in benefits.

But the program needs all of that money to cover the costs it will accrue when those new enrollees start needing home-nursing services. In fact, it will almost certainly need a lot more. The American Academy of Actuaries warns that the program will be insolvent by 2021. The HHS actuaries conclude that it faces "significant risk of failure." In October, Kent Conrad, D-N.D., chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, called the CLASS Act "a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing that Bernie Madoff would have been proud of."

But remember, the CBO counts new revenues, even if they're owed later for another purpose, towards "deficit reduction." Hence, using the CBO report, the administration is, in effect, touting the $70 billion the CLASS Act raises between 2010 and 2019 as money that's available to spend on subsidies for premiums and coverage for the uninsured.

The higher Medicare and Social Security taxes come from one of the bill's central features, the "Cadillac Tax" on expensive health-care plans. The levy would prompt companies to provide more modest coverage, giving workers higher wages in lieu of richer benefits. That would lead to higher taxable income, and hence, bigger revenues from Social Security and Medicare taxes. In addition, the Senate bill would raise the Medicare tax rates on high earners, and the president's new proposal would raise those rates even higher. The bill would raise an extra $52 billion in Social Security taxes, and $113 billion in Medicare taxes over 10 years. [[Those numbers are the most recent breakdown available and come from a previous score released by the CBO on December 19th.)

As the president's February 22nd proposal states, the extra Medicare taxes will all go to the Medicare trust funds, as required under law. Neither that money, nor the revenues from Social Security taxes, can be used to pay for the new health-care spending. In fact, the Social Security windfall is needed to pay future benefits, since retirement payments generally rise in tandem with taxable income. By contrast, the Medicare taxes aren't required to cover additional future spending, since high earners will pay them and get nothing in return. But their contribution to bolstering the long-term solvency of Medicare -- which is underfunded by some $38 trillion -- is feeble.

How the math adds up
So how much must the government borrow to pay for reform? That's the true measure of future deficits. Let's start with the CBO's "deficit reduction" estimate of $118 billion.

First, we'll subtract the Doc Fix of $371 billion, which Obama does not pay for and must be borrowed. That wipes out all of the theoretical decline in the deficit and leaves a shortfall of $253 billion.

Then we'll subtract the tax revenues that are owed for entitlements, and therefore excluded from paying for the bill: $70 billion from the CLASS Act, $52 billion for Social Security, and $113 billion for Medicare. That subtotal: $235 billion.

So the full amount that must be borrowed by 2019 is $488 billion. [[That's 39% of the total cost, composed of the $875 billion official estimate plus the Doc Fix of $371 billion, for a total of $1.25 trillion.) Add in interest, which is excluded from the official CBO cost, and the total amount approaches $600 billion. So the U.S. will need to borrow an additional $600 billion to pay for a new medical system -- one that won't be up and running until 2014.

Only by using the crazy math of health care can a bill both "lower deficits" and enormously raise debt. America's struggling households know what real deficit reduction looks like, and this isn't it.

[maxx]

Hopefully, the budget will look better when we get out of W's budget-breaking and totally unnecessary war. W oversaw the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs which I guess, he tried to replace with military jobs. Maybe he thought he was Frederick the Great in a narrow militaristic way.

[mjs]

Two wrongs don't make a right.

And yes, I'll never understand the Bush tax cuts or wars anymore than I'll understand how Roosevelt's explosion of Fed powers and spending got us out of the depression. As for still wanting a pound of flesh from former President's that no longer hold the office, a great man once said, "an eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind."

[maxx]

When people talk about the rising cost of health care, I can't find anyone who has addressed the beginning of all the costs, the rising cost of medical school. Why has medical school risen so much in cost?
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=124501284

[jiminnm]

Why has college tuition in general risen so much, at a rate far above the rate of inflation?

[Retroit]

Why has college tuition in general risen so much, at a rate far above the rate of inflation?

