“Sicko”: Michael Moore does US Health Care

The Internet Movie Data Base describes Moore’s latest succinctly: “This film will focus on the American healthcare system …. “  Even with a noncommittal statement like that, you know this docu is not going to be laudatory.   I, a film buff to the bone, would not hazard a review in advance of the completion of the film, but just let’s say, I hope Michael has done himself proud.  You know his POV from the request he sent out to viewers of his website earlier this year: “Send Me Your Health Care Horror Stories… ” I’m sure he got even more than he expected.

Cheers for the VA/Tears for Massachusetts

Paul Krugman’s Sunday column extols the elegance of the VA health system as I have so extolled in the past. The benefits are decent, the record system fantastic. Once you’re in the system, you can get sick anywhere in the country, go to any VA doc, and all your records are at his or her fingertips. It’s single payer and single provider which is probably way too much to ask for us non-military citizens of the USA. But I still have probably unrealistic hope that the US will see its way into some kind of single payer plan like Medicare for everyone: old, young, rich, poor, employed or not. Meanwhile, Massachusetts’s feeble attempt to at least get insurance for all–even though it was a hodgepodge of many insurance plans and variegated benefits–seems to be foundering according to this week’s Nation. Imperfect as it was, it’s still too much for the special health interests.

PGD – Survival of the Richest

A New York Times story today reports on a procedure to insure that an in vitro fertilized embryo does not carry a known defective gene of either parent. Embryos are culled, the defective ones tossed, and a healthy one implanted. I really have no comment on that.  It’s all to the good if a baby is saved from having a life-threatening or debilitating disease later in life.  The culling is part of Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis–PGD. It is, of course, only available only to people rich enough to shell out tens of thousands of dollars.  So, now the rich get not only richer but healthier too.  Nothing new there.  The irony is that the rich would be more able to take care of a diseased or handicapped child than the poor citizens of our health-insurance-for-some land.