Since Michael Moore and SiCKO are going to be smeared and swiftboated, the time has arrived to kick back hard. The way we do this is to dispel absurd claims which have started to come fast and furious.
When the film opens on June 29th, mark my words, it's going to be war. One piece of bullshit that you'll hear repeated ad nauseum is that there are no waiting lists for healthcare in the United States.
I'm going to go first and tell my story about trying to get an appointment for a mammogram in New York City.
Folks, our power is in our personal stories.
You see, the enemies of reform, organizations like AHIP want the American people to believe that there are long lines of people desperate to get healthcare in countries which have exemplary single-payer healthcare systems like France and Canada. These merchants of deceit (AHIP, lobbyists, special interests, PhARMA, politicians), don't want us to tell the truth about our broken system. They want you and me to think that in the United States, our for-profit system allows us to pick up the phone, call a doctor and be seen the next day.
This is bullshit. We know it, even the Democratic presidential candidates know it, now let's let the world in on the dirty little secret of American healthcare.
Articles like this, which is on the front page of the New York Times, made me realize the SiCKO battle for the hearts and minds of America has begun in earnest. It's also long overdue that the American healthcare system be exposed as the soulless and immoral disgrace we know it is.
For Filmmaker, ‘Sicko’ Is a Jumping-Off Point for Health Care Change
Though speaking against the film carries the risk of generating more buzz for it, the opposition is also campaigning hard. Representatives of insurance and pharmaceutical trade groups are countering Mr. Moore’s praise for socialized health systems in Canada, Cuba, France and Britain. And as details have seeped out from screenings, they have started disputing some of Mr. Moore’s anecdotes about rejected insurance claims and unnecessary deaths.
Staff members of America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry’s leading trade group, handed out news releases at Mr. Moore’s events this week emphasizing the need for "a uniquely American solution" and raising the specter of "long waits for rationed care."
Since AHIP is evidently living in a different world than me, here's my waiting list story. I'd like everyone who reads this diary to tell us their own experience with healthcare rationing and waiting lists in the United States.
AMERICA'S DIRTY LITTLE SECRET: HEALTHCARE RATIONING AND WAITING LISTS ARE COMMONPLACE.
Here's my story.
A year or so ago, I needed to get a routine mammogram. I was overdue. I called the breast imaging department at NYU Medical Center. This is the place that had done my previous mammograms. For anyone who has not had the pleasure, part of the procedure is for the radiologist to compare your films from year to year, so you try and go to the same place.
I requested an appointment, expecting I would have to wait at most what, two weeks, a month?
I recall it was March 2005. The receptionist put me on hold and came back and said, "the earliest available appointment we have is March 2006."
I was momentarily at a loss for words. I told her I'd wait two months even three months, but not a year. I said, if I don't get an appointment, I would call the office of the president of the hospital. I asked to speak to a supervisor. My first attempt to get a timely mammogram ended with an appointment one year away.
The supervisor did in fact call me a few days later. She said she would bend the rules and give me an expedited appointment. The expedited appointment was for July, a mere four months later.
Free-market policy groups like the Cato Institute have held briefings to rebut Mr. Moore, showing short films that find fault with the Canadian system. Health Care America, a group that is financed in part by pharmaceutical and hospital companies, placed an advertisement in a Capitol Hill newspaper stating: "In America, you wait in line to see a movie. In government-run health care systems, you wait to see a doctor."
Ken Johnson, a senior vice president for Pharmaceutical Manufacturers of America, predicted the movie was "going to energize activists, but I don’t think it’s going to change anybody’s party affiliation." Yet, Mr. Johnson said the industry did not feel it could ignore the movie because doing so would "admit tacitly that some of what he says is true, and that’s not the case. He holds the camera, he gets the last say, and that’s the problem for us."
Wrong, Ken Johnson, Michael Moore doesn't get the last word, the American people get the last word.
They want you to believe we have no waiting lists in America. They also want you to believe that the market fixes everything.
Crossposted at Daily Kos
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