And this is after they receive substantial funds from the government [[at least the public ones). Which goes to prove that just because something is government-run or government-funded does not mean that costs will be kept low.

Yet some people want government control of health care.

[Papasito]

They have done nothing to attack the pricing of Medical Products and Services. No interstate competition. No price controls. We have the Government giving something like 32 million people health insurance while the workers and the businesses that provide jobs for them are told to foot the bill. Insurance companies now have you by the balls, able to charge you whatever they see fit, because having Health Insurance is now compulsory. Frivelous lawsuits and defensive procedures are still a cost hiker. Malpractice insurance is six figures or more per year for a practicing medical professional. And the creators of the catastrophies known as the US Mail, Medicaid, the IRS, and Social Security are suppoed to run it all like it's a Swiss watch.....
you are watching history in the making... of another Government orchastrated disaster

[Danny]

The new Health Care Bill WILL NOT BANKRUPT the U.S. Government. Please do not listen to LIES, LIES, LIES from the local and national media. The Repulbicans actually don't like the bill becuase they don't want the U.S. Gov't running the health care business like its a proto-socialist agenda. The democrats like the bill becuase it help over 33 million unisured Americans to be insured by 2015, cut the pricing caps off between health insurance companies and its clients. That means if the doctor says to you that you need open heart surgery and its going to cost over $250,000 with a $10,000 down payment, Your insurance company will have to pay it ALL as a part of your pre-assisted condition and it would help to reduce the deficit by trillions of dollars over the next 10 years.

Face it folks, either you all like it or not, health care crisis on America is going to be over and the begining of Universal Health Care will commense. The law has spoken. So you all put up or shut up.

WORD FROM THE STREET PROPHET


President Obama told the American People that HE will reform the our government and he's fulfilling it, truthfully. Let's keep that black man in the White House for Neda Soltani's sake.

[Retroit]

The democrats like the bill because it help over 33 million uninsured Americans to be insured by 2015, cut the pricing caps off between health insurance companies and its clients. That means if the doctor says to you that you need open heart surgery and its going to cost over $250,000 with a $10,000 down payment, Your insurance company will have to pay it ALL as a part of your pre-assisted condition ...

??? If you are going to require insurance companies to foot the bill, but you are going to prevent how much insurance companies can charge, won't that cause the insurance companies to go bankrupt? Who do you think is going to bail out these companies?

Also, once everyone is required to purchase insurance, there will be no pre-existing conditions. Which means that insurance companies will have to raise rates for everyone because they will not be able to refuse coverage to people who wait until they are sick to buy insurance.

...and it would help to reduce the deficit by trillions of dollars over the next 10 years.

Yeah, by raising taxes. Not by reducing health care costs.

[Mikeg]

^^ Danny's explanation of the "Big F*#cking Deal" makes about as much sense as anything I've heard coming from the Democrats in Washington D.C.

[Sstashmoo]

The insurance companies aren't complaining. Rich folk aren't complaining. Let's see, we are going to force the Insurance companies to cover us for less money and the rich folks are going to pay for it, yet neither are complaining. Turn on your brains folks.

[oladub]

The new Health Care Bill WILL NOT BANKRUPT the U.S. Government. Please do not listen to LIES, LIES, LIES from the local and national media. The Repulbicans actually don't like the bill becuase they don't want the U.S. Gov't running the health care business like its a proto-socialist agenda. The democrats like the bill becuase it help over 33 million unisured Americans to be insured by 2015, cut the pricing caps off between health insurance companies and its clients. That means if the doctor says to you that you need open heart surgery and its going to cost over $250,000 with a $10,000 down payment, Your insurance company will have to pay it ALL as a part of your pre-assisted condition and it would help to reduce the deficit by trillions of dollars over the next 10 years.

Face it folks, either you all like it or not, health care crisis on America is going to be over and the begining of Universal Health Care will commense. The law has spoken. So you all put up or shut up.

