Michael Moore's New Film Leaked To BitTorrent 1088
Jared writes "Michael Moore was afraid the Feds might sieze his new documentary Sicko, a scathing indictment of the US health-care system, because part of it was filmed in Cuba despite the US embargo. So he stashed a copy of the film in Canada just to be safe. He might as well not have bothered — the film has shown up on BitTorrent and P2P networks everywhere. So it's safe now."
Uh Oh... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you are for P2P, I'm not sure if this is the guy you would want on the other side of the debate.
Re:Uh Oh... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the same as with oh-so-many "artists" who rant away how they would rather see their songs pirated than not heard. It does not matter jack whether they say they would, as long as their studios keep hunting down copiers, they can say whatever they like, it does not matter. They can easily say what they want, they have no say in the question whether copying is persecuted or not.
Re:Uh Oh... (Score:5, Insightful)
why is cuba bad? compared to russia (Score:3, Interesting)
Why is Bush so chummy with a bad ass MOFO ex KGB guy like Putin that wants the old soviet russia back.
If Putin is so pro west (ie sanity vs insanity) then he would have made the KGB not so evil.
He is nothing more than a global school bully with nukes.
Re:Uh Oh... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a very good movie, you should definitely watch it. even if it's not 100% accurate, it still brings up a shitload of valid points that Americans should definitely think about.
Re:Uh Oh... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure the guy means well, but I don't share his views, I don't trust his facts, and I don't plan to watch this movie.
Begging your pardon, but that alone isn't a great reason not to watch the movie. Truth is, there are no 'trustworthy' collections of facts, for all facts are collected by interested parties, tainted at the very least by preconceptions. Even in hard sciences this human subjective effect cannot be entirely banished (thouh it is minimized). That you don't trust the guy's facts doesn't mean that you won't get anything valuable from the film.
In point of fact, I think that because you don't take all his facts at face value that you may gain more from the film than someone who is critically unreflective, because you have a motivation (from your prior experiences and conceptions of Moore) to remain aware, and thus have a a sense of which facts to accept and which to take skeptically. You know, for example, that his distortions tend to be pro-populist, a bit histrionic, and has a tendency for broader generalizations than are warranted; taking that information, you know exactly how seriously to take each scene with histrionic antics and also to filter through towards the narrower facts that might have inspired overebullient sweeping statements.
As a conservative, I read The Nation as much as I read the Wall Street Journal. I even sat down and read Obama's "Audacity of Hope" a month or so ago. Just because I didn't believe every bloody word (of any of those three) doesn't mean I don't/didn't gain valuable understandings of different perspectives and exposure to different arguments from those publications. And when an argument was sufficiently intruiging, it spurred me to search for corroborative and refutative evidence; sometimes, I was honestly surprised by the results.
I also tend to believe that Orwell was right when he said that all public (and many private) issues are political issues at bottom, and so those entanglements are unavoidable. What is more important in documentary filmmaking as well as other documentary enterprises is the ability for the viewer/reader to be able to identify probable biases. Our obsession with unencumbered facts is damn unhealthy, because it tends to convince us to outright ignore or minimize the importance of issues that seem too one-sided.
Re:Uh Oh... (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Uh Oh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Take the topic of enacting socialized medicine in the US. Does it suck that so many people don't have health care? I think so. Would it suck if the gov't took more of my money to pay for someone else to have an operation? I think so. Do people get into situations sometimes where they need help (i.e. free medical care). I think so. Will people take advantage of the system by needlessly going to the doctor all of the time just because they know it's going to be free? I think so. Will it be a benefit to the millions of Americans who have no health care coverage? I think so. Will it be a detriment to the other millions of Americans who already have quality health care at a low cost through their employers or other means? I think so. Are there positives? Of course. Are there negatives? Of course. And the journalist should present all of them.
You can't just focus on the side that makes your case look good... you can't just parade the "lost causes" in front of the camera and say, "Socialized medicine will fix this". You have to point out the things that it will break as well. For every person who will go from getting no coverage to getting some coverage, you have to point out the people who will go from getting fast, quality coverage to getting slow, lesser quality coverage (I should know... I'm Canadian by birth, and my brother was on a waiting list for over 9 months for a simple operation... the last surgery I needed --now that I'm in the US-- required about a two week wait). For every person who can't afford coverage and will get it for free, you'll have to point out all of the people who _can_ afford it and are getting it for a very good price, who will end up losing more money in taxes than what it costs them right now (My wife, for example, gets coverage through her work for free... I get it for a very low cost through my work... if our taxes went up to pay for this, we'd both end up on the losing-side --financially and in the quality of the coverage).
The most important thing to remember in this debate is that you're talking about forcing the entire nation into doing something, whether they agree with it or not. The same goes for any of these other major debates. And when you're talking about doing something like that, you can't play games with the "facts". We need to hear it all.
WATYF
The Speech (Score:5, Interesting)
As for the speech, here [hardylaw.net] is a comparison someone transcribed from F911 and from Heston's actual speech.
Here [michaelmoore.com] is a link to Moore's website where he responds to attacks on his movie. The page is long and there is a lot there, so I'll copy the text where Moore responds to this specific charge. I'm going to leave it as is, without correcting the paragraph/formatting errors.
