BY PATRICE GREANVILLE
COMMENT AND OPINION BY THE EDITOR OF CYRANO’S JOURNAL
Thomas Paine’s Corner
http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=119
7/2/07
Well, judging from what we are beginning to see, it didn’t take too long for the mainstream media to regain its footing, atone for its earlier honest hoorays for Moore’s film, and figure an angle from which it might preserve the remnants of its tattered honor while still fulfilling the dirty job its corporate masters demanded it to do, which was to badmouth Michael Moore’s brave documentary, SICKO, into complete ineffectiveness. The spectacle makes me sick.
Just a few days ago CNN’s Anderson Cooper offered on his program 360 a glimpse of the subtle and not so subtle maneuvers being frantically worked out by the elites as they scramble to repair the huge breach on their disinformation wall created by Moore’s near irrefutable expose of the American healthcare system, an industry whose cynicism and callousness should have been exposed by the “professional media” in the same manner eons ago.
While Anderson–I’ll give him that–was (for the MSM) uncharacteristically aggressive, one might even say “crusading,” in reinjecting the term “for profit medicine” in his otherwise soft-gloved interrogation of Karen Ignagni, an industry hack, the program only featured some clips from the film and no live panelists to counter Ignagni’s well rehearsed dissembling.
The exchange however was a harbinger of what we now see as a consistent slant underscoring the counterattacks issuing from the for-profit healthcare camp. My bet is that far worse is yet to come, for, make no mistake, this is an issue of incalculable significance to the direction this nation may take in resolving its innumerable politically-manufactured crises and deficiencies, and they–the corporatocracy, the guys who make and benefit from the wounds–know it better than most.
So what’s their prescription for defeating SICKO? Quite simple, actually, something any corporate, Republican, or Democratic sellout talking head will have little trouble parroting. The argument goes more or less like this:
(1) YES! The US healthcare system has serious problems, is broken, and needs revamping…BUT (this is a big BUT, usually accompanied by a pregnant pause for maximum effect)–
(2) Moore’s prescription is
- wrong
- misguided
- alien-inspired
- communist
- inefficient
- will create another huge government bureaucracy (oooo la la!),
- will deny Americans their right to choose (this is a big one in a nation with so many fanatical consumerists),
- blah blah blah…whatever.
For good measure, throw in any bogeyman you can think of, preferably from the plentiful annals of anti-communism. Shake the toxic brew for a few seconds, and voilá…you get the desired effect: Moore’s proposed cure is UNAMERICAN! Moore has been defanged. Never mind that all of these lies were efficiently and conclusively addressed and dismantled in SICKO. The lingering effect will be one of doubt, and doubt is already a victory for their position.
Nothing new under the sun
Students of rhetoric and lawyerese know that this is an old and hypocritical formula taught since the time of Hermogenes or earlier: When confronted with an immense, unassailable truth, concede the undeniable in order to deny what you want to deny and maybe save the day.
Ask any rhetorician if you doubt me, or, perhaps more entertaining, any of those highly-paid prostitutes we see crawling all over the body of this decomposing republic, the fabled “spinmasters.” Or any Republicrat demagogue. For this is how Madison Avenue, the professional political class, the incestuous media, and, in particular, their even more revolting relatives, the underhanded operatives of the public relations industry, earn their bread. By serving those who can pay, which is not the vast majority of the American public. Compared to this crowd, the ladies of the night are paragons of virtue.
Reinventing the same narrative
As I suggest above, these scoundrels realize that they can’t deny outright that the healthcare system is rotten, and that Big Pharma is an assembly of white-collar crooks with the ethics of Al Capone, since such a gnawing suspicion is now commonplace among most ordinary Americans. So the only solution has to be consistency in maintaining the old lies. Or, just maybe, to appease the masses, propose that yet one more special blue-ribbon panel be appointed to study the obvious: that profits and healthcare don’t mix; that they should NEVER be in the same bed.