A second choice is to rout Democrats and corporatist Republicans from office ASAP.

Unfortunately, the financial crises in this country is only beginning and our country is already BANKRUPT or at least it would be in bankruptcy court if it were a company, didn't have a money printing press, and a lot of momentum left over from better times. There is no way the US can mathematically pay off it debt now not to mention fund Social Security and Medicare a couple of decades from now. Although it is not advertised to be as economically destructive as the passage of Bush's Wall street bailout and the rest of the $14T that went out the window to bankers, Mugabecare is just an extra ton of straw on our financial camel's back.

One thing that the new health care legislation will be good for is raising money. Because of all the tax increases found in the bill, the US government will be a little more solvent and revenue ancticipation bonds can be issued up front so the US government can pay its bill for a little longer.

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Possible next stop for for financial solvancy: the seizing of IRA's and 401k's.

[johnsmith]

Oladub, stop worrying. Grab your Obama Logo Lollipop, put on your Democrat Party issued rainbow sunglasses and sing a happy tune!

[firstandten]

And this is after they receive substantial funds from the government [[at least the public ones). Which goes to prove that just because something is government-run or government-funded does not mean that costs will be kept low.

Yet some people want government control of health care.

The government doesn't set college tuition for Med students and its not gov run or funded. The individual schools set the tuition rates. C'mon people you are trying to make the government the boogie-man hiding under the bed.

Associations like the AMA exert influence over these Med schools to limit the number of seats available which limits the supply of doctors available which in turn keeps doctors salaries high and the cost to educate doctors out of this world.

[maxx]

oladub: A second choice is to rout Democrats and corporatist Republicans from office ASAP.

maxx: As long as corporations can give money to candidates, it doesn't matter what party or non-party they belong to. They will still be shills for the corporations if they intend to stay in Congress a long time.

The problem with this health care bill is that we are now going to be paying Cadillac prices to the private for-profit insurance companies while getting who knows what sort of services. It's welfare for the corporations. The only insurance that is affordable and has low admin. costs is a public option. Private companies' admin. costs are around 30% of costs. As long as the Republicans are going to try to sink the bill, I think the Dems should go for a public option. I'm tired of supporting the CEO's of companies like Blackwater that recruit from the third world whie they rake in the big bucks. I don't want to be supporting fat cats in the health insurance industry too.

[Danny]

??? If you are going to require insurance companies to foot the bill, but you are going to prevent how much insurance companies can charge, won't that cause the insurance companies to go bankrupt? Who do you think is going to bail out these companies?

Also, once everyone is required to purchase insurance, there will be no pre-existing conditions. Which means that insurance companies will have to raise rates for everyone because they will not be able to refuse coverage to people who wait until they are sick to buy insurance.




Yeah, by raising taxes. Not by reducing health care costs.

The insurance companies will not go bankrupt as long as the comsumers keeps on paying for their coverage.

Pre-existing conditions will continue to be in every American person. Health insurance companies MUST cover those clients or else pay the penalty. Free Universal Health Care has been brough out from the political closet and now its a reality. So the next time I want to get my teeth fixed, I don't have to pay the doctor, my insurance company will put it in my tab. Yes insurance companies will raise rates, but the government will cap it to a certian precentage to keep the patients happy. Health Insurance Companies over the last 40 years after the HMO Act of 1971 have made more money and making people miserable. It's time to stop this mess and insure millions of Americans. The would like to thank the democrats, president Obama, Hillary Clinton and Michael Moore for making health care reform possible.

[Danny]

Retroit and forumers. I want you all to carefully read my comparitive analysis paper and explan to me what this crazy health care system did in the United States.

