By Manila Ryce
Published Thursday, June 28th, 2007, 5:48 am
Filed under: Human Rights, Videos: Political, Health, Economic, Videos, US Politics

8 Responses to “The Daily Show – Interview with Michael Moore”

1. 

   One of the criticisms that I keep hearing is that if healthcare is socialized, then the quality of healthcare goes down. There seems to be a severe misunderstanding here. Healthcare reform has to do with Health Insurance, not Medical Facilities. We, as the richest nation in the world, have the best medical facilities. The last thing we want is to decrease that. What we’re talking about here is How to Pay for it.
   Micheal Moore is a self-named propagandist, and has repeatedly stated that the views in his movie are indeed His Views. So obviously we must watch this film with a grain of salt. His figure of 60 million Americans without coverage, for example, is actually much lower. (And I would argue that it’s somewhat semantic to debate the impact of 60 million vs. 44 million. Even with the range, the number sucks!)
   That being said, his point that the middle class, as has been the case for years, is being screwed here! The Middle Class is under assault from every angle, and Medical Coverage is definitely one of them.

   Look, I’m no Socialist, but there are socialist ideas that to me are no brainers. Police and Fire Departments are the public’s investment in our safety. No one debates that, but when it comes to no-brainers like the Education and Health of our people, suddenly everything’s a slippery slope.

   The fact of the matter is that Health is a huge investment, not just on the government level, but also on an individual level. It will require more than just a universal healthcare plan. It will require education, comprehensive inspections and regulation, and a national effort to cut down on the amount of shit we as Americans eat. And I’m talking a massive effort on the part of each an every one of us. Is it worth all this work?

   According to the CDC, over 60% of Americans are overweight, with close to half of them considered obese. The complications that arise from this group kill more Americans every year than Any Other Preventable Cause of Death, except Smoking!

   Is obesity a primary concern for Healthcare Reform? Not necessarily. But it is a clear indicator, canaries if you will, of the Public’s utter lack of information, education, viable alternatives to shit-food, and simple will power!

   I think Kucinich’s idea for a Government Sponsored, non-profit insurance program is a great one! I’m a big fan of non-profits, I only wish there were more secular ones; they all seem regious in some way. But that being said, you know what? At this point, if religious organizations want to quit attacking Darwin and step up to the challenge of Providing Health Insurance, I’ll be just ecstatic! But getting back to my original point with Kucinich’s plan, this would be a great first step, but we also, as individuals, need to take responsibility for our health as well. By this point, the idea that the government can be trusted to fix anything for us should be seen as an absurd one.

   PapaFigue
   06/28/07 at 8:48 am
   

2. […] LINK […]

   The Daily Show – Interview with Michael Moore (video link) « Dandelion Salad
   06/29/07 at 3:29 am
   

3. Michael Moore is one the few people on this planet who is truly prescient! The immediate future of American Health Care is in fact the ‘Single Payer System’. The current system will only consume more and more of our resources and leave an ever increasing number of us in dire financial straits. Why is this bad? From the perspective of simple Economics, consumer spending accounts for over 2/3 of our GDP. With corporate Outsourcing, Globalization and Free Trade, the American consumer has few funds at the end of the day to drive the Almighty GDP for the benefit of the 300,000 Wealthiest in the US.

   The Trilateral Commission, the Bush ‘cartel’ and the 1 Percenters in our society truly believe that with systemmatic Globalization and a ‘new’ N. American Union they will have sufficient ‘Income Generating Bodies’ to keep on financially ripping off, robbing and shafting folks to fill their greedy maws. The harsh reality is that the PRESENTLY LAZY, INDOLENT, SELFISH, ARROGANT AND DISASSOCIATED MAJORITY OF AMERICANS are slowly waking up to what has been and is happening to them at the hands of the Wealthiest 1 to 2% of Americans.

