Sicko is probably one of the most disturbing films

[gravenewworld]

Just saw it, probably one of the most disturbing films I have ever seen. The crap insurance companies get away with is simply RIDICULOUS. I am not a Moore fan or a liberal by any means, but this film was pretty well done. It was not full of a lot of political BS, most just facts and stories of people who have gone through hell trying to get medical care. At some parts I really did want to shed a tear.

After seeing what medical care is like in Canada, Britain, France, and even freakin' CUBA, universal health care looks pretty attractive.

 

[turbo]

After seeing what medical care is like in Canada, Britain, France, and even freakin' CUBA, universal health care looks pretty attractive.

Every person who mentions this is immediately labeled by the hacks taking payoffs from the health-care industry as "liberals", "socialists" or even "communists". The Rebublicans are especially great at throwing around labels derisively, and the Democrats (who are also getting paid off) make supportive statements while doing nothing of substance to fix this broken system. Make no mistake, as long as lobbying is allowed, there is no way we can get universal health care coverage or affordable medical insurance, because Congress will not vote against their own financial interests.

 

[fourier jr]

before anyone even mentions it, the US would SAVE the government money by creating a universal health system.

After seeing what medical care is like in Canada, Britain, France, and even freakin' CUBA, universal health care looks pretty attractive.

oh NO, you don't mean SOCIALIZED medicine do you? don't you know communism failed??

 

[fourier jr]

check out this study contrasting the costs of health care in the US, in one of the most respected journals in the english-speaking world:
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/349/8/768

 

[Danger]

I haven't seen the movie, but I have seen enough nightmare stories on Yankee TV to be grateful every day that I live up here.
(Incidentally, Michael Moore stashed a copy of the film up here because he's sure that the US government would confiscate it and destroy at least the Cuban segments.)

 

[edward]

Thailand and India are actually advertising for people to come to them for inexpensive medical care. The term Medical tourism is used.

I saw a documentary on 20-20 about a guy who went to Thailand for heart surgery. The guy was self insured and saved about $150,000 by outsourcing his health care.

Every person that entered his room had to be at least an RN. No LPN's, no nurses aids. So if you need that triple by-pass you can get it in Thailand for less than your co-pay in the USA. What a weird world this has become.

http://www.hygeiasurgery.com/about_us.html

 

[gravenewworld]

US spenditure on healthcare as a percentage of total GDP

US-15.4%
Canada-9.4%
France-10.5%
Cuba-6.3%
UK-8.4%

http://www.who.int/whosis/database/core/core_select_process.cfm?countries=all&indicators=nha

The US economy is also MUCH bigger than the economies of the UK, Cuba, Canada, and France so the US expenditures on health care are simply ridiculous compared to places with universal health care and for what? Terrible terrible access to health care and treatment of patients?

 

[jpr0]

UK-8.4%

...but health care in the UK is terrible. I believe it's quite good in France though.

 

[Smurf]

Heh, by the time the US get's Universal health care, I might be moving there because it was just privatized here in Canada.

 

[gravenewworld]

...but health care in the UK is terrible. I believe it's quite good in France though.

I have a feeling you have never been to the ER room in the US. The UK might not be the best in Europe for health care, but it is certainly better than in the US.

When I went to the ER room after my car accident, the hospital tried to charge me $5000 USD for a 30 minute stay in which all they did was take a quick CT scan and gave me a pill of aspirin. $5000 to average American is simply ridiculous. For the 45 million Americans with no health insurance, $5000 would be close to 20% of someone's yearly income (after tax). That is why so many Americans are drowning in debt from health care costs. On top of that insurance companies like to play as many games as possible to deny coverage for medical expenses so that they can maximize their profits. Heaven forbid if you have a "pre-existing" condition in the US. Even with insurance in the US, if you have a pre-existing condition, insurance companies will use that as leverage against you so that they will not have to pay for any medical bills that someone that they "insure" might accrue.
Many people are forced to pick between either eating or paying for their pills. Have Europeans ever had to recently make such a choice?

 

[turbo]

There are many games that the insurance companies play that the populace is unaware of. My cousin is a coding specialist in ophthalmonogy. She looks at the charges that the practice assesses against the patients' insurance companies and reviews the patients' records to see how conditions were diagnosed and how the treatments/procedures were deemed necessary, then she has to code the procedures in such a way as to comply with the rules of the particular insurance company. The charge for EVERY procedure that is coded in such a way that it does not fully comply with the rules of the insurance company (or the particular plan the patient is enrolled in) is denied, to try to force the cost back on the patient or the practice. The coding specialist then has to review the often arcane rules of the insurance company, recode and resubmit the charges. Such things are not always resolved easily and multiple rejections can occur. The longer the insurance company can hold off paying legitimate claims, the more money they make on their investments, financed by this "float" of delayed payments.