It is a foregone conclusion that these rascals are betting on the legendary short attention span of Americans, and their almost perverse propensity to forgive those who victimize them with impudence, coldly figuring that, by the time the inevitably multi-volume, heavily footnoted report appears, most Americans will have long forgotten about SICKO and the lessons it taught them while mesmerized with the latest episode in the Paris Hilton saga. (The commissioning of ponderous studies on obvious problems is an old tradition and political gimmick to delay remedial action in America.)
I’m therefore prepared to wager a bet that, as a first stage in their battle with SICKO and its political consequences, the powers that be are–as we speak– busily putting the finishing touches on some ambitious p.r. and ad campaign to start muddying up the waters once again, with the leading politicians on hand to dismiss as “not serious,” or “not realistic,” any proposal that would create a government-sponsored single payer healthcare system, or any plan that dares to completely rule out “a partnership” between government, big pharma, and the private insurance companies.
The excuses will be the usual time-tested arguments: “we don’t want more bureaucracies,” “higher taxes”, “bigger government,” or whatever these cowards and liars usually hide behind to pay off their debts to their controlling masters, or save their skins from the sure-to-follow attacks the hypocrites on the right, through their highly disciplined noise machine, will surely deliver in keeping with the enormous lies they have disseminated with impunity for decades.
So the old tricks are being dusted off once more to render service to the empire. The same old tricks that Moore eloquently shows in his film have kept Americans in a cage of woefully inadequate (and brutally expensive) healthcare for as long as anyone can remember. The same high-handed deceptions spread by the conservative American Medical Association and the pharmaceutical mafia half a century ago, using as their megaphone the “all-American” persona of Ronald Reagan, surely one of the phoniest and most malignant politicians of the Twentieth Century. A blackmailing system of healthcare apportionment that has also served to tame labor and restrict the mobility of employees confronted with unhappy workplace conditions.
Cognoscenti of cold-war and right wing propaganda will recognize that Karen Ignagni, CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans, and one of the earliest voices to be deployed in defense of capitalist medicine, has no compunction in resorting to the old bugaboos. It’s not accidental that she’s already warning us about that dreadful thing, a “Government takeover…” Brrrrr. Haven’t we heard that one before? When did the commies ever come to power except in “takeovers”??? Get the implication? It’s filthy and this woman knows it, but hey, she is what she is. As they say, very few will “see” something when their fat paychecks depend on not “seeing it.” Even if it costs unnecessary lives and happiness, which were, I thought once, part of the birthright of all Americans.
Readers wishing to read further on this topic may examine the attached Action Alert prepared by FAIR, a fraternal media watch organization with a distinguished record of impeccably documented exposes. The paper speaks for itself. Read it, and take action. Whining endlessly about how bad things are without taking any decisive action is a formula for defeat, and that, folks, is no longer an option.
Patrice Greanville is Cyrano’s Journal (http://www.bestcyrano.org/ ) founding editor.
Action Alert (from FAIR)
USA Today’s `Sicko’ Debate
Is Michael Moore wrong…or very wrong?
6/29/07
On June 28, USA Today’s editorial page offered a “debate” on Michael Moore’s new film Sicko. But the paper “balanced” its own take critical of Moore with a piece written by a representative of the private health insurance industry.
Under the title “Today’s Debate: Healthcare,” readers saw the paper’s view under the headline “Flawed `Sicko’ Sparks Debate.” The paper wrote that Sicko “plays on emotions with anecdotes, stories and facts that aren’t always in context, up-to-date or accurate. So it has to be taken for what it is: a provocateur’s exposé of the worst of the American system, coupled with an uncritical, even naive, review of his preferred alternative.”
The paper went on to argue:
“Is a single-payer, government-run system the answer? That’s what Moore is pitching. Sicko applies rose-colored camera lenses to healthcare in Canada, Britain, France and Cuba. None of these, particularly Cuba, is as idyllic as portrayed. All require higher taxes to finance and are beset by inefficiencies.”
While acknowledging that the U.S. healthcare system had problems, USA Today concluded by declaring that “Sicko doesn’t have the answer.”
