Here's A New One
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Featured Stories | Policy — Comments (10) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Michael Moore may be inconvenient to the crop of Democratic Presidential candidates. Never let it be said that the political world is absent its share of ironies:
With the release of Michael Moore's "Sicko," a movie once again is adding sizzle to an issue that's a high priority for liberal politicians -- this time comprehensive health insurance for all. But unlike Al Gore's film on global warming, which helped rally support on an equally controversial problem, "Sicko" is creating an awkward situation for the leading Democratic presidential candidates.
Rejecting Moore's prescription on healthcare could alienate liberal activists, who will play a big role in choosing the party's next standard-bearer. However, his proposal -- wiping out private health insurance and replacing it with a massive federal program -- could be political poison with the larger electorate.
At a special screening in Washington this week, politicians, lobbyists, media pooh-bahs and policy junkies flocked to see Moore's film. And its slashing demand for action on an issue that voters care deeply about, and Democrats hope to capitalize on, generated plenty of buzz. Moore hopes that, after its general release June 29, "Sicko" will exert significant influence on the presidential campaign.
Instead of greeting the film with hosannas or challenging it head-on, however, the leading Democratic presidential candidates have sidestepped direct comment on Moore's proposals.
Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois and former Sen. John Edwards of South Carolina all have staked out positions sharply at odds with Moore's approach. But none of them is eager to have that fact dragged into the spotlight.
If Moore's fire-breathing proposal catches on among party activists, who tend to be suspicious of the private sector and supportive of direct government action, the candidates' pragmatic, consensus-seeking ideas could look like weak-kneed temporizing -- much the way their rejection of an immediate pullout from Iraq has drawn heated criticism from antiwar activists.
It ought to be interesting to see how this develops.
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.
...or critiquing poetry at Gitmo.
This should make the seating arrangement at the '08 Dem convention interesting.
The Federal Government already provides Medicare with a 3% administrative costs; Medicaid; Veteran's, Indian and Federal Employee's healthcare. Additionally the Federal Government and State governments fund a good portion of children's health insurance.
This country spends approximately 2 trillion dollars on health care and get less in terms of results (as measured by life span, infant mortality rates, hospitalization rates) than 39 other countries in the world all of whom spend less per capita than the US.
Let's take these.
Life expectancy: according to WHO we rank 29 in life expectancy in the world. So there aren't 39 countries who get more for their money.
Ditto for infant mortality. There aren't 39 nations in fronto of us.
Hospitalization is a silly notion as a measurement.
If you're going to try to troll at least get familiar with the subject.
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling
fare better than us in terms of life expectancy and infant mortality, I guess that means that our healthcare system is great after all.
Silly comment.
The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit. Somerset Maugham
I often read, in the blogs, that Canada's socialized medicine is a tragedy.
What's the truth to this? Where does Canada rank in these areas of life expectancy, infant mortality and such?
I can't tell you the exact numbers though (but they are available, I'm just too lazy to look them up).
However, Canada's healthcare system is not necessarily the best example, I think it's actually a bit of a strawman because there are deficiencies in terms of access that many Americans wouldn't find acceptable, e.g. it can take a while to see specialists.
However, there are many, many countries ahead of us in terms of healthcare stats and cost-effectiveness, we don't have to just do what they do next door, we could take the best of different systems.
The main point is that our system is broken and tons of vested interests (i.e. private insurance companies) keep us from improving it.
The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit. Somerset Maugham
and other social welfare programs that they are basically financed as pyramid schemes? It is a fair point that Medicare is an existing large single payor socialist healthcare program that as far as I know provides decent quality of care. Perhaps we could accomplish the same on a wider basis by expanding a Medicare like program to cover everyone.
But Medicare is going to implode in about 10 years because of the way its financed, as is inherent to all socialist welfare programs.
We're better off staying with private for-profit health coverage rather than having the rest of us get sucked into the looming fiscal blackhole that our senior citizen entitlement programs are facing.
Nothing more fun than watching a bunch of liberals eating each other