At this point, there's nothing more to say, really. Judge for yourselves if Moore is being honest or dishonest.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I can be certain that he needs his films to make enough money to fund making more films. I'm sure he also wants to eat, I'm sure enough pepople will purchase this movie as a symbolic gesture that he doesn't get too upset.
If he got upset prior to actually knowing if this really hurt his wallet, well
MM is a troll (Score:4, Insightful)
I even agree with some of his points. Well, dunno about this particular movie, but I ended up buying a couple of his books because the back cover said they were "hilarious." (Ooer. Americans must be quite a cheerful and fun loving folk, if even that kind of bitter whine counts as "hilarious".)
That said, his endless "auugh, the government is out to get me" is starting to look stupid already, for a start. Look, if the government wanted to silence him, he'd be silent already. If America was the kind of fascist oligarchy that he always describes, he probably wouldn't even be alive at this point, or at least someone would have framed him for something already and sent him to a maximum security jail.
This is just yet another such publicity stunt, for conspiracy theorists. How about waiting until the government actually does something about it, before "leaking" the movie? Or if he wants to distribute it via P2P, fine, that's a mighty fine way to distribute your works, really. But it's just a choice of distribution, not some great act of resistance against fascism.
Hyperbole (like metaphors, similes, and everything else) is like a condiment in food. If half your dish is salt or pepper, you probably overdid it. Same here. Not only it makes his bitter whine sound even more bitter, it doesn't even serve his purposes that well, since you never know what's a genuine assessment and what's another of his over-the-top hyperboles. It's like the boy who cried wolf: by the time you've described something as a totalitarian plot for the 1000'th time, noone (sane) takes it seriously any more.
Such ego-stroking stunts are just that kind of bad hyperbole. Yes, probably some people above would dislike his point, but some might even agree with him. Either way, he's _not_ going to end up with the Gestapo on his doorstep and with the SS burning his movies and book, either.
More importantly, there are always two sides to each issues. There's rarely a free meal: to get X you give up some Y, or viceversa. And neither extreme is an utopia, so you have to figure out your own least crappy compromise among all possible crappy compromises. Which is why there's a political debate and more than one party and platform. One thinks that it's totally worth giving up X to get more Y, one thinks the opposite, one thinks the balance is good enough as it is, one wants to give up both X and Y to gain Z, and yet another one runs around with pencils up its nose and thinks it's an airplane.
The reason why the government does X instead of Y, may not always be the best, may not always even be honest, but aren't always "let's oppress someone for the fun of it either" either. Whether it's about health care or letting the Bin Laden family fly away after 9/11, there are real issues ranging from costs to international relations to ideology behind those choices. And by ideology I mean "what we think is best for the economy", not just "let's be neo-conservative because the conspiracy told us to". Those ideas might well be wrong (everyone can't be right at the same time, or you wouldn't need more than one party), but painting one side with the broad brush of "auugh, they're all bought by their industrialist friends and trying to silence me" is just an ad-hominem.
Stances basically saying "my version is by definition perfect, and everyone else is a fascist peddling crooked crap solutions" aren't really doing anyone any good.
Or at least I hope it's hyperbole, because otherwise he'd have to be paranoid schizophrenic to actually believe all that. But I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. It's probably hyperbole.
Re:MM is a troll (Score:4, Funny)
If America was the kind of fascist oligarchy that he always describes
I don't think Moore ever called America a "facist oligarchy" - that must be your exaggerated representation of his perspective. A little hyperbolic, don't you think?
by the time you've described something as a totalitarian plot for the 1000'th time
1000 times? Really? Did you count them? Surely that's a bit of an exaggeration.
he's _not_ going to end up with the Gestapo on his doorstep and with the SS burning his movies and book, either.
Again, I can't recall Moore expressing any concern about the Gestapo or the SS doing these things. Perhaps you just brought up Nazis and book-burning as a sort of over-the-top caricature of the concerns Moore does express?
Stances basically saying "my version is by definition perfect, and everyone else is a fascist peddling crooked crap solutions" aren't really doing anyone any good.
I was worried that your interpretation of Moore's message is a bit extreme, and possibly borders on what's called "putting words in his mouth" (after all, he never said that, and you'd have to stretch quite a bit to interpret anything he has said into such a statement)...
But seeing how strongly you oppose hyperbole and exaggeration, I can see you'd never resort to such tactics.
Re:Uh Oh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well maybe you should watch it again, or at all: he never said canadians never locked their door. What he showed was that, usually, in small town Canada, people didn't lock themselves *inside*. You see him walking up to a porch, pushing an unlocked door and asking "is there anyone in here?", and the lady of the house comes, surprised but not frightened.
Here's the thing about Michael Moore: he's criticized for movies he didn't make, and things he never said. I believe it's called "strawman".
Re:Uh Oh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, this is a criticism that I have a real hard time getting behind, because the implicit assumption that it requires is that everyone is simply too stupid to be trusted understanding that in a two-hour film, not every nuance or exception to a comment need be expressed aloud. Documentarians should be able to make the basic assumption that people don't turn off their brains while watching.