The piece that followed-labeled “Opposing View”-could only be considered the other side of a “debate” in the sense that it was more critical of Moore. This was not a surprise, considering the author: Karen Ignagni, president and CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans. Her argument against Moore echoed USA Today’s in some key aspects: “Moore wants a government takeover,” she wrote, and his film “relies on one-sided anecdotes.” Ignagni also wrote that “Moore advocates a total government takeover of healthcare, sugarcoating what that would inevitably mean-including rationed care, long waits for care, underpaid doctors and delayed adoption of new technologies.”
So USA Today’s “debate” on healthcare policy went something like this: Michael Moore’s film is misleading, inaccurate and naive, and his solution for healthcare problems is wrong; on the “other” side, Moore’s work is one-sided and his solution would make healthcare in the United States much worse.
This restricted range of debate would seem to be in line with the paper’s reporting on Moore’s film. On June 22, USA Today’s Richard Wolf wrote that “Sicko uses omission, exaggeration and cinematic sleight of hand to make its points. In criticizing politicians, insurers and drug makers, it says little about the high quality of U.S. care. In lauding Canada, Great Britain, France and Cuba, it largely avoids mention of the long lines and high taxes that accompany most government-run systems.” The article closed with Ignagni complaining that the industry’s perspective was not included in the film.
What’s missing from USA Today’s coverage, meanwhile, is a real sense of how poorly U.S. healthcare fares compared with other countries. While the editorial noted that the United States spends “more than any other country” to achieve lackluster results in terms of longevity, it doesn’t point out that the U.S. spends twice as much or more on healthcare per capita as the countries that the paper calls “beset by inefficiencies.” As for “higher taxes,” a real rebuttal to USA Today’s position might have noted that the U.S. government spends about as much on healthcare as a share of GDP as the Canadian, British and Cuban governments do, and France’s government spends only somewhat more-even as the U.S.’s private spending on health dwarfs that of any developed country.
In its editorial, USA Today signaled a hope that Sicko “can stir a serious debate about the nation’s ailing healthcare system.” That sounds like a great idea-so why didn’t the paper have one in its own pages?
ACTION: Contact USA Today and ask them why their June 28 healthcare “debate” over Michael Moore’s Sicko was so unbalanced.
CONTACT:
USA Today
Brent Jones, Reader Editor
accuracy@usatoday.com
1-800-872-7073
So are you saying that Fox isn’t the only “fair and balanced” program?
but seriously – Michael Moron has good points, but he allows his own biased opinion screw them up. While there are MANY problems with our healthcare system, Socialism is not the answer – just ask a Canadian how long he had to wait for his last surgery. Michael Moron is a very convincing man who misrepresents facts and passes them off as the truth. If we are going to criticize George Bush for doing the same, how are we to applaud this fat loser? Open your eyes people – Michael Moron is a fraud.
The usual obstructionist attack… long on ad hominem, short on facts.
I am a US citizen who lives in Canada, in what is considered a medically “under-serviced” area (not in a rural area). My 80 year old mother-in-law had a mastectomy 6 years ago and her doctors recently found another suspicious bump. In less than 30 days , she had a biopsy, another mastectomy, and was home recovering. She did not pay for any of those procedures herself.
On the other hand, my hard-working brother, who works in the US retail industry waited about 4 years to have hernia surgery because he was under insured and felt that he could not afford to take off the time from work.
I personally have not had any problems with medical care here. Is that to say that I won’t – nope. But, if one regularly goes to the doctor and stays up on his/her health, I suspect that the odds improve for having timely care. I also suspect that medical availability is poor in any rural area of any country and substantially decreases the lower a person’s income level, no matter the country.
your brother waited 4 years on his own accord. He most certainly could have made payments to the hospital and would have avoided 4 years of pain – he sounds like a moron to me.
On a lighter note…My wife had an emergency gall bladder removal four months ago. The cost: $52,000.00. My insurance company paid all but $2500.00 of it, so I consider myself in good shape. I pay nearly $400.00/month for insurance, not because I want to, but because things like this happen. I don’t really feel sorry for most people who don’t have insurance because most of them have nicer cars than I do. These people need to get their priorities straight. Sure, we need to fix the system, but in the meantime…..GET SOME DAMN INSURANCE!
…he sounds like a moron to me.