 

[jiohdi]

I work for a major insurance company, and not everything is as dark as it is portrayed. many major american corportations are self insured meaning that we, the insurance co. are only handling THEIR money and don't prevent payments to save us anything. We of course try to make sure they don't go bankrupt in the process and that experimental treatments are not payed for... they make a big deal of that in the movie, but in fact if a procedure has no valid scientific/medical backing to show it is more than a placebo, an insurance co has a duty to its stock holders and the companies it represents. How does this change under national policy? does the gov't health insurance in other countries just pay for any test without concern for medical validity?
I am not saying that the US system in general isn't terrible, it is...and socialized medicine seems only a matter of time to me...but somethings will continue to be damned no matter who is running the show.

 

[gravenewworld]

We of course try to make sure they don't go bankrupt in the process and that experimental treatments are not payed for... they make a big deal of that in the movie, but in fact if a procedure has no valid scientific/medical backing to show it is more than a placebo, an insurance co has a duty to its stock holders and the companies it represents. How does this change under national policy? does the gov't health insurance in other countries just pay for any test without concern for medical validity?

Exactly. That is the problem with health care in America. Insurance companies answer first to their stock holders then to the people that they "insure". Why do people have to basically go to war with their insurance companies to pay for medical procedures when the insurance companies should be insuring them? It makes no sense. I will admit, I didn't have to pay the $5000 that the hospital charged me for my visit to the ER. But that was only after I spent almost a month and a half going back and forth between all the insurance copmanies involved, going to city hall to get a report of the traffic accident as "proof", getting a copy of the report for my visit to the ER, calling lawyers, and calling 1000 different people at multiple insurance companies. RIDICULOUS! It was like basically like a 2nd job just to get my hospital bill payed for.

 

[fourier jr]

Heh, by the time the US get's Universal health care, I might be moving there because it was just privatized here in Canada.

when did that happen? as far as i know the Canada health act just isn't being enforced.

 

[Smurf]

well that's mostly the problem, but there's a lot of rhetoric going around recently about it needing to be privatized in order to be efficient, usual bs really, and people are getting fed up with the liberals lousy managment of it. (at least in BC this is the case). In any case, the people can't really do anything about it because their too afraid of the conservatives/NDP getting in if they don't support the liberals. It's all party politic.

 

[turbo]

I work for a major insurance company, and not everything is as dark as it is portrayed. many major american corportations are self insured meaning that we, the insurance co. are only handling THEIR money and don't prevent payments to save us anything.

It does not matter if your insurance company is providing the coverage or if your company is providing administrative services for a self-insurer. From the viewpoint of a medical care provider, it makes no difference. Your company's value to the self-insurer resides in your ability to deny claims and defer compensation, just as it is in the self-interests of insurance companies to provide those services to themselves and their investors.

Small medical offices that cannot afford full-time coding specialists sometimes avoid certain insurers and don't bother to get into their "preferred provider" pool because of that. I was the network administrator at my cousin's old ophthalmic practice and there was considerable pressure on the staff to get the physicians to dictate more comprehensive notes, improve coding accuracy, and ramp up the percentage of claims that were paid for the first time they were submitted. This is not a small part of the health-care problem in the US, and it is a major concern for doctors in private practice.

 

[Smurf]

Maybe you should start an insurance insurance company. "We'll insure your insurance claims so that if the insurance company backs down, we'll send our lawyers to court for you." Then you could back out on all your claims. hahaha.

 

[turbo]

Follow the money. There are huge amounts of money flowing into insurance companies in the forms of premiums, and lesser amounts flowing out in the form of payments. When a sizable portion of our GNP is running through such a conduit, it is easy to make fortunes by denying as many claims as possible and delaying the payment of as many claims as possible. Look at the dynamics (we'll use horribly inadequate tiny numbers to illustrate) - if you have a million dollars a week coming in and are promptly paying $900,000 a week in claims, you are making $100,000 a week to pay your employees, pay for overhead, and provide some type of profit to benefit your stockholders. Perhaps $10,000/week is available for investment, yielding more income. Now, let's assume that you manage to deny/defer $100,000 worth of claims every week, for an average delay of 4 weeks until you give in and pay them (assuming you pay them at all). Now you don't have $10,000/week to bolster investments - you have an accumulating $10,000 per week PLUS a constant revolving float of $400,000. Now multiply this theoretical (minuscule) tiny little insurance company by any appropriate scaling factor and you can see how the denial/deferral of otherwise real authentic payable claims can create a huge rolling slush fund from which the insurance companies or their clients can derive additional income. This is not a secret in hospitals and medical practices. Unfortunately, the public is very poorly informed about this tactic, nor its financial load on the health-care system.