Crisis at General Hospital
and
Sicko,
A Comparative Analysis Paper
By Dana T. Bonner

Health care is a developing term meant for medical treatment of living things so that they could recover and fell better. As human civilizations developed, man started to learn about the human body and its functions. Mankind wants to know how to live longer and how to fight suffering without going through severe complications or harming any people in the process. Doctors, nurses, medical tools and other research materials were developed to increase medical treatment and make people live better lives. As centuries past and various world governments developed, the techniques of health care also evolved through the power of money, regulations and new policies. Since various world governments developed their own policies for health care, the United States, in the meantime, placed a stronghold on health care policies through health maintenance organizations. The result was that health insurance companies may deny coverage to their customers. Over 50 million Americans are without coverage. Most hospitals along with their doctors and nurses may not get the money they need for medical equipment; thus, they will have to turn their patients away.
Is there anyone in the United States who is going to report this health care crisis? Two filmmakers proposed their own documentaries: One was Graham Chedd and Andrew Lieberman who created a film called Crisis at General Hospital. The film focuses on Tampa General Hospital in Tampa, Florida, where patients could get the medical care they needed, but government bureaucracy and financial issues hindered its patient care. The film also focuses on private hospitals in the suburbs like Humana Hospital in Indianapolis, Indiana. Humana is getting assistance from other health insurance companies to continue their practices. The film was broadcasted on Frontline and distributed by Public Broadcasting Stations in 1983. The other film was Sicko by Michael Moore. This film focuses on the health crisis in America. It also focuses on other foreign nations who claimed to have absolutely free health care for its patients. The film was distributed from Weinstein Pictures for theatrical release in 2007. Through the approaches of social art and cinema verity, both of these films reveal their own ethical considerations, stylistic conventions and modes of representations.
In the first scene of Crisis at General Hospital, Chedd and Lieberman show a patient who has been shot in the chest. The emergency room doctors and nurses begin to treat the patient. However the patient is complaining of severe pain and the doctors tell him to hold on. Later in the scene, Chedd and Lieberman continue to film another patient who is getting a heart bypass surgery. The filmmakers continue to film the operating procedure from the beginning of the anesthetics to the stitching up of the patient's heart. The scene only shows a portion of the operation and this shows the ethical consideration of the filmmakers. The patient needed medical care and the doctors will perform the surgery because the health insurance companies will cover the cost. In the case of the patient who needed heart bypass surgery, the patient is able to get medical treatment. When the narrator in the film states that the patients will be treated first and pay later, the hospital policies might change in the near future making the patient who is almost well, pay the bill or leave it the health insurance company. If the patient doesn’t pay the bill, he or she could be dumped out to the street in which it's unethical.
The scenes in the movie Sicko show some ethical considerations for the improvement between health insurance companies and their patients. Moore focused his interests on a man named Doug Noe who decided to fight his insurance company Cigna Health Care. Because his health care was only going to cover half of his daughter Annette's ear operation, he threatened to tell Michael Moore that his insurance company didn't cover the whole cost. In fact, Doug wrote to Cigna that if Moore proposed a documentary on health care problems in the United States, the company will be interviewed by him. Cigna knew the threat and the company covered the entire cost for Doug's daughter's ear operation.
Since health insurance companies have continued their unethical practices of denying more claims to patients in the United States, other people started going to foreign nations to receive free health care coverage. Moore turned to Adrian Campbell, from Sterling Heights, Michigan. She went to Canada for a physical. Usually by Canadian Common Law, you have to be an official Canadian citizen in order to receive free health care. Thanks to Kyle, Adrian’s Canadian friend, Campbell actually tricked the Canadian clinic's officials by signing Kyle's name and address and marital status, making them believe that Adrian was a Canadian citizen. She received free health care. Moore uses this footage to give the audience a debate; was Adrian's plot to apply for free health care in Canada by using Kyle’s name ethical? After all she had known that her health insurance company had turned her down for coverage and she needed to see a doctor for health concerns.
Moore later decided to film and participate with a French house doctor named Dr. Philippe Leminez. Dr. Leminez works for S.O.S. Medecins, a state supported socialized health care program that sends doctors out 24 hours a day to care for the patients instead of patients calling for an ambulance. Dr. Leminez and Moore went to patients' homes and Dr. Leminez treated the patients. Then they proceeded to the next house to treat other patients. This is an ethical ideal to have doctors come into houses and businesses and hopefully help patients instead of the patients struggling to get to the hospital. Plus to make the film more ethically considerate, Moore filmed some scenes of the people in France marching in protest for housing, employment and public services. Their voice expressing that their government must serve the public more than the people serving their government.