That was completely uncalled for.
sorry – I just don’t think that anyone in his right mind would wait four years to have a surgery if it was that important. Your post implied that he was waiting for a surgery like Oliver Twist or something -it was very misleading. Maybe you could write for FOX.
Maybe you could use a reading comprehension refresher.
I didn’t write that post, number one. And you don’t know what her brother’s situation was/is. Most importantly, insulting her brother adds nothing to the conversation.
Not a good look, but since you know so much about Fox–perhaps Bill O’Liely needs a water boy and can pay you in falafels.
There are actually a lot of people who put off their medical care for fear of losing their jobs while they take time to recover. And they aren’t morons, they are the people who aren’t making enough money to have a savings to fall back on in hard times. Hell, even people who make a decent living can get taken under by their healthcare copays and deductibles.
There are probably hundreds of thousands of people like my brother. Go to any mall, look past the teenagers and the college students. You’ll find adults of all ages managing these stores, or selling suits at Macy’s, or shoes at Payless – many of them in the same predicament as my brother – unless they are lucky enough to have a spouse with better pay and good insurance.
Same goes for the restaurant business.
No, he could not have made payments to the hospital. Most hospitals require 75%-100% fee up front for non-emergency care or for those not on public assistance. I had to pay the hospital $10,000 before my mastectomy. The bill ultimately came to over $17,000 for a 5.5 hour stay. That amount did not include the surgeon’s or the anesthesiologist’s fee which I paid separately.
Later I found out that if I had had insurance, the hospital would have billed the insurance company HALF of what they charged me cash.
And don’t tell me I should have had insurance because the insurance industry considers me uninsurable.
right – that is called the “contracted amount”. If you have insurance and haven’t met your deductible you only pay the contrated amount – which is sometimes 90% less than the regular price. Pretty shocking huh? These people are really putting the screws to the American people.
a personal attack on a guy who, had insurance, worked 50-60 hours a week, and was an at will employee, even as management. He waited four years because that job would not have been there for him when he returned. You see, his job was not covered by FMLA, so his employer was not obliged to hold his position. He waited until he had established himself, which, in retail management means constantly hitting higher and higher monthly sales – which he almost always hit.
Who doesn’t work 50-60 hours a week? If someone doesn’t have insurance he probably isn’t budgeting correctly. If he sincerely can’t afford insurace he probably qualifies for medicaid. Shortly after my wife became pregnant two years ago I became unemployed. Medicaid paid 100% of the medical expenses. We were denied twice – you have to be persistent. Today, I pay my bills in this order:
This is how ALL people should prioritize their budgets – it is the RESPONSIBLE thing to do.
You might try reading my posts – he had insurance, after 90 days. Read where I explain how FMLA did not cover his situation and how retail (at least his situation) does not give employees ample time to recover – no time off.
Let me know when you’ve actually read any of the info I actually wrote.
Oh yea, you never touched the subject of my mother-in-law’s lack of waiting time for her surgery, in Canada.
well, I guess I owe you an apology. I just know that I see a lot of people who drive expensive cars, live in expensive homes, and have all kinds of expensive stuff – and then they don’t have insurance. To make matters worse, they don’t educate their kids. It is a real problem in this country. On the other hand, I know a guy who rides a bicycle to work (in Houston!) but has put three girls through private school. He is a janitor -he can’t make too much. If there is a will there is a way.
Apology accepted. That is the weakness in arguments that make broad sweeping generalizations about all people in a given circumstance. My own “world” is limited to my own experiences and in order to make informed decisions, I need to listen to and evaluate the experiences of others.
Socialism is, in fact, precisely the answer.
Medical products and procedures do not fit the capitalist model in a moral society. No “business” should be encouraged to sell more and more and more drugs and procedures; privatized, for profit medical care can only prosper if more and more of us keep getting sicker and sicker. There is no incentive to cure people or keep them healthy.
Contrast the environmental and worker protection legislation in single payer coverage countries with the business-friendly, screw-the-peasants attitude of our government. Socialized medicine isn’t just about health care. We pay taxes to a government that colludes with big business to fleece the citizenry, instead of using the power of collective finance to buy the most people the best quality of life.
Socialism has been demonized by those with most to lose.