 

[Alfi]

Just watched the film again.

I am so glad I don't live in the USA. Drug companies and Insurance companies own your asses.

Now that the Republicans are a minority I wonder if anything will improve.

 

[turbo]

Just watched the film again.

I am so glad I don't live in the USA. Drug companies and Insurance companies own your asses.

Now that the Republicans are a minority I wonder if anything will improve.

I'm not holding my breath. Democrats can be bought off by lobbyists just as easily as Republicans. "Vote my way on this bill, and your wife gets a really cushy job and doesn't even have to show up at the office."

 

[mheslep]

Just watched the film again.

I am so glad I don't live in the USA. Drug companies and Insurance companies own your asses.

Now that the Republicans are a minority I wonder if anything will improve.

Now Moore owns you through fabrication.

 

[Flat]

The US economy is also MUCH bigger than the economies of the UK, Cuba, Canada, and France so the US expenditures on health care are simply ridiculous compared to places with universal health care and for what? Terrible terrible access to health care and treatment of patients?

I sure hope this fairy tale program will not be modeled after Mediciad.

 

[jreelawg]

It is real tragic when I see the elderly get taken advantage of by the system. They work hard and build up their savings thinking they can pass it on to their children, and then when they require treatment they end up giving everything away to the health care system, sometimes even bankrupting their children who try and help in the process. On top of this, many of them simply cannot make payments and are kicked right out of the hospitals onto the streets.

Rather than see people just name call and character bash, I would like to see the proponents put a coherent argument represented by facts together. If you don't like moores film, tell me which parts you disagree with and what you think is a fabrication.

 

[mgb_phys]

How does this change under national policy? does the gov't health insurance in other countries just pay for any test without concern for medical validity?

In the UK the National Institue of Clinical Excellence (NICE - I wonder if the acronym came first!) approves drugs and treatments for the National Health Service. This is separate from the FDA equivalent that licences drug safety.

Occasionally there is a news item about a fund raiser for some dying photogenic child who has to go to an expensive in clinic in $COUNTY for some experimental treatment that the NHS doesn't cover - what rarely makes the news is that they are almost never successful.

There are also budget conflicts over expensive drugs that might say extend the life of terminally ill patients. But in general the advantage of the system is that if NICE approves a drug's use, the goverment's buying power (as in Canada) gives it leverage with the drug companies.

Another big saving from this system, apart from not having to do billing, is that there is no pressure to schedule unnecessary procedures in case some insurance company complains.
So you don't get an automatic MRI for a sprained ankle. The downside is that you can wait a long time for an MRI that you do need!

There are also other economic effects - I can leave my job without worrying that my kid's condition will not be covered under a new scheme. My American colleagues are locked into their company because of this.

 

[nottheone]

I saw sicko after a friend recommended it, I probably would never have watched it otherwise. While I am sure that it isn't quite as rosy in other countries as is made out in the movie I do know what health care is like in the US. Even if we get the 'socialized medicine' here as we should, people without healthcare as the republicans want it is unacceptable, it won't solve all our problems because it won't improve the quality of our doctors.

Doctors in this country are all too often second rate. They never believe what a patient tells them and think that they know better after a 5 minute exam than the patient who lives with the body and symptoms 24/7. I have been consistently misdiagnosed on numerous occasions because the doctors refused to believe what I tell them. If you watch house you will get a sense of what I mean, the difference is that on house they are are usually right and the patient is deceiving them. This is particularly annoying since I am right and have been proven right each time. Is everyone but me a lying hypochondriac? It must be by the way they all act. In my opinion most doctors couldn't diagnose their way out of a paper bag, there isn't a Watson among them let alone a Holmes. I have yet to see a doctor that believed what I told him.

 

[mgb_phys]

I don't know any scientist/engineer who has a particularly high opinion of medic's intelect! Certainly nobody that has lived with medical students.
But to be fair the job is a little limited -

For GPs (family doctors) the job is to hand out Asprin(=there's nothing wrong with you), prozac(=you're a bored housewife) or antibiotics(=theres something none-serious that will clear up in a week).
And spot the occasional real illness to pack off to a specialist while hoping that the overweight/unfit/bad diet middle aged don't die in your office.

For ER docs with a few hundred patients in a night you patch up the more obviously bleeding, make sure the drunks are still breathing and hope the serious cases last until the end of your shift.

 

[russ_watters]

I don't know any scientist/engineer who has a particularly high opinion of medic's intelect!

You do now.

Certainly nobody that has lived with medical students.

That's a little unfair - not only are students students regardless of what they study, but the way people act in professional and personal situations is different (I think I just said that in another thread...!).