To put it mildly, you would have to be a fscking idiot to believe that *nobody* in Toronto locks their doors. You know that. I know that. Michael Moore knows that. Michael Moore also has only 120 miuntes to say everything he wants to say, and so he can generalize to a point where he *should* feel comfortable with assuming the audience knows that he is talking about trends rather than a hard law of behavior. Anybody with a reasonably functional mind would come away from that scene under the impression that Moore is making the point that Torontoans care less about locking their doors when home than Americans, who are by-and-large both the subject and audience of the film. That assertion anecdotally and for me experientially also seems eminently correct. If he were forced to qualify every statement to absolute precision, he wouldn't be able to say anything interesting or thought-provoking. Neither would anyone else.
I have my own criticsms of M. Moore, and they tend towards my perception that he uses manipulative tactics too often, I imagine intended to elicit sympathy through emotional appeals of pity or indignation, but for me it is simply distracting and wearying. For example, I thought that much of Bowling for Columbine was interesting and thought-provoking, but I hated the part where he badgered poor Mr. Heston, particularly the part with the photograph. Similarly, in F9/11, the end part with the mother wailing and gnashing her teeth was an off-key ending that marred his larger points with cheap and exploitative melodrama.
Re:Uh Oh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sarcasm aside, yeah, that's right. Texts (both typed and film) have minimum entry levels for knowledge-base, experiences, and intelligence. When a person is speaking or writing, often he or she has to just make a basic assumption that someone is minimally intelligent, informed, capable of critical thought, etc., and write off those that don't. Behind every statement of any worth is a trove of unspoken hypotheses and assumptions. Requiring that they be spelled out for the uninformed and the stupid is ridiculous and unfair unless the text is intended for those specific audiences.
And he can't say "whatever he wants" in the sense that you mean. He just doesn't have to spell out his points as if we were all born yesterday, and in that narrow sense he can take liberties with the expected intelligence of his audience.
So if membership in the "Cool kids club" is typified by being able to think even cursorily about what is being presented instead of being a passive receptacle for whatever you happen to view, that's the one I want to be in. Don't you?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's relevant because locking your door while at home and the idea of "shoot first, ask questions later" have a common cause; a certain level of fear, distrust and suspicion. Find out what's making people so afraid, deal with that properly and (1) you have a neighbourhood where people feel safe with their doors unlocked and (2) you ha
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If that were true, its hard to see a motivation for him saying "I don't give a damn if people pirate my works so long as they see my message." Where's the "selling his books and movies are everything" profit motive in that?
"Real men don't back up..." (Score:5, Funny)
Those evil cubans! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Those evil cubans! (Score:4, Insightful)
No, noone can. There is no reasoning behind the bans on Cuba. It's purely emotional.
Re:Those evil cubans! (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll take a shot. Voters in Florida.
It's purely emotional.
Might depend on whether you're the one voting, or the one up for re-election.
Personally, I think Cubans (the ones in Florida) should just "get over it". Easy to say not having ever been in their shoes, but then, again, they were never in Castro's shoes (boots) either.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It was sort of an extension of the Monroe Doctrine, trying to prevent a European power from establishing control in the region. In this case, they especially didn't want a *communist* power to establish itself.
To that end, they built Cuba into a boogey man of a magnitude that, even after the threat was gone, the public would have reacted badly to resuming trade relations. Now it's just kind of a political convention in the United States
Re:Those evil cubans! (Score:4, Insightful)
All about Florida voters (Score:5, Insightful)
THAT is why the embargo is still in place.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Short but also wrong.
A long time ago, cuba was very friendly with the usa. Then cuba had a (communist) revolution, and seized a lot of property belonging to americans. So the usa wasn't very happy,
They had an, at most, Socialist revolution. Major factories were confiscated and farmland redistributed to the poor. Fairly typical stuff. Compensation were offered to the American companies who previously owned most anything, but the offer was denied. It was because of that, tha
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Those of them who are actually old enough to have ever lived in Cuba.
Given how much a few thousand votes in Florida can matter, no politician wants to risk pissing these folks off. Funny how such a small group can be so influential because they live in the right state.
Quite a bit of US foreign policy appears to be controlled by interest groups. Be they the Israeli lobby and the various corporate interests which have m
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The issue isn't that he is good or bad. The issue is that he isn't a "friend" or puppet of the US Government. The former rather ironically since Castro was perfectly happy to have normal relations with the US...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Huh? You can disagree all you want with Castro, you can't accuse him of having become anything like his predecessors.
While freedom of speech is undoubtedly stiffled in Cuba, it's a comparatively safe place. Opponents might be sent to jail, but they're not tortured. Women's right are respected. Religious rights are respected. No child labor. Education is good. There doesn't seem to be massive corruption, at least compared to similar countries.
Compare this to curr
Re:inertia, saving face, not rocking our boat (Score:5, Funny)
While freedom of speech is undoubtedly stiffled in Cuba, it's a comparatively safe place. Opponents might be sent to jail, but they're not tortured. Women's right are respected. Religious rights are respected. No child labor. Education is good. There doesn't seem to be massive corruption, at least compared to similar countries.
No, you're wrong. People are tortured daily in Cuba. Their religions are mocked. They have no access to education.
Haven't you ever heard of Guantanamo Bay?
What? That's run by the USA? Oh.
HAL.