MORE TO COME...

[Danny]

CONTINUED...

There is a scene in the film that is horrendous. Moore decided to post a videotape of a lost and confused patient, in a hospital gown, wandering in the street. Luckily a concerned citizen escorted the patient to a nearby social service center. Moore reported that local hospitals had been dumping patients simply because they did not have any health insurance, thus they could not pay the hospital bills. Moore chose to shoot the footage to get people, especially in the health care system, to be ethical and aid the sick.
The stylistic conventions in the film Crisis at General Hospital have a straight forward story. The scene of Tampa General and Humana Hospital corresponds with the narrative of America's flip flop health care system. The narrator corresponded his story with the scenes of the patients before the interviews. There was some diegetic music from the local church group and from two ladies from the hospital convention scene. There was some editing that had been cut off from the operating scenes between the doctors and the patients. The filmmakers Chedd and Lieberman show different sides between Tampa General and Humana Hospital. In comparison Tampa General Hospital is meant to treat poor and low-income patients while Humana Hospital is mean to treat well insured patients. The whole style of the film has no comical images and it was treated like a news magazine program.
The stylistic conventions in Moore's film Sicko is mostly straight forward narrative, but told in a comical manner. There were both diegetic and non diegetic music that corresponds with each character. For example while Moore and Dr. Leminez were making house calls, a French version of "Love is Blue"[[non-diegetic music) was playing. That includes with the song “I’ll take you there." that corresponds with First Lady Hillary Clinton. There was a lot of archival footage in the film. Moore uses specific camera techniques of HMO corporations denying coverage to their patients due to their weight, sex, or long medical treatments. A couple of historical footages that made the film interesting were the meeting between Nixon and Ehrlichmann. Ehrlichmann addressed Nixon that the new Health Maintenance Organization should take effect for patient care and let the health insurance companies make a profit and do whatever they want with their customers. Nixon signed the HMO bill of 1971 into law. After Moore shot a a couple of edited scenes of the Republican outcry against Hillary Clinton's proposed Universal Health Care, he juxtaposed the outcry scenes to the historical footage of 1950s America concerning about the warnings of socialized medicine. The final historical footage that Moore put into his film is the images of war torn England after World War II. People were getting free health care called The National Health Service which was proposed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1948.
The film Crisis at General Hospital's mode of representation is mostly expository. The film starts with the narrator explaining the troubles with the patient as being taken to the emergency room for treatment. As the narrator explained further about the health care problems at Tampa General Hospital, the filmmakers Chedd and Lieberman continued to make shots of doctors and patients doing their business. The rest of the mode of the film is reflexive by interviews. It's straight forward, no performative gimmicks and it provided some detailed information from doctors and patients going through health maintenance organizational policies and standards. The evidence supports the claim when filmmakers Chedd and Lieberman interviewed the doctor explaining patient care and how the patient is going to pay for medical treatment with or without health insurance. Next, Chedd and Lieberman interviewed a woman named Dora Mosley. She explained that she needed surgery for her heart. Unfortunately she doesn't have health insurance to cover the cost. The filmmakers decided to make the interview more reflexive by filming a one shot scene of her face, depressed, poor and miserable. Chedd and Lieberman use this technique because they wanted to audience to debate and decide how our U.S. health care system needs to be reformed. The rest of the scenes are from both views of Tampa General and Humana Hospital from the doctors performing operations and rooms where medical records are kept makes it observational.
There were several modes of representation in the film Sicko to be used as persuasion tools. Michael Moore starts his narration that corresponds with the characters which makes it expository. To keep the story flowing, he added some clips from 1950s and 60s America to correspond with the American health care system. The evidence that further supports his narrative is a connection between Hillary Clinton's proposals of a Universal Health Care System versus the Republican outcry of socialized medicine. Moore added some scenes from America's past, along with a classic record of Ronald Reagan's story telling about the evils of socialized medicine; combining with his narrative to explain what would happen if socialized medicine became the norm in the United States. To make his film lean to a performative approach for the narrative, Moore added some scenes from a Soviet farm propaganda film called Kubanskie Kazakie and juxtaposed its non-diegetic sound with some scenes of 21st Century America.
Filmmaker Moore made some reflexive interviews of the people who were fully covered by health insurance companies and others from HMOs but given full coverage. In the beginning of the film, Moore interviewed a man named Rick who was injured in a table saw accident causing his 2 index fingers to be cut off. Rick was rushed to the hospital to have the doctors sow his index fingers back on. However the doctors said to him to him that it would cost him over $60,000 dollars for his first finger and $12,000 for his second finger. Rick had no health insurance so he told the doctors to stitch his second finger for $12,000 and throw away the first finger and stitch the rest of the tip of the finger.