   Tired, gnarled, evil, unhappy, black-hearted, OLD, WHITE, EURO-AMERICAN MALES such as DAVID ROCKEFELLER are tearing the heart out of this once great Democracy just to ensure they have a future of sustained wealth & liesure. Sadly, too many Americans want to be like these dried up, greedy, thoughtless, arrogant to the last, selfish Wealthy Old, Unhappily DYING Euro-American men like David. As part of trying to be like him, too many American males have totally forgotten what this nation is all about, what their FAMILIES AND CHILDREN are all about. They believe that denying others and keeping others in the ‘Bondage of Poverty’ will somehow guarantee their future Wealth. Like David, though, they will die sad, lonely lives - even with the best of US Health Care - because of their greed and profound self aggrandisement.

   Universal, Single Payer Health Care/Insurance is as American as Apple Pie, George Washington and Baseball. Like the Bill of Rights which Mr. Bush & Co. has sought to so thoroughly elminate in its insane Greed & Lust for Wealth of Others, a Single Payer system will help the citizens and the government of the US keep MORE of what they make to INVEST IN AND KEEP THE US STRONG.

   Joseph Conrad
   06/29/07 at 8:47 am
   

4. Health care for all. It works for every other leading nation in the world. Our auto industry is losing the international war to sell cars because every car carries a $1,500 additional price for UAW health care.

   Why not?

   mike mid city
   06/29/07 at 10:53 am
   

5. here’s a good review of moore’s film in the new yorker:

   Do No Harm
   “Sicko” and “Evening.”
   by David Denby July 2, 2007

   Michael Moore has teased and bullied his way to some brilliant highs in his career as a political entertainer, but he scrapes bottom in his new documentary, “Sicko.” The movie is an attack on the American health-care system, and it starts out strongly, with Moore interviewing families who have been betrayed or neglected by H.M.O.s and insurance companies. A man whose life might have been saved by a bone-marrow transplant died when he was refused “experimental” treatment. A feverish baby died when her mother, rather than taking her to a hospital run by her insurer, Kaiser Permanente, rushed her to the nearest emergency room, where they were turned away. Moore then zeroes in on the situation of three volunteer Ground Zero rescue workers, who have trouble breathing or who suffer from stress and can’t get assistance from the federal government. More baffled than angry, they soberly report on their conditions, and Moore comments that even national heroes aren’t given help by the nation. A bit later in the film, however, he presents congressional testimony suggesting that people the Administration has deemed to be national enemies—the detainees at Guantánamo Bay—are receiving good health care free. So Moore loads the Ground Zero volunteers, plus some other people who have serious health problems, into three boats in the Miami harbor. “Which way to Guantánamo Bay?” he calls out to a Coast Guard vessel, and the little flotilla sets off for Cuba. When the boats arrive outside the base, they are, of course, stonily denied entrance.

   An absurdist of outrage, Moore has attacked corporations that destroy cities by closing down local plants (“Roger & Me”); a gun-happy culture that makes arms easily available (“Bowling for Columbine”); an Administration that begins a war without sufficient cause (“Fahrenheit 9/11”). He has stalked corporate officials and congressmen, planted his bulk before them and asked mock-naïve questions, and his provocations, at their best, have smoked out hypocrites and liars. But this confrontation is different. Hauling off seriously ill people to a military base where they won’t receive treatment is a dumb prank. And the insensitivity isn’t much relieved by the piece of whimsy that comes next: Moore and the rescue workers (the other sick voyagers having mysteriously disappeared) wander onto the streets of Havana and ask some guys playing dominoes if there’s a doctor nearby. They go to a pharmacy and then to a hospital, where the Americans are admitted and treated. Few people in Moore’s audience are likely to be displeased that they receive help from a Communist system. But what is the point of Moore’s fiction of a desperate, wandering quest for medicine on the streets, as if he hadn’t known in advance that Cuba has free health care? Why not tell us what really happened on the trip—for instance, what part Cuban officials played in receiving the American patients?

   After the early tales of the system’s failure, “Sicko” becomes feeble, even inane. A recent poll shows that a majority of Americans not only favor a national health service but are willing to pay higher taxes for it. In that case, wouldn’t it have made sense for Moore to find out what features of universal care in other countries could be adapted to America? Instead of sorting through any of this, Moore and his crew go from place to place—to Canada, England, and France, as well as Cuba—and, at every stop, he pulls the same silly stunt of pretending to be astonished that health care is free. How much do people pay here in France? Nothing? You’ve got to be kidding. But isn’t everyone taxed to death to pay for health care? Well, here’s a nice, two-income French couple who have a great apartment and collect sand from the deserts of the world. Not only haven’t they been impoverished by taxation; they travel. And so on.