Remember, guys (Score:5, Funny)
The most important thing is that he's fat and his voice is a little whiny. If you can't see that and channel your rage accordingly, I feel sorry for you dirty hippies.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
He is not the voice of reason... he is the voice of another opinion. Nothing wrong with that, but his tactics are not to provide information, insight, or raw un-spun feeds of a particular problem, but to provide you with his opinion on the matter. If you ag
Re:Remember, guys (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't really know what other people, or teh internets, have to say specifically about this, but I am under the impression that this is a propaganda piece. That's part of what I'm interested in seeing. I do boring research on this crap all the time, but I want someone to produce something like this I can watch and go 'OOOooo, that's interesting!" while comfortably not forming a whole belief system around it.
What's the worst that could happen, people try to academically challenge his info? The US healthcare system sucks, and someone needs to shake up a lively discussion of how it can be fixed. I have a lot of ideas, and I'd be curious to see if any of them are suggested in the film.
Re:Remember, guys (Score:5, Insightful)
If Bush's businesses were funded by the Saudis, that may matter. If prominent Saudis (related to Bin Laden, no less) were flown out of the country without being interviewed by the FBI when the rest of the non-military planes were grounded, that may matter. If the Saudi ambassador is so close to the Bushes that he has a pet name and is considered a close personal friend, that may matter. If Cheney still owns stock in Haliburton and stands to make money off of it when he steps out of office, that may matter.
I've seen concerted efforts to discredit Moore, and they always hinge on a different interpretation of the facts, not catching him in an outright falsehood. The facts he puts on the table need to be on the table, and Fox sure as hell isn't going to put them there. If his facts are correct and the facts indicate that something was awry, then we needed to look at that. We chose not to. We allowed cries of "he's biased!" to trump the question of "are his facts correct and what conclusion do they lead to?" Even if smoking guns can't be found, there were a lot of things brought to light by his movie that looked fishy as hell.
If you want to see bias, look at an Ann Coulter book. At least Moore's references check out.
Saw it a few days ago (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Saw it a few days ago (Score:5, Insightful)
"If the system is motivated by short term profit, there is always a benefit to denying care"
Re:Saw it a few days ago (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever since Adam Smith, it's been known that a perfect free market is impossible, you can only approximate one. The better an area of commerce meets the necessary preconditions, the closer it will approximate a truly free market. The medical industry fails utterly to meet some of the most important preconditions for a functional free market.
Ideally, you want perfect information -- this means everybody knows exactly what they're buying and selling, and knows and understands all their available options. The better the market's information, the freer; whereas the less various agents within the market know, the less functional that market will be. It's pretty easy to meet that condition for breakfast cereal, but you need years of higher education to get in the ballpark when it comes to medical treatment.
Another important precondition for a free market is elasticity of demand. Medicine has almost zero. If Doctor Jones has a half-off special for fixing broken legs, people don't rush out to get their leg broken now to take advantage of it. If the cost of cast materials rises, people don't look at their budget and decide they'd be better off if they wait a couple months before they break their leg skiing! What's more, people are frequently unable to shop around and seek out the best supplier, especially in emergency conditions. This further weakens the market forces that would ordinarily weed out the inefficiencies and reward the most competitive.
Another important facet is having low or no barriers to entry. The harder it is to enter the marketplace and offer goods or services, the less free that market becomes as inefficient actors are more easily tolerated by the market due to the slow growth of competition. If all it takes to sell butt-scratchers is to stand on a street corner offering them, competition rises easily to meet demand. Medicine requires years of study to get a license, and this drags down the responsiveness of the market, and further increases the tendency to become bloated and inefficient.
This also ignores the garbage-collector effect. If only people who have money get medical care, people without money get sick and can incubate illnesses and epidemics that will adversely affect those with medical care, too -- just as a neighbor who can't pay for a privatized garbage pickup will have trash pile up, stinking up the neighborhood
Hopefully America will realize it benefits everyone to have universal health care, not just the poor. I mean, we blow more cash than any other industrialized nation, and get mediocre care at best. Our wealthiest citizens are less healthy and don't live as long as the wealthiest in the U.K., and they spend a fraction of the money we do. It's friggin' staring us in the face! Well, behind the smokescreen of bullshit that gets kicked up by the HMO and Pharma industry shills, who want us to believe our medical care is hot shit on a silver platter.
Oh, and don't even get me started on for-
"Fair and effective free market" (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no such thing as the free market, because access to every market is controlled by special interest gatekeepers. If you don't believe me, just try visiting the NYSE and buying some shares directly. Free market think tanks are as prone to special interest pleading as anybody else - unless you really believe, say, that the Cato Institute takes money from the oil and tobacco industries and is totally uninfluenced by it.
And here in the UK, we have had to move away from the medical profession being allowed to regulate itself as a result of numerous scandals. Although the great majority of physicians are doubtless more altruistic than the majority of society, it's been said that trade unions are like dishwater - the scum rises to the top.
I think that experience in Canada, the UK and most of Europe shows that you must be able to vote for the people that control the health care system, because there are too many ethical, special interest, and economic factors to be left to people acting blindly in their own interests. Adam Smith never foresaw a world of mega-corporations, and his understanding of capitalism was a long way short of that of Marx.
Re:Saw it a few days ago (Score:5, Insightful)
But that's the rub. You don't want health care to be fair (which, in free-market terms means ability to pay). You want a health care system which covers everyone who needs covering, and which treats humans like their lives have value.