MORE TO COME...

[Danny]

CONTINUED...

The next evidence of the film shows about four ladies, who were being interviewed by Moore, did have HMOs, but fully covered for medical treatment. The first female named Maria who has Blue Shield of California. The second female, Diane has Horizon, a parent company of Blue Cross and Blue Shield. The third female named Laura has BCS Insurance Company and the fourth female Carolyn has Cigna. Three of these ladies have life threatening health problems, but Diane has a non-life threatening tumor. According to their reflexive interviews all of these ladies got a full non-paid doctor's visit, but when the doctor told each of them that they needed further treatment and surgeries, their HMOs only covered some of their doctor bills. As a result, Diane died from the non-threatening tumor. Laura's disease is now spreading all over her body. Carolyn needed chemotherapy to treat her cancer. Maria became ill while vacationing in Japan. She received treatment at a Japanese general hospital and was diagnosed with a brain tumor that her insurance company Blue Shield did not cover her for the treatment of, because Blue Shield claimed she did not have a brain tumor. She later sued for denial of medical treatment.
To make the evidence more interesting, Moore went to England to conduct short interviews on the doctors, patients and pharmacists about their health care plan. The patients' interviews said that they don't have to pay for their treatments. The pharmacists in Britain only covered free prescript medicines to those who can't work and only charge 6 Pounds and 68 Pence [[that's $10.00) American to those who worked. In the hospital in Britain, Moore went to interview the cashier. After Moore questioned the cashier about the hospital pay, the hospital said that they would give patients' money for their care instead of the patients paying the hospital. Plus when Moore interviewed the British doctor, he said that the hospital is making more money if they get more patients. All of the socialized medicine in Britain is managed by National Health Services from the parliament.
The next scene of the film involves Moore where he decided to create a participatory mode to help 9/11 volunteer workers get medical treatment. When Moore found out from The U.S. Army that Al-Qaeda prisoners received free health care treatment at Guantanamo Bay Base in Cuba, he and his 9/11 volunteers and others went to Miami, Florida to purchase a boat and make a journey to Cuba. As they arrived, Moore, the 9/11 volunteers, and others observed Guantanamo Bay from afar. They commandeered a small boat and sailed to the bay to find an entrance. Moore put on his speakerphone and asked someone to enter. When the sirens sound, Moore turned the boat around and headed to Havana. While in Havana, took the 9/11 volunteers and others to Havana General Hospital to be treated. The Cuban doctors treated them for free and they are feeling much better.

