Editor's Note
Editor's Note Matthew Rothschild Sick Priorities I saw snippets of Michael Moore's Sicko at a June 20 hearing in Washington, D.C., that Representative John Conyers was holding. Moore testified at...
...Moore testified at the hearing, and he brought with him some of the people in the film...
...And the contrast between the lousy health care in the United States and the great health care in Canada, France, and Great Britain could not be more stark...
...She was vomiting, had diarrhea, was having trouble breathing and a very high temperature...
...The problem with the private health care system, as Sicko amply demonstrates, is that a lot of people can't afford private health insurance, and many of those who have it—like Dawnelle Keys—get jacked around by their insurance companies...
...Those who rule America, Benn says, "don't want people to be educated, healthy, and confident because they'll get out of control...
...Finally, an hour after that, Mychelle was transferred by ambulance to Kaiser...
...The stories of the victims tug at you...
...On May 6, 1993, my eighteen-month-old daughter, Mychelle, became very ill," Keys testified...
...She became lethargic and unresponsive...
...But Bush and the Republicans resisted, hauling out the shibboleth about scary socialized medicine that Moore had done so much to rebut...
...But Bush and the Republicans would rather defend the profits of those insurance companies and regurgitate the ideology that the market knows best than see to it that poor children get the care they need...
...Within fifteen minutes of arriving, she died...
...Democrats wanted to cover four million more poor kids...
...I pleaded for them to treat her, and still no one would give her antibiotics...
...Ikept thinking of Benn's point when, just a week after I saw the movie, Congress started debating expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program...
...That is a scandal...
...You see, MLK hospital was not a Kaiser facility...
...When Keys was done testifying, almost everyone in the hearing room was close to tears...
...But he did not conduct a simple blood culture or treat her with antibiotics because our health plan, Kaiser, told him not to...
...Already, we have a government-run health care system called Medicare, which works very well...
...Mychelle became sicker and sicker...
...Instead, the rulers want people to be "poor, demoralized, and frightened" so they'll think "the safest thing is to take orders and hope for the best...
...I called an ambulance, which took her to the nearest emergency room at Martin Luther King/Drew Medical Center hospital in Los Angeles...
...Including Dawnelle Keys...
...So, too, does the larger political point...
...Well, that's the path we need to take in this country...
...Moore interviews the old Labour Party leader Tony Benn, who spells it all out...
...John Boehner, leader of the Republicans in the House, said: "Dragging people out of private health insurance to put them into a government-run program is 'Hillary care' come back...
...The doctor believed she probably had a bacterial infection, which could be treated with antibiotics...
...Over two hours later, Mychelle had a seizure...
...I sensed at that point how powerful Sicko is...
...Trent Lott over in the Senate echoed the line: It would be "a significant step toward a government-run health care system...
...And Bush himself said it would take us "down the path to government-run health care for every American...
Vol. 71 • September 2007 • No. 9