With the extraordinary costs of health care, that's the last thing you want to have based purely upon free market principles. "I can zap you again to try to restart your heart, but it will cost you an additional 35 dollars for this service. Sign here and we will proceed."
Which is not to say that you don't have a valid point: there is a lot which is wrong with our health care system above and beyond not having a social safety net... such as relying upon employers to maintain health insurance, lawsuits every time something goes wrong, not enough investment in preventative and curative medecines, and a reliance upon the expensive and the extravagent over the effective. And that doesn't even address overburdened doctors who never know their patients.
But the free market is not going to solve this problem. This problem exists in a moral, social, and economic grey realm which the market has been particularly bad in the past at dealing with.
Don't mix up health care and health insurance (Score:5, Insightful)
France, Germany, etc, have "socialised" health insurance.
Care itself is mostly private. Doctors, dentists, pharmacists have private practices. A majority of hospitals are state-run, but there are plenty of private hospitals, too.
You are free to go to any doctor you want.
Re:Don't mix up health care and health insurance (Score:4, Insightful)
This very complex debate is extremely simple, when you boil it down to this one salient fact. An insurer should not be able to pick and choose the insured.
The point of insurance is to spread risk. Once they're allowed to focus risk, it's no longer insurance. It's healthcare-brokering.
i don't see how this is news, but (Score:5, Interesting)
"I make these books and movies and TV shows because I want things to change, so the more people that get to see them the better, so I'm happy when that happens. I think information and art, ideas should be shared."
So far so good, hats off to the guy for the message.
Now, onto part two. The funny thing is that there are some people in the so-called "blogosphere" (who seem to disagree with Moore), who have posted the movie for download, pasted a ton of ads on their website, and then gone to write something like so:
"Now I fully expect [...] Moore's people asking me to take this down. Which I will, because unlike Moore and most liberals I actually do respect things like copyright laws and property rights. "
Ain't that sweet, and ain't people on the internet nice -- you rip someone off while saying you "respect" copyright, you're making money off ads on it, and you have the audacity to say the movie is all bulshit. Cheers for the copyright 'lovers' on teh internet, really.
The U.S. has gone completely mad... (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course as a nation we really are insane; most people still don't see the problem with putting the richest corporations in charge of absolutely everything and calling it "freedom".
Re:The U.S. has gone completely mad... (Score:5, Insightful)
We are stuck with a significant portion of the population, Red states, that when given this choice:
1) Bring universal health care up to the levels other developed countries in the world enjoy
2) Leave the US health care system in the mess it currently is and not have to admit the free market is a failure in the area of health care
Will eagerly go for option 2)
If someone's grandmother needs to die in order to avoid admitting something so fundamental to right wing dogma in the US is broken, so be it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If it isn't nominated for an Oscar, I'd be surprised - even given his rant^H^H^H^Hacceptance speech for his Bowling For Columbine oscar.
What's especially powerful is how the film touches on the psychological effects of health insecurity - a much more docile and unprovokable population, easier to keep in their place.
It was especially sickening to see how the health insurance companies rega
real sources of our health care problems (Score:5, Insightful)
Our problems do not come from a "failure" to socialize medicine. When I was up in Canada, the news was that brain scanners were mostly going to places with powerful politicians. Quebec got an unfair share. Money was disappearing for political reasons. Over in the UK, people are being sent to France for surgery because they'd die on the waiting lists if they didn't go. Here in the USA we install brain scanners (lots of them too) where there will be patients and we don't die on waiting lists for anything other than an organ transplant -- and that only because we made it illegal to pay the dead person's estate.
Our real problems are:
Some of these problems are not really solvable. Economics is what it is, people like new technology, and nobody wants to see their little children die. The lawyers have some mighty lobbiests, but a change would at least be theoretically possible. The same goes for the co-pay insurance system, which could be replaced by a sliding scale or percentage system. (example insurance fix: the patient's payment must increase by at least 10 cents for every dollar of the treatment cost up to "$200 for $2000", then by 1 cent per dollar thereafter)
Re:real sources of our health care problems (Score:4, Insightful)
In America, you do need a few thousand dollars though.
Editors: I before E, except after C (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry, ex-English teacher, had to say something. (Sidenote: always nice to see an old spelling mistake in a new word. I see far too much of "concieve" and "beleive" and not nearly enough "siezing". Of course, that is because I don't typically teach children older than middle school, and they don't have much call to say "seizure" unless it is in the context "Spelling nearly gives me a seizure".)
WikiMoore (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, I haven't seen Sicko, but I do agree with Moore that health insurance is essentially legalized gambling. It's also essentially a redistribution of wealth from the healthy to the unhealthy, with lots of middle men taking their cut along the way. The big question, though, is how do you fix it without making the average quality of health care worse?
You would think that he'd find a less obvious rant (Score:3, Insightful)
I live in the US, and I have 100% free health care (Score:5, Informative)
Why do I say that? Well, personal experience. My income is about $12,000 a year, and about two months ago I had an operation to diagnose a kidney disease. That is, this was not life threatening, but for diagnostic purposes. I didn't have to wait two years either, rather I only waited about a month and a half.