The latest? Right wing blogs linking Sicko to the terrorist attacks in Britain. because we all know Michael Moore is really Bin Ladin in disguise (or vice versa).
This time Michael Moore has taken on something more powerful than even BushCo–the health care/insurance industry. I’d venture to say he’s taken on something even more powerful than Halliburton.
He is a brave, brave man…in our new National Monument, he’ll be right next to Henry Waxman (we’ll have to do the statues to scale.)
Yeah…the Insurance Ceo’s make big bucks:
http://healthcare-economist.com/2006/02/14/united-health-ceo-earned-1248-million-in-2005/
this guy makes $124,000,000.000 a year! And they say that atheletes make too much money.
I never really liked the idea of ‘for profit’ healthcare.
Healthcare should not be for Profit. Healthcare is for People.
People are more important than profit.
Who pays for the profit end of it?
Couldn’t we get it cheaper if we didn’t have to pay for Aetna’s profit?
And what’s this business about ‘shopping’ for healthcare?
I don’t mind shopping for groceries and video games. I know a little about that. It’s not hard to see a bad green pepper. I know what games I would like to play. Heck sometimes they even let me sample the goods.
It’s not the same with healthcare though. What would you pay to save your child’s life? Everything you have? It’s not exactly a secret.
Shopping for Healthcare?
Being forced to pay for something or you die isn’t shopping. It’s called extortion.
Healthcare is for people.
Healthcare for profit is extortion.
People are more important than profit.
“for profit” is supposed to encourage competition. The only problem is that unlike an automobile or computer, or any another machinery that is in need of repair, you can’t live without healthcare – so the level of competition isn’t comparable to anything else in the business world. They’re shooting fish in a barrel. The thing that most people don’t understand is that most of your doctors today are selling their practices to the hospitals (the big enemy in my opinion) because they can’t seem to make a profit.
I haven’t gotten out to see SiCKO yet (I was sick last weekend, dammit), but will soon.
I think, however, its message will resonate with a lot of Americans… because most of us know, either from personal experience or from the experiences of someone we know, just how screwed up the healthcare system is. We all know stories like this:
–a neighbor of mine who suffered a stroke, and was turned away from two nearby private hospitals, ultimately sent to a public hospital twenty miles away… the story was they “had no beds”… but I have a feeling that if he had had insurance that was not simply Medicare, a bed would have been found. And this was a stroke, a life-threatening emergency with a definite time window for treatment! What happened to him? He never regained consciousness, and died a few days later. The care he finally received came hours too late.
–a fellow employee, recently married, hadn’t gotten around to adding his wife to his healthcare plan (which would have been rather expensive, as we work for a very small company that couldn’t afford the best family plan). Then his wife got pregnant… and when he added her, Blue Cross told them that the pregnancy was a “pre-existing condition” and therefore was not covered. Nothing related to her prenatal care, childbirth, or post-natal care was covered. They are still trying to pay off those costs; fortunately she had no complications that I know of.
–A married couple I know, both working full-time for the same company, pay over $800/month for insurance for themselves and their toddler son. That is somewhere between 25-30% of their combined take-home pay, and that is not counting the deductibles and copays; there have been some months they have barely scraped by. But since they have a child and both have chronic health problems, they cannot afford to NOT have the insurance.
–I know other people who are unemployed, or working at temporary or part-time jobs who do not qualify for employer insurance, and do not make enough to get insurance on their own… who KNOW they need to see a doctor for something, but dare not… because once any problem is identified, it will become a “pre-existing condition” and not covered by any future insurance they may be able to get, even through better employment.
I think a lot of people know stories like this. But there are other stories they need to hear… like Jerome a Paris’ experience with the French healthcare system, with a critically ill child; or my friends in Denmark who were both unemployed, but when faced with both a pregnancy and later miscarriage, paid NOTHING for the healthcare they received. I had my own experience with Danish healthcare while I was visiting — a quick consultation with a doctor and pharmacist to replace my asthma inhaler cost me less than $20 US (had I been Danish, it would have been free).
For more background, I’d recommend reading nyceve’s diaries over on DKOS — she has a tremendous wealth of information on just how screwed up the US healthcare system is.