Crisis at General Hospital by Chedd and Lieberman and Michael Moore's Sicko addressed the issues of the health care crisis in the United States. The filmmakers Chedd and Lieberman who produced Crisis at General Hospital used some scenes of patients getting the medical treatment they deserved, while other patients were turned away due to no type of insurance and the inability to pay the doctor bills. The editing was fine in order to prevent further horrendous scenes from younger viewers. Both scenes of Tampa General and Humana Hospital showed how structured our health care system in America should be for patient care. The filmmakers Chedd and Lieberman used straight forward scenes and corresponding voice-of-God narratives to explain to the viewer what was going on between Tampa General and Humana Hospital; even through its interviews from doctors, nurses and patients. There are no comical gimmicks or both historical and archival footage in film. The filmmakers shot some church music for diegetic music and no non-diegetic music was played in the film.
The filmmaker Michael Moore who produced Sicko uses some scenes from people who went to extreme measures in order to get health care coverage. He even put some scenes from doctors making house calls for patients to receive medical treatments. Also he tried to get viewers to debate on an ethical concern by using a videotape scene of a poor patient with hospital pajamas who was dumped off to a street wandering about until a citizen came and escorted that patient to the social service center. Moore uses a lot of archival footages from various HMOs to show the viewers how people can easily be denied for medical coverage. He also uses of a lot of historical footages from 1950s and 60s America and other classic foreign environments to correspond to his narrative and give it a performative approach. He also uses to lot of diegetic and non-diegetic music to not only correspond with historical and archival footage but also the rest of the scenes in the film. Moore keeps his interview scenes reflexive so that people could address the audience [[in real life) as to why their HMOs turned them down. Moore uses several sides of the film by showing scenes of the differences of the health systems of Canada, Britain, France, and Cuba. These scenes that Moore film is to show the audience why "free health care" and "socialized medicine" is important in the United States. When Moore found out the U.S. has "free health care" to Al-Qaeda detainees in Guantanamo Bay U.S. Military Base, Cuba; he decided to make a grand participatory approach by gathering all of the medically ill people including former 9/11 volunteers. After they made their trek to Guantanamo Bay U.S. Military Base and Moore asked some to let them in for free medical treatment. Instead they went to Havana Hospital and all of the medically ill people including former 9/11 volunteers received free medical treatment. Plus the Havana firefighters honored them for their heroic duties at ground zero. Do these films contain both social art and cinema verite? The comical images, historical and archival footages of Michael Moore's Sicko could lead to those requirements while Crisis at General Hospital lacks both of those approaches. However the editing approach for the film Crisis at General Hospital for ethical considerations might bring it closer to cinema verite.
After seeing both of these films, our health care system in the United States is getting worse like a common plague with no cure in site. As a matter of fact according to World Health Organization, the United States is ranked 37th in the list. Our American health care system needs to be reformed; whether it’s Universal Health Care or a new government proposal to make HMOs fulfill their promises to get their customers absolutely full coverage. Some foreign nations have free health care for all while other nations want proof that your are a citizen for coverage.

Once you're born or moved into the U.S. remind yourself of three things for better health: One don't get sick, two get health insurance right away when you have good income and three if the HMOs turned you down fight until the end.
Works Cited
Sicko. Dir. Michael Moore. Weinstein Company and Lionsgate Films, 2007.
“Crisis at General Hospital�. Frontline Prod. Graham Chedd an Andrew d Lieberman. Videocassette. PBS Video, 1983.

[maxx]

http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stor...th-reform.aspx

" People who are sick might face lower premiums than otherwise because insurers won’t be permitted to charge sick people more; healthier people might pay more. Older people could still be charged more than younger people, but the gap couldn't be as large."

So if I'm a healthy non-smoker over 65, I'll be paying more in premiums than someone my age who has smoked for the last forty years and has lung cancer or emphysema? And I am not eligible for a subsidy although I make well under $80,000.

