Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Sicko

Here is an excerpt from an article about Michael Moore's new film about the US healthcare system. It sounds like Moore's film discusses the issues of inadquate healthcare coverage moreso than a lack of health coverage. However, i tend to think the root of the problem is the same and I look forward to this film spurring dialogue and impacting society in the same way Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine shed light on Iraq and Gun Control.

"Sicko" purposefully does not focus on the 50 million or so Americans who don't have health insurance, as scandalous as that is, but on the horror stories of middle-class working folks who believed they were adequately covered. There are so many of these they begin to blur into each other: the woman in Los Angeles whose baby was denied treatment at an emergency room outside her HMO network, and died as it was being transferred hours later; the woman in Kansas City whose husband was repeatedly denied various drugs his physician prescribed for kidney cancer, and who in the last stage of life was denied a bone-marrow transplant that could have saved his life; the woman who was told her brain tumor was not a life-threatening illness, and died; the woman who was told her cancer must have been a preexisting condition, and died.

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