What did I pay for it? Nothing. No co-pay, no co-insurance, no cost for anethesia, no deductable. Nothing. Nada. Even my prescription drugs are free, everything from simple pain killers to the latest and greatest name brands. Who paid for it all? The state of Arizona. One acronym: AHCCCS [google.com]. Similar programs exist in all 50 states.
If this isn't providing health care to those who can't afford it, then I don't know what is. It has all of the benefits of private health care, in fact it works into the private health care system, so you get all of the same doctors and everything you would get in most private health care plans. The particular plan I am on is called Health Choice AZ, and there are many such plans to choose from, including a few PPO plans. I am not making any of this up, google it and you shall see. The information is sitting right at your fingertips.
Why do people like Michael Moore completely omit this fact when they bash America's health care system? They act as though poor people get nothing here - its just not true. If our health care system was like Canada's, hell I could be on dialysis right about now with how long it would have taken for me to get a proper diagnosis. I don't know about anybody else, but I wouldn't trade our current health care system for anything else.
watch the movie before you run your mouth off (Score:5, Informative)
The state of the American health care system is atrocious, and anyone who defends it is either ignorant, a crazy Libertarian, or a tool for the insurance industry.
Re:I live in the US, and I have 100% free health c (Score:4, Informative)
The people who get lost are those working low-wage jobs and are just making ends meet. The state doesn't recognize them as being poor enough to need assistance, and to these people it is more important to put food on the table than purchase independent health-insurance. If they get sick, often what little health-insurance they may have through work will not cover their needs. This leaves them with enormous medical bills, and no way to pay them.
Actually I think the poor are well looked after in the states, if you are unable to work or qualify for state-assistance you can be better off than people who work two jobs and make just enough money to scrape by. It's the people in the middle that fall between the cracks. I only have heard anecdotal evidence that that gap is getting larger... but I don't have any real evidence at hand to justify that statement so it could be false.
Lots of publicity, lots of stunts (Score:3, Insightful)
Pretty much what everyone else does that tries to sell an opinion rather than giving you unbiased information.
He's also a master of publicity. He didn't cart those people who fell through the US social network to Canada or Mexico, no, it had to be Cuba. Why Cuba? It makes little sense in a medical way, but it does make a lot of sense when you think about it from the point of publicity and when you try to create a lot of discussion.
And a more interesting question, would they have gotten the same treatment if they were Cuban or was it a publicity stunt for Cuba as well? That's a question that isn't answered.
Now, I think Moore's films are important as counter-spin to the spin of our corporations and government, but you have to realize that this is what is is: spin. It's not "the awful truth".
Re:Lots of publicity, lots of stunts (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.worldpress.org/Europe/1659.cfm [worldpress.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Cuba [wikipedia.org]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1739773
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/5
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43b/185.html [hartford-hwp.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Cuba [wikipedia.org]
Compulsory health insurance... The third way (Score:3, Informative)
The third way is "Compulsory health insurance". You don't need to run a huge health service, or even manage a state health insurance system. It seems to work in several European countries, (Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany) the poorest benefit from the lower premiums which are brought about by the universal coverage. It doesn't prevent the state from providing a healthcare system, neither does it require it to do so.
Don't vilify BitTorrent (Score:4, Insightful)
Everyone knows what you mean. I actually use BitTorrent exclusively for legitimate downloads (yes, I realise that sounds unlikely, but it's true) and I would be very disappointed if use of it was criminalised because of clueless lawmakers who are deriding their information from subjects like this.
SiCKO also on Youtube (Score:3, Informative)
Bias vs. Lies (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm tired of all of this crap about Moore's documentaries being nothing but lies. His documentaries are heavily biased against the Bush administration and the direction of the country, but, for the most part, his facts are pretty accurate. This new documentary was created to point out how bad the national health care situation is currently. His using Cuba to demonstrate national health care shows his bias, but it doesn't make his point less accurate or factual. Health care in this country is screwed up. When needing medical care could mean years, or even decades of extreme debt, even when you have "insurance" (if it can be called that with the crap these companies pull), we have an issue.
I'm tired of the ad hominem attacks here. If you disagree with the man, fine. If you don't want to watch the movie, fine. But if you want to disagree with him as vocally as many do here, counter his facts, stop the BS and petty name calling.
Re:yet another... (Score:4, Funny)
Because we all know the President Bush tells the truth and would never mislead us.
Re:yet another... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:yet another... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, there is widespread speculation that a recession is coming, fueled mainly by the crisis in the housing market, but people speculate about the market all the time. This speculation is coming from economists in general, and is certainly not limited to the left wing.
Also, the Film Actors Guild (FAG) was a fictional organization in the film "Team America: World Police". The acronym is part of the humor. So, while your point of view is legitimate, you may want to research your assertions before throwing bile at fictional entities.
Also, while Moore undoubtedly plays up certain aspects of his films for entertainment value and to prove his point, he does often bring up quite a few good points that are solidly based on fact. To ignore a point of view out of hand merely because it comes from a source you find distasteful is closed-minded.
Re:yet another... (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that Bush has often misled the american people does not prove that Michael Moore is telling the truth.
Re:yet another... (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that Bush has often misled the american people does not prove that Michael Moore is telling the truth.
Re:yet another... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:yet another... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because when someone disagrees with a liar they are automatically telling the truth.
For example, I too think Bush is a liar. Also, your hair is on fire.