[maxx]

"The film was broadcasted on Frontline and distributed by Public Broadcasting Stations in 1983. The other film was Sicko by Michael Moore. This film focuses on the health crisis in America. It also focuses on other foreign nations who claimed to have absolutely free health care for its patients..."

I don't think this was claimed in "Sicko". Europeans pay for their healthcare through taxes. Of course, they don't have the huge defense budget that the U.S. pays for. Who does?

Danny, your essay sounds like it is for a movie crit. class, so I'll just mention some small changes you could make to your sentences.

" If the patient doesn’t pay the bill, he or she could be dumped out to the street in which it's unethical." Drop the "in" and use "onto the the street".

"The scenes in the movie Sicko show some ethical considerations for the improvement between health insurance companies and their patients."
What sort of improvements?

"Moore focused his interests on a man named Doug Noe.."
Focused his attention is the usual phrase.

" Because his health care was only going to cover half of his daughter Annette's ear operation, he threatened to tell Michael Moore that his insurance company didn't cover the whole cost.."
He wrote a letter to Cigna threatening to tell his situation to Michael Moore [who was making "Sicko" at the time]?

" In fact, Doug wrote to Cigna that if Moore proposed a documentary on health care problems in the United States, the company will be interviewed by him. Cigna knew the threat and the company covered the entire cost for Doug's daughter's ear operation."

This uses too many words to say what I said. Also Cigna recognized the threat.

"She went to Canada for a physical. Usually by Canadian Common Law, you have to be an official Canadian citizen in order to receive free health care. "
These should be combined into one sentence. I would drop "official".

" Thanks to Kyle, Adrian’s Canadian friend, Campbell actually tricked the Canadian clinic's officials by signing Kyle's name and address and marital status, making them believe that Adrian was a Canadian citizen. She received free health care."
Combine these too.

"Moore uses this footage to give the audience a debate;"
Moore pointed out the ethical ramifications of her actions.

" Plus to make the film more ethically considerate, Moore filmed some scenes of the people in France marching in protest for housing, employment and public services..."
I don't know what you mean by ethically considerate. Your paper appears to be dealing with the way movies present ethical issues. If that is the case, then you should talk about these ethical considerations from the start. Your intro just talks about health care in general. That's the way I would do it anyway. I am not seeing a big difference between the two movies as you present them. Michael Moore is known for bringing his own brand of humor and pathos to his docs. He wants to get people excited, not just informed about the issues he presents. In fact he has been called a propagandist by people who don't like his messages.

[oladub]

Danny and maxx. I watched Sicko and thought it was a pretty good documentary. I didn't always agree with Michael Moore but it was entertaining as documentaries go.

"So, I mean, Obama, right now, he’s our -- you know, he’s the guy that isn’t the last eight years of Bush and Cheney. Boy, there’s a rousing endorsement for him. I mean, I’m sorry, I’m just so -- I feel so disillusioned."

Michael Moore Filled With 'Despair' Over ObamaCare, a 'Victory for Capitalism'

[maxx]

Danny and maxx. I watched Sicko and thought it was a pretty good documentary. I didn't always agree with Michael Moore but it was entertaining as documentaries go.

"So, I mean, Obama, right now, he’s our -- you know, he’s the guy that isn’t the last eight years of Bush and Cheney. Boy, there’s a rousing endorsement for him. I mean, I’m sorry, I’m just so -- I feel so disillusioned."

Michael Moore Filled With 'Despair' Over ObamaCare, a 'Victory for Capitalism'

I liked "Sicko" too. Hopefully, this health care bill is just a first step and the next step won't be backwards or fifty years from now.

[Sstashmoo]

Quote: "Hopefully, this health care bill is just a first step"

LOL... The insurance companies got what they wanted, their products rammed down our throats whether we want them or not, no caps on premiums and 40+ million new customers. It won't be changed. This is just another phase in breaking the back of this country. And you people align with some stupidassed political party, and argue FOR these types of things. Amazing.

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. H. L. Mencken