   * from the issue
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   In each country, Moore interviews doctors who speak proudly of how well their country’s system works. But the candor of these doctors is no more impressive than that of the corporate spokesmen Moore has confronted in the past. No one mentions the delays or the instances of less than first-rate care. We find out that a doctor in Great Britain makes a good income (about two hundred thousand dollars), but not how medical care in, say, Toronto might differ from that in a distant rural area, or how shortages may have affected the quality of Cuban health care. Moore winds up treating the audience the same way that, he says, powerful people treat the weak in America—as dopes easily satisfied with fairy tales and bland reassurances. And since he doesn’t interview any of the countless Americans who have been mulling over ways to reform our system, we’re supposed to come away from “Sicko” believing that sane thinking on these issues is unknown here. In the actual political world, the major Democratic Presidential candidates have already offered, or will soon offer, plans for reform. A shift to the left, or, at least, to the center, has overtaken Michael Moore, yielding an irony more striking than any he turns up: the changes in political consciousness that Moore himself has helped produce have rendered his latest film almost superfluous.

   and more criticism from wikipedia on how moore portrayed health care systems in other countries:

   Description of Cuban health-care system

   Kyle Smith, a New York Post film critic, wrote that Moore asserts he asked Cuban officials to give his group exactly the same care that a Cuban would receive, “and that’s exactly what they got”. Smith writes that Moore treats the Cuban health-care system with kid gloves, although he’s capable of taking a hard look at American officials: “You can’t film anywhere in Castro’s Alcatraz without government say-so, meaning the whole scene was as phony as what happens when [New York Times restaurant critic] Frank Bruni walks into a four-star restaurant, […] Moore solemnly reports Cuba’s official health statistics, which are of course a fiction […] Moore’s motto is to trust no authority figure from cringing corporate spokesman on up to Washington windbags. Except dictators. Dictators, he’ll take your word for it.”[4]

   Rich Lowry, editor of National Review wrote in his syndicated column that Moore whitewashes the health-care system in Cuba, describing it as better than that in the United States[5], although “According to a 2004 story in the Canadian National Post: ‘Hospitals are falling apart, surgeons lack basic supplies and must reuse latex gloves. Patients must buy their sutures on the black market and provide bed sheets and food for extended hospital stays.’”[6]

   The World Health Organisation which Moore states ranked the United States’ health care system at 37th, ranked Cuba’s health care system at 39th.[7]

   In an interview with Time Magazine, Moore states “I’m not trumpeting Castro or his regime. I just want to say to fellow Americans, “C’mon, we’re the United States! If they can [provide care for all] we can do it.”[8] Fidel Castro is also referred to as a “dictator” in the film.

   A Boston Globe reporter wrote that in Moore’s descriptions of other nations’ health care systems, “Never is heard a discouraging word about any of them. Typical unbalanced Moore. That he may be promoting a Potemkin Village in Havana for Fidel Castro bothers Moore not a whit.”[9]

   Moore told the Globe reporter, “If we went to Columbia Presbyterian, they’re going to roll out the best doctors, take us to the best floor. And if we went to Pfizer, they’re going to show their best face, too. What’s the difference between what Pfizer does and what Castro does? We get P.R.’d all the time.”[9]

   [edit] Description of other nations’ health-care systems

   Smith criticizes Moore for presenting health care systems in Canada, Britain and France with the same uncritical attitude the filmmaker took with Cuba, despite the fact that there are significant criticisms of those systems within their own countries.[4] According to Scott, Moore’s descriptions of health care in other nations have “a bit of theatrical faux-naïveté”, and “the utopian picture of France in Sicko may be overstated”, but Scott dismisses the problem by saying a filmmaker praised in Cannes would naturally be pro-French.[10]

