U.S. Health Care Reform

I watched President Obama's address to Congress this evening regarding proposed health care reform. For the record, I greatly admire Obama and believe that he's a man with great vision and a courageous drive to improve the lives of all Americans. I understand that not everybody may agree with all of his proposals for the Health Care Reform bill, but surely there was much in his speech tonight that made so much sense that I don't get why a certain segment of the American people are so determined to trip him up and see