Anyway, people tend to focus on the negatives, so I'll give a positive anecdote:

Last year, I had some minor surgery - a hernia. I hadn't seen a doctor in 7 years and had mediocre personal insurance (high deductable/catastrophic) due to the type of job I had. I found a GP through my provider's website and got an appointment in about a week. By the time I made the appointment, I was reasonably certain of what my issue was. It wasn't bad enough to be an essential surgery, so there was no real rush (though it was really annoying me!) The GP (mid-30s, male, seemed competent) agreed and sent me to a surgeon. That took about a week, and the surgeon scheduled me for surgery two weeks later, with an appointment in between for pre-op blood work and a physical. I might have gotten the surgery sooner, but it happened that the surgeon was moving and taking a week off. The surgery was out-patient and was about 4 hours from when I got there to when I left. It is an easy surgery (especially on me), no complications, not too much pain, and I had a follow-up appointment a few weeks later to confirm all that.

It cost me about $3500 mostly due to my deductable being high, but considering how much 6 years of paying for extra coverage I wouldn't use would cost, I probably actually made out ok.

 

[jreelawg]

If you haven't seen Sicko, at least watch this clip from youtube exposing the truth about HMO's.



The guy speaking to Nixon in the recording is John Ehrlichman. Interestingly, he was a devout christian scientist, also interesting, Henry Paulson, also a Christian scientist was his assistant from 72-73.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ehrlichman

 

[Evo]

If you haven't seen Sicko, at least watch this clip from youtube exposing the truth about HMO's.

Sicko is a typical Moore film, a little bit of truth and a whole lot non-truth massaged into suit his purpose. It's been discussed here before and you can find the misinformation online.

 

[jreelawg]

Sicko is a typical Moore film, a little bit of truth and a whole lot non-truth massaged into suit his purpose. It's been discussed here before and you can find the misinformation online.

That may be, but the recordings of Nixon don't lie.

 

[Zantra]

I think a lot of people have a common misperception that doctors are supposed to infallible gods incapable of making mistakes. That's what we build up in our minds to comfort ourselves. But medicine is not a perfect science, and Doctors are simple human beings who decided they'd rather help people, then write lines of code or solve mathematical formulas.

Engineers make mistakes- I see it every day. The difference is no one dies when you put a decimal in the wrong place or forget a variable(hopefully). And while I know my doctor isn't necessarily Einstein or "HOUSE", I know I didn't spend 8 years studying medicine, and jump through the fairly high standards and various hoops it takes to make it in medicine, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Otherwise, I could just have him walk me through my next surgery over the phone.

 

[Evo]

That may be, but the recordings of Nixon don't lie.

Nixon, like in over 30 years ago? What does that have to do with anything? We didn't have handheld calculators, cell phones, personal computers, cable tv, video recorders, video games or the internet then. I'm assuming you know who Nixon is so you know how irrelevant anything he said back then is. He's dead, btw.

 

[mheslep]

... He's dead, btw.

:rofl:

 

[nottheone]

I think a lot of people have a common misperception that doctors are supposed to infallible gods incapable of making mistakes. That's what we build up in our minds to comfort ourselves. But medicine is not a perfect science, and Doctors are simple human beings who decided they'd rather help people, then write lines of code or solve mathematical formulas.
...

I don't think doctors are supposed to be infallible, I think they think they are infallible. I think they should listen to what their patients tell them. Are they taught in med school to ignore what patients tell them? It seems that way since it seems to be universal. There was an article in the NY times science section ( I buy it every Tuesday for the science section) a couple years ago and its conclusion was that a lot of misdiagnosis was caused by them not listening to the patient.

 

[jreelawg]

Nixon, like in over 30 years ago? What does that have to do with anything? We didn't have handheld calculators, cell phones, personal computers, cable tv, video recorders, video games or the internet then. I'm assuming you know who Nixon is so you know how irrelevant anything he said back then is. He's dead, btw.

It is relevant because he was discussing Kaisers HMO plan which he launched via this act.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Maintenance_Organization_Act_of_1973

His assistant had a deep discussion with Kaiser and then reported to Nixon that the plan was a private enterprise, nixon liked that, then he said it was for profit, and explained that Kaiser was able to do this by providing less health care to maximize profit. Nixon thought that was a great idea, less health care more profit for Kaiser, and so he launched the, "Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973". It is extremely relevant, it is how our modern HMO system was born. It also exposes without a doubt that the goal was to provide less health service to make more money. Nixon is dead, but HMO's aren't dead.

It is also a very neat educational recording that everyone should hear. Not often that secret recordings of the inner workings of a corrupt government are exposed and made public.

The reason that health care in the U.S. is inefficient is because it was designed to be inefficient. The more inefficient, the more private profit, and so the incentives are to minimize efficiency.