here’s really no time like the present. Every since I’ve started venting from this site twelve years ago, I’ve been putting off writing about what I think is the worst injustice perpetrated on Americans by Americans themselves: the lack of universal healthcare—the right that all citizens of all developed nations (and even some poor, underdeveloped ones) have except the United States. One of the reasons is that it’s such an extremely complex topic that thousands, or perhaps millions of Americans have already eloquently articulated the utter insanity of the system. One of those Americans is Michael Moore with his brilliant new Sicko. By illustrating the essential absurdity of the American system, this film has the potential to convey its important message effectively across the American mainstream

owever, there a few important points that I wished the film could have made that would make the argument for state-run universal healthcare even stronger:

1. Almost everyone knows that Americans already spend more per person on healthcare than any other country on earth, and yet not eveyone is covered. Why is that? It's not the rising costs of malpractice insurance as some in the media would persuade you to believe. The majority of that spending goes to support a gigantic, absolutely perverted bureaucracy (the American insurance companies, who have created such byzantine systems of bureaucracies that no regime in the history of mankind has ever come close to exceeding its complexity) whose main function is to prevent people from obtaining healthcare. Think about it: you're paying people to denying you healthcare. Furthermore, they drag the doctors and nurses into this crazy mess. Physicians and their staff have to expend an enormous amount of time and paperwork to deal with these useless bureaucracies in justifying their treatments. The bottom line is that Americans are already paying more for healthcare than anyone else on earth, because they are supporting a completely parasitic industry and its bureaucracy, when they should be paying for actual medical care rather useless paperwork. Meanwhile, as American citizens pay more, their life expectancy rates, infant mortality rates, obesity rates, and overall health keeps lagging behind all other developed nations. As the quality of healthcare continues to decline in the States, the insurance companies' profits soar. In the name of efficiency, competitiveness of the nation in a global marketplace, and well-being of its citizens, Americans must stop this rampant waste of resources by getting rid of for-profit insurance companies and their highly-paid executives. Kill the healthcare insurance industry now! It won't be easy with its powerful lobbyists and rampant propaganda against government "socialist" healthcare (American should be so lucky to actually have universal healthcare), but Americans must catch up with the rest of developed world, eliminate this unfathomable waste in time and resources, and get rid of this evil parasite once and for all.


2. The current system, which links insurance to a person’s place of employment, also essentially hurts American businesses that struggle to provide insurance benefits for its employees despite unrelentingly increasing costs year after year. How do American companies compete in a global marketplace when they have to be burdened with rising insurance costs?


3. Most of the healthcare system reform proposals being bandied about by the media and by the various presidential candidates are still essentially modifications to the current employer-based system. Single-payer systems (like the one instituted in Canada), and the outright ban on insurance companies, are concepts that are not really seriously discussed. The biggest problem with employer-based systems is that it neglects period of economic downturn, when people do not have employment. Furthermore, this system also ignores freelancers and self-employed professionals, much of whom make up a significant portion of the uninsured today.


4. Finally, why would foreign companies want to invest in building factories or setting up offices here in America, when they would have to support their new employees with costly health insurance benefits in addition to capital output? With NAFTA, wouldn’t it be smarter for foreign capital to just place their investments in Canada or Mexico?

ow, everyone, please go see it, go buy it later on DVD, and share it. Tell every one of your friends and enemies, as well as family members and relatives, to do the same. Don't stop the momentum.

07 July 2007