   Some Canadian critics did not like Michael Moore’s glamorizing the Canadian health care system.[11] Peter Howell, in The Toronto Star, wrote: “Sicko makes it seem as if Canada’s socialized medicine is flawless and that Canadians are satisfied with the status quo.” Howell wrote that he and other Canadian journalists criticized Moore for inaccurately contending that Canadians only had to wait for minutes for health care, rather than much longer waiting periods. [12]

   Michael C. Moynihan, an editor at the libertarian Reason magazine, writes that while Moore presents other nations’ health-care systems as close to perfect, they and other systems have many of the same problems as in the United States. He cites anecdotal examples that he says rival and parallel the examples presented by Moore: a Swedish parent whose government-run health-care system refused to put cochlear implants in both ears of her child, a German man[13] who couldn’t get his national health-care system to approve surgery for a brain tumor — and if he hadn’t paid for it himself instead of continuing to wait, his doctor says the man would have died. London’s Hammersmith Hospital, featured in the movie, was pressured by health officials to limit the number of patients treated in order to cut costs, a problem that isn’t anomalous in Britain, where the government has promised to cut down waiting periods — down to 18 weeks.[14] “Such examples suggest that Moore’s depiction of European-style medicine as an easy panacea for America’s problems is rather more complicated than presented. Massive queues and cash shortages have plagued all of the systems profiled—and celebrated—in Sicko.”[15]

   Jonathan Cohn, writing in The New Republic, agrees that Moore wrongly downplays the waiting lines that the British and Canadian systems “really do have”, but he points out that the French not only don’t have waiting lines, they have an insurance system that “allows free choice of doctor and offers highly advanced medical care to those who need it.” Although the French pay a lot for their health-care system (paying more in taxes and less in private insurance than Americans do, overall), their national health-care costs are still ultimately less than those of the United States.[16]

   Moore said the wait for service in Canada is, on average, a few weeks. “I’d be willing to wait a couple of weeks,” he said during a stop in Colorado on a publicity tour for the movie. “Statistics Canada, which is the governmental statistics office in Ottawa will tell you the following: there is a four-week wait in Canada to see specialist. There’s a three-week wait for diagnostic testing. And there’s a four-week wait for elective surgery.”[17]. [18]

   and, of course, murray rothbard’s brilliant criticism of clinton’s similar health care proposal, where he argues against such “reform” as a matter of principle:

   Criticism of Clinton’s Health Care Plan

   In the mid-1990s the Clinton administration proposed a major overhaul of the U.S. health care system. Libertarian scholar Murray N. Rothbard wrote this analysis:

   The standard media cliche about the Clinton health plan is that God, or the Devil, depending on your point of view, “is in the details.” There is surprising agreement among both the supporters and all too many of the critics of the Clinton health “reform.” The supporters say that the general principles of the plan are wonderful, but that there are a few problems in the details: e.g., how much will it cost, how exactly will it be financed, will small business get a sufficient subsidy to offset its higher costs, and on into the night.

   The alleged critics of the Clinton Plan also hasten to assure us that they too accept the general principles, but that there are lots of problems in the details. Often the critics will present their own alternative plans, only slightly less complex than the Clinton scheme, accompanied by assertions that their plans are less coercive, less costly, and less socialistic than the Clinton effort. And since health care constitutes about one-seventh of the American output, there are enough details and variants to keep a host of policy wonks going for the rest of the their lives.

   But the details of the Clintonian plan, however diabolic, are merely petty demons compared to the general principles, where Lucifer really lurks. By accepting the principles, and fighting over the details, the Loyal Opposition only succeeds in giving away the store, and doing so before the debate over the details can even get under way. Lost in an eye-glazing thicket of minutiae, the conservative critics of Clintonian reform, by being “responsible” and working within the paradigm set by The Enemy, are performing a vital service for the Clintonians in snuffing out any clear-cut opposition to Clinton’s Great Leap Forward into health collectivism.

   Let us examine some of the Mephistophelean general principles in the Clintonian reform, seconded by the conservative critics.

   1.