Bush, Rush, Coulter etc. vs Clinton, Moore, Franken, etc... it's the circus part of the bread and circus formula. Their goal is to really change very little but get you all worked up about it in the process.
Re:yet another... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:yet another... (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, so piling on more mistruths is totally justified. I feel full of insight, now.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:yet another... (Score:4, Insightful)
Michael Moore is a pretentious hack. Every time I want to see his smirking face like he's teaching the world a thing or two I want to gouge my eyes out.
Every time I hear Ann Coulter talk about the liberal media bias I want to light something on fire and throw myself in it.
So which am I, fucktard GP? Right or Wrong? Left or Right?
I'm a goddamn self-critical thinking American who realizes we've fucked up but also realizes that distorting the truth in a documentary is probably the worst thing you could ever do for the industry. You want to present an opinion - cool, say it's your fucking opinion. But saying right is left and the sky is actually a pretty shade of lime and presenting that as not coming from you, but coming from facts is the lowest thing you could do in documentary journalism. It's as bad as any (insert ideology) media bias and worse for the hard-working true blue documentarians who want to present both sides of an issue but are shown that doing that isn't sexy enough, that they won't get the respect they so richly deserved by allowing both sides to speak and letting the audience decide, or by presenting their opinion and letting the audience decide whether it's right or wrong.
Moore makes me as sad and pissed off for my America as any other partisan lobby-owned political hack.
gee thanks (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Distorting the truth? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20021119.html [spinsanity.org] - here you go. Educate yourself on the man.
Note: These are the same people who wrote this [amazon.com] - no fans of the current president.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5335853/site/newsweek/ [msn.com]
Michael Isikoff, co-writer of the MSNBC piece, also wrote this [amazon.com].
There're your specifics, sir. The man is not a true documentarian, and makes the whole practice look worse than Geraldo Rivera journalism.
Re:Distorting the truth? (Score:5, Informative)
2 minutes, 23 seconds in, the bank manager says "We have to do a background check". If you watched less than 2 and a half minutes of the film, why should I listen to your opinion about it?
Re:yet another... (Score:5, Funny)
I kind of liked The Onion's take on it [theonion.com]:
Half Of Nation Outraged At New, Not-Yet-Released Michael Moore Film
[...]
"This film is absolutely tasteless and misguided, and I can't believe theaters are even showing it," said GOP presidential candidate Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS), who, along with the rest of the nation, has not yet seen the film.
Re:yet another... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've read a bit of the "Michael Moore is a liar" threads here and elsewhere, but their content is, from what I've seen, limited to re-interpreting the facts a different way, just leaving out the facts that led to his conclusion, all the while pretending that he's just spouting foundationless opinion, a la Rush Limbaugh.
Re:yet another... (Score:5, Insightful)
I've watched this movie, and he's glossed over the fact that our (the UK) NHS infrastructure is a bit shoddy. Sure, it's one of the best in the world, but it's a giant money hole.
Also, it appears to be an advert for Clinton. Would have been nice to see this party-neutral. Ah well.
If you ignore the partisan politics, this is a fantastic film with one important message: Societies are not judged by how they treat their heroes, but how they treat the bottom rung. Only with universal healthcare, free at the point of need (that's need, not want - no free boobjobs, obviously) can the US elevate it's status as one of the worst infant mortality rates, poor general health and positively narcissistic health corporation which have done nothing but bolster corporate profits.
The US is a fantastic place, but I'd never want to live in a country that didn't care about everyone - regardless of whether they're a billionaire or a meth-addict in dire straits.
Re:yet another... (Score:5, Informative)
Please post an actual lie that Michael Moore had in his movies. The arguments in Fahrenheit 9/11 were presented in terms of evidence--government documents, congressional transcripts/testimony, interviews, books, etc. You can interpret the facts differently if you wish, but that doesn't mean he's lying.
I've read a bit of the "Michael Moore is a liar" threads here and elsewhere, but their content is , from what I've seen, limited to re-interpreting the facts a different way, just leaving out the facts that led to his conclusion, all the while pretending that he's just spouting foundationless opinion, a la Rush Limbaugh
ZOMG, you just said Michael Moore is pretending that he's Rush Limbaugh!!!!
Now if you said that was a lie, and that you said no such thing, and I retorted saying those were your words, who would be right? I dare say you would be. It is a lie, and not a "bending" of truth.
Here is an example: In the movie "Bowling for Columbine", Michael Moore wanted to paint the NRA as a nasty gun club that lacked compassion for the Columbine shooting. Here is how he did it. First he spliced in some video of children crying outside columbine, then cut to Charlton Heston saying "from my cold, dead, hands", then cut to a billboard about an NRA meeting in Denver while Michael Moore tells us that after Columbine Charlton Heston decided to have a pro-gun rally in Denver, then cut to a video of Heston's speech (except utilizing the above demonstrated edit job to alter the message).
The problem with this is that Heston's "cold, dead, hands" speech wasn't even from his Denver speech. And after the Columbine shooting, the NRA didn't suddenly decide to hold a gun-rally. Their National Convention has been planned to be there for years. And it wasn't even a pro-gun rally, as all the exhibits and committee meetings were canceled in respect of the recent tragedy. The only thing not canceled was the members meeting, which could not be canceled due to state laws governing non-profits.
