Michael Moore's Latest Target: An 'Immoral' Health Care System (ABC News)

[marmar]

June 14th, 2007 3:02 am
Michael Moore's Latest Target: An 'Immoral' Health Care System

The Controversial Director on the Story Behind His New Film "Sicko"

By Sarah Baker and Katie Escherich / ABC News

Polarizing -- that's one way to describe the work of filmmaker and activist Michael Moore, whose new film, "Sicko," takes on the U.S. health care system.

"Nightline's" Terry Moran spent a day with the director in Sacramento, Calif., where Moore teamed with the California Nurses Association to hold a rally at the state capitol.

The nurses wore red "Sicko" T-shirts and cheered for Moore as he criticized America's health care system.

"I am honored to be able to be here today to be able to join with you in a very important movement that is already taking place all across this country," he said. "Because the American people are fed up with this broken health care system. And & it's the nurses who are on the front lines of this war. And it is a war. It's a war against greed."

While the group was walking through the state senate chambers, a group of teenagers recognized Moore and immediately swarmed him, shouting things like 'Oh my God!' and 'I love your work!'"

...(snip)...

Health Care's Haves and Have-Nots

Moore's hope for the film is that it will inspire change and help find a solution to the massive problems facing the U.S. health care system, and said that making the movie inspired him to change his own life and to take better care of himself. He began to diet and exercise, dropping more than 30 pounds during the course of the film's production.

Moore hopes that people who see "Sicko" will realize that the current health care system needs an overhaul and will start a "political movement" of change, but he also said that fixing the health care system isn't strictly a political issue.

"It's not really a political issue," Moore said. "I should say, it's not a partisan issue. It's political in the sense that our laws make it so that people have a difficult time getting the care they should get. Until those laws change I think we're going to have this 'haves and have-nots' society that we have when it comes to health care."

...(snip)...

'People Are Dying'

In addition to being a filmmaker and an activist, Moore is also a deeply religious man, an Eagle Scout who at one point decided to go to the seminary and become a priest. He said that "Sicko" comes from "a spiritual place."

"I don't like putting my religious beliefs out there," he said. "But I do believe that this film is coming from a very deep place, from a spiritual place in the sense that I believe as a Christian and a Catholic that it is my responsibility to make sure that not only am I covered if something happens to me, but that everyone else is covered. … I belong to the Directors' Guild. I have a great health plan, and I'm going to get help, but 47 million people aren't going to get help. There's something wrong with that. It's very immoral."

"Sicko" contends that people are dying because of the flaws of the current system, and Moore places some of the blame for these failures on insurance and pharmaceutical companies. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Story?id=3274963&page=1

[SpiralHawk]

1. What we have now in the US is basically republicon-corporate health care system

republicon ideology: Make Massive profits off the sick and dying

That's what we got going on

Why are republicons so freaking greedy and immoral?

[Wickerman]

2. It's a great film

I've seen a screener and hope it shocks a few people into realizing that part of America's success has been it's ingenuity and remanufacturing of ideas. Moore points out that we have so often taken good ides from other countries and incorporated them into our society; it's to take in health care ideas from overseas and to restore out health systems to processes that actually serve the people, not the industry.

A lot of myths questioned, and imho, destroyed in the work. I look forward to people watching it and demanding change.

[PA Democrat]

3. Nurses seem to be out there in front of the general public on this issue.

I imagine it's because they see first-hand every single day how the greed built into our current system harms people.

My neighbor quit her nursing job because she said that the management of the hospital where she worked had cut back on nurses so severely that she knew it was only a matter of time before a patient died on her shift due to inadequate staff. I keep hearing that there is a nursing shortage, but it seems that it is the greed of out for-profit health care system that is driving nurses out of the profession causing the shortage. Of course I also hear that hospitals are recruiting foreign nurses (at lower wages) to fill the shortage.

[Acadia Blue]

4. When insurance and hospitals were not for profit, a time when most

people today do not remember. Even the poor could afford insurance.

For profit health care means, bad health care, and expensive health care. We are at par with Chili in health care.

Thanks to corporate America, everytning good in our beloved country is going down the tubes.

[jtrockville]

5. Attribute it to GREED (the LOVE of money)