   Guaranteed universal access. There has been a lot of talk recently about “universal access” to this or that good or service. Many “libertarian” or “free-market” proponents of education “reform,” for example, advocate tax-supported voucher schemes to provide “access” to private schooling. But there is one simple entity, in any sort of free society, that provides “universal access” to every conceivable good or service, and not just to health or education or food. That entity is not a voucher or a Clintonian ID card; it’s called a “dollar.” Dollars not only provide universal access to all goods and services, they provide it to each dollar-holder for each product only to the extent that the dollar-holder desires. Every other artificial accessor, be it voucher or health card or food stamp, is despotic and coercive, mulcts the taxpayer, is inefficient and egalitarian.
   2.

   Coercive. “Guaranteed universal access” can only be provided by the robbery of taxation, and the essence of this extortion is not changed by calling these taxes “fees,” “premiums,” or “contributions.” A tax by any other named smells as rotten, and has similar consequences, even if only “employers” are forced to pay the higher “premiums.”

   Furthermore, for anyone to be “guaranteed” access to anything, he has to be forced to participate, both in receiving its “benefits” and in paying for them. Hence, “guaranteed universal access” means coercing not only taxpayers, but everyone as participants and contributors. All the weeping and wailing about the 37 million “uninsured” glosses over the fact that most of these uninsured have a made a rational decision that they don’t want to be “insured,” that they are willing to take the chance of paying market prices should health care become necessary. But they will not be permitted to remain free of the “benefits” of insurance; their participation will become compulsory. We will all become health draftees.
   3.

   Egalitarian. Universal means egalitarian. For the dread egalitarian theme of “fairness” enters immediately into the equation. Once government becomes the boss of all health, under the Clinton plan or the Loyal Opposition, then it seems “unfair” for the rich to enjoy better medical care than the lowest bum. This “fairness” ploy is considered self-evident and never subject to criticism. Why is “the two-tier” health system (actually it has been multi-tier) any more “unfair” than the multi-tier system for clothing or food or transportation? So far at least, most people don’t consider it unfair that some people can afford to dine at The Four Seasons and vacation at Martha’s Vineyard, whereas others have to rest content with McDonald’s and staying home. Why is medical care any different?

   And yet, one of the major thrusts of the Clinton Plan is to reduce us all to “one-tier,” egalitarian health care status.
   4.

   Collectivist. To insure equality for one and all, medical care will be collectivist, under close supervision of the federal Health Care Board, with health provision and insurance dragooned by government into regional collectives and alliances. The private practice of medicine will be essentially driven out, so that these collectives and HMOs will be the only option for the consumer. Even though the Clintonians try to assure Americans that they can still “choose their own doctor,” in practice this will be increasingly impossible.
   5.

   Price Controls. Since it is fairly well known that price controls have never worked, that they have always been a disaster, the Clinton Administration always keen on semantic trickery, have stoutly denied that any price controls are contemplated. But the network of severe price controls will be all too evident and painful, even if they wear the mask of “premium caps,” “cost caps,” or “spending control.” They will have to be there, for it is the promise of “cost control” that permits the Clintonians to make the outrageous claim that taxes will hardly go up at all. (Except, of course, on employers.) Tight spending control will be enforced by the government, not merely on its own, but particularly on private spending.

   One of the most chilling aspects of the Clinton plan is that any attempt by us consumers to get around these price controls, e.g. to pay higher than controlled prices to doctors in private practice, will be criminalized. Thus, the Clinton Plan states that “A provider may not charge or collect from the patient a fee in excess of the fee schedule adopted by an alliance,” and criminal penalties will be imposed for “payment of bribes or gratuities” (i.e. “black market prices”) to “influence the delivery of health service.”

   In arguing for their plan, by the way, the Clintonians have added insult to injury by employing absurd nonsense in the form of argument. Their main argument for the plan is that health care is “too costly,” and that thesis rests on the fact that health care spending, over recent years, has risen considerably as a percentage of the GDP. But a spending rise is scarcely the same as a cost increase; if it were, then I could easily argue that, since the percentage of GDP spent on computers has risen wildly in the past ten years, that “computer costs” are therefore excessive, and severe price controls, caps, and spending controls must be imposed promptly on consumer and business purchases of computers.
   6.

   Medical Rationing. Severe price and spending controls means, of course, that medical care will have to be strictly rationed, especially since these controls and caps come at the same time that universal and equal care is being “guaranteed.” Socialists, indeed, always love rationing, since it gives the bureaucrats power over the people and makes for coercive egalitarianism.