When you imply something untrue by using careful editing and splicing, you are lying. I'm sorry that we live in a world where lying is so casually dismissed (thanks to our current and last president), and that lying about somebody we don't like is okay. But the fact remains that Moore is a liar and his "documentaries" aren't worth the film they're printed on.
Re:yet another... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:yet another... (Score:4, Insightful)
It is sort of ironic to have a Moore supporter accuse the other side of discrediting the intelligence of the viewers.
Re:yet another... (Score:4, Insightful)
I saw that part of the film. I am anti-gun, and I still didn't reach the conclusion that Moore is said by his critics to have foisted on me. That's part of what I find odd about the criticisms of his movies. Politically I'm in his neighborhood (roughly), but I never saw what everyone says he is showing. I take hyperbole for hyperbole, rhetorical questions for rhetorical questions, metaphor for metaphor, and so on--I guess I'm not literalist enough to feel that he's trying to lie to me. The main ideas of the film are what matter to me, and oddly, I haven't seen those questioned. I just see them thrown out altogether, sight unseen, because Moore spliced two speeches together and "that means we can't trust him."
Re:About that Cuban healthcare... (Score:5, Informative)
Canada not so nice (Score:5, Informative)
Depending on the political power your region of the country holds, you may be out of luck. It's not the market (number of sick people) which determines where these devices are installed. It's pure politics, and the resulting distribution is not even remotely fair.
That's not really an improvement.
That's just scaremongering (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Frankly, I'd rather pay a large chunk of my salary than have to wait half a year for medical services.
Re:Canada not so nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Canada not so nice (Score:5, Insightful)
We trust government-run firefighters, police and military. Why is it that a government-run firefighting system can be trusted to rescue people from a burning building, but somehow government-run healthcare can't be trusted to treat them? Are firefighter EMTs worse at their job than hospital EMTs?
And just look at our military. Is it wasteful? Without a doubt. But does it have the tradeoffs that Canadian/European militaries have? Not by a long shot. So why should government-run health care in America automatically be a disaster? Why should we even expect to have to make the same tradeoffs that other nations make? This is America ffs; we've got a ridiculously large national ego. If Canucks and Euros can make it work, why the hell wouldn't we be able to do it better?
It seems to me that we should expect American government-run health care would still be the best on the planet.
And last I checked, I'm already paying about twice as much for less healthcare today than a decade ago when our nation last talked about healthcare. Private healthcare clearly hasn't protected us from massive increases in costs and cutbacks in service.
So why again, are we defending a system that's built to incentivize denial of service? Why again are we defending a system that is clearly incompatible with free-market assumptions? (Healthcare is not a good the consumer can walk away from, so the consumer will always lose.)
I simply don't see how it is that American government-run police, firefighting, emergency response, and national defense can be trusted -- can be the best in the world at what they do -- but government-run healthcare is still a boogeyman.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Canada not so nice (Score:5, Insightful)
That's pretty similar to the US system:
If you can afford it, you pay to use the American MRI machine.
Except for the part about waiting for a Canadian machine to open up if you can't afford that.
Here in the US, if you can't afford it, you just wait to die.
Actually we'd be paying 0.46% less. (Score:3, Informative)
The cost of defending U.S. malpractice claims is estimated at $6.5 billion in 2001, only 0.46 percent of total health spending. The two most important reasons for higher U.S. spending appear to be higher incomes and higher medical care prices.
The medical insurance companies are making lots and lots of money, and that's not because they are giving services for the dollars they are taking in.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
OK, how about this:
The number of malpractice filings 1992-2001 was pretty much constant (around 1% net decrease over that period), and over that period 54% of malpractice judgments came from 5% of doctors.
Re:About that Cuban healthcare... (Score:5, Informative)
I also find it funny that a lot of posts on
Sure make fun of the guy. It is easier to ignore the actual message that the US private Healthcare system is a total mess.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
What does that mean though? If the US government didn't give free and good healthcare to people detained indefinitely at gitmo, the public would complain. Quite rightly in my opinion. Part of the vast death
Re:Slightly off topic, but Michal Moore... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The main reason Bush won is that the Democratic party couldn't offer a good alternative. Nobody liked Kerry, including the people who voted for him. Kerry was a mediocre candidate. So many people hate Bush that Kerry almost won anyway, but the peop
Re:I blame Michael Moore for Bush's winning (Score:5, Insightful)
Stay the fuck out of our world, and we'll stay out of your politics.
Re:I blame Michael Moore for Bush's winning (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, sure, except US politics affects the rest of the world. US politics is everybody's politics.
We'd love to, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
We would, if you could stay the "frak" out of our business.
USA still has a lot of international say and use it in a not so civilized way at times.
Stop kidnapping our citizens and send them to Guantanamo for no good reason. [guardian.co.uk]
Stop keeping "secret" prisons in our countries. [washingtonpost.com]
Stop your european missile shield program. [state.gov]
Stop invading souvreign countries to protect american profit interests. [cnn.com]
Stop pushing SW-patents and other bad ideas onto the rest of the world. [wired.com]
Stop being the top polluter in the world. [nationmaster.com]
etc...
Your politics affect us, and as long as that's the case, we really can't stay the "frak" out of your politics.