'Sicko': Heavily Doctored, By Kurt Loder - Movie News Story | MTV Movie News

'Sicko': Heavily Doctored, By Kurt Loder - Movie News Story MTV Movie News: "Jun 29 2007 12:34 PM EDT
'Sicko': Heavily Doctored, By Kurt Loder
Is Michael Moore's prescription worse than the disease?"

I think the chief straw man Loder has thrown up here is that Moore holds up the Canadian, French or British systems as "utopia," to use his word. SICKO showed some of the serious flaws in our system and showed some of the serious benefits to others. That really is the bottom line. I've been following the media coverage closely, interviews with various experts, MM himself in interviews, etc. There are lots of complaints about what he "left out." Well, it's only a two hour movie and I think it is not his job nor his role to be the health care czar and review every nuance of health care here and abroad. He had a lot of points to make and he made them very well, very humorously and sometimes heart-breakingly poignantly. If you see it, you'll know that he didn't tell the downsides of universal access in other countries, but, frankly, as we health care providers know (I'm a critical care physician) better than the average viewer, neither did he scratch the surface of the problems so widespread in our "system." But he always says in interviews that of course other systems have problems. Our goal should be to take the best parts of each of those systems and craft an American system better than all the others. But, he makes no bones that this needs to be a single payer system at its core. He seems to have no bone to pick with physicians - he believes the focus of reform should be getting rid of private health insurance as we know it.
And finally, if you want to make the debate solely on health care horror anecdotes, you'll lose. Badly.
Cheers,

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