   And so this means that the government, and its medical bureaucrats and underlings, will decide who gets what service. Medical totalitarianism, if not the rest of us, will be alive and well in America.
   7.

   The Annoying Consumer. We have to remember a crucial point about government as against business operations on the market. Businesses are always eager for consumers to buy their product or service. On the free market, the consumer is king or queen and the “providers” are always trying to make profits and gain customers by serving them well. But when government operates a service, the consumer is transmuted into a pain-in-the-neck, a “wasteful” user-up of scarce social resources. Whereas the free market is a peaceful cooperative place where everyone benefits and no one loses, when government supplies the product or service, every consumer is treated as using a resource only at the expense of his fellow-men. The “public service” arena, and not the free market, is the dog-eat-dog jungle.

   So there we have the Clintonian health future: government as totalitarian rationer of health care, grudgingly doling out care on the lowest possible level equally to all, and treating each “client” as a wasteful pest. And if, God forbid, you have a serious health problem, or are elderly, or your treatment requires more scarce resources than the Health Care Board deems proper, well then Big Brother or Big Sister Rationer in Washington will decided, in the best interests of “society,” of course, to give you the Kevorkian treatment.
   8.

   The Great Leap Forward. There are many other ludicrous though almost universally accepted aspects of the Clinton Plan, from the gross perversion of the concept of “insurance” to the imbecilic view that an enormous expansion of government control will somehow eliminate the need for filling out health forms. But suffice it to stress the most vital point: the plan consists of one more Great Leap Forward into collectivism.

   The point was put very well, albeit admiringly, by David Lauter in the Los Angeles Times (September 23). Every once in a while, said Lauter, “the government collectively braces itself, takes a deep breath and leaps into a largely unknown future.” The first American leap was the New Deal in the 1930s, leaping into Social Security and extensive federal regulation of the economy. The second leap was the civil rights revolution of the 1960s. And now, writes Lauter, “another new President has proposed a sweeping plan” and we have been hearing again “the noises of a political system warming up once again for the big jump.”

   The only important point Mr. Lauter omits is leaping into what? Wittingly or unwittingly, his “leap” metaphor rings true, for it recalls the Great Leap Forward of Mao’s worst surge into extreme Communism.

   The Clinton health plan is not “reform” and it doesn’t meet a “crisis.” Cut through the fake semantics, and what we have is another Great Leap Forward into socialism. While Russia and the former Communist states are struggling to get out of socialism and the disaster of their “guaranteed universal health care” (check their vital statistics), Clinton and his bizarre Brain Trust of aging leftist grad students are proposing to wreck our economy, our freedom, and what has been, for all of the ills imposed by previous government intervention, the best medical system on earth.

   That is why the Clinton health plan must be fought against root and branch, why Satan is in the general principles, and why the Ludwig von Mises Institute, instead of offering its own 500-page health plan, sticks to its principled “four-step” plan laid out by Mises Institute Senior Fellow Hans-Hermann Hoppe (The Free Market April 1993) of dismantling existing government intervention into health.

   Bon
   06/30/07 at 4:12 am
   

6. by the way, we don’t live in a “democracy,” we live in a Republic. if you want to know the difference, it is simple: mob rule (i.e. “public” property) vs. inalienable rights (i.e. “private” property). the further we slide into a purely “democratic” society where the “mob” can vote an endless amount of money and hand-outs from the treasury, as well as an endless amount of regulations and taxation on private property, the further we slide into economic bankruptcy and, eventually, tyranny. read “u.s.a., the republic: the house that no one lives in” on my blog.

   there is an alternative to H.R. 676. read below.

   Lowering the Cost of Health Care

   by Ron Paul

   As a medical doctor, I’ve seen first-hand how bureaucratic red tape interferes with the doctor-patient relationship and drives costs higher. The current system of third-party payers takes decision-making away from doctors, leaving patients feeling rushed and worsening the quality of care. Yet health insurance premiums and drug costs keep rising. Clearly a new approach is needed. Congress needs to craft innovative legislation that makes health care more affordable without raising taxes or increasing the deficit. It also needs to repeal bad laws that keep health care costs higher than necessary.

   We should remember that HMOs did not arise because of free-market demand, but rather because of government mandates. The HMO Act of 1973 requires all but the smallest employers to offer their employees HMO coverage, and the tax code allows businesses – but not individuals – to deduct the cost of health insurance premiums. The result is the illogical coupling of employment and health insurance, which often leaves the unemployed without needed catastrophic coverage.

   While many in Congress are happy to criticize HMOs today, the public never hears how the present system was imposed upon the American people by federal law. As usual, government intervention in the private market failed to deliver the promised benefits and caused unintended consequences, but Congress never blames itself for the problems created by bad laws. Instead, we are told more government – in the form of “universal coverage” – is the answer. But government already is involved in roughly two-thirds of all health care spending, through Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs.

   For decades, the U.S. healthcare system was the envy of the entire world. Not coincidentally, there was far less government involvement in medicine during this time. America had the finest doctors and hospitals, patients enjoyed high-quality, affordable medical care, and thousands of private charities provided health services for the poor. Doctors focused on treating patients, without the red tape and threat of lawsuits that plague the profession today. Most Americans paid cash for basic services, and had insurance only for major illnesses and accidents. This meant both doctors and patients had an incentive to keep costs down, as the patient was directly responsible for payment, rather than an HMO or government program.

   The lesson is clear: when government and other third parties get involved, health care costs spiral. The answer is not a system of outright socialized medicine, but rather a system that encourages everyone – doctors, hospitals, patients, and drug companies – to keep costs down. As long as “somebody else” is paying the bill, the bill will be too high.

   The following are bills Congress should pass to reduce health care costs and leave more money in the pockets of families:

   HR 3075 provides truly comprehensive health care reform by allowing families to claim a tax credit for the rising cost of health insurance premiums. With many families now spending close to $1000 or even more for their monthly premiums, they need real tax relief – including a dollar-for-dollar credit for every cent they spend on health care premiums – to make medical care more affordable.

   HR 3076 is specifically designed to address the medical malpractice crisis that threatens to drive thousands of American doctors – especially obstetricians – out of business. The bill provides a dollar-for-dollar tax credit that permits consumers to purchase “negative outcomes” insurance prior to undergoing surgery or other serious medical treatments. Negative outcomes insurance is a novel approach that guarantees those harmed receive fair compensation, while reducing the burden of costly malpractice litigation on the health care system. Patients receive this insurance payout without having to endure lengthy lawsuits, and without having to give away a large portion of their award to a trial lawyer. This also drastically reduces the costs imposed on physicians and hospitals by malpractice litigation. Under HR 3076, individuals can purchase negative outcomes insurance at essentially no cost.

   HR 3077 makes it more affordable for parents to provide health care for their children. It creates a $500 per child tax credit for medical expenses and prescription drugs that are not reimbursed by insurance. It also creates a $3,000 tax credit for dependent children with terminal illnesses, cancer, or disabilities. Parents who are struggling to pay for their children’s medical care, especially when those children have serious health problems or special needs, need every extra dollar.

   HR 3078 is commonsense, compassionate legislation for those suffering from cancer or other terminal illnesses. The sad reality is that many patients battling serious illnesses will never collect Social Security benefits – yet they continue to pay into the Social Security system. When facing a medical crisis, those patients need every extra dollar to pay for medical care, travel, and family matters. HR 3078 waives the employee portion of Social Security payroll taxes (or self-employment taxes) for individuals with documented serious illnesses or cancer. It also suspends Social Security taxes for primary caregivers with a sick spouse or child. There is no justification or excuse for collecting Social Security taxes from sick individuals who literally are fighting for their lives.

   August 23, 2006

   Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas.

   Bon
   06/30/07 at 3:13 pm
   

7. here is a little video that michael moore would rather you *not* see.

   Bon
   07/1/07 at 4:17 pm
   

8. tks for hsoting this.. just missed the show.. hey, check out the google ads to the right of the page for a dose of irony.. health care for profits! :)

   ryan
   07/10/07 at 8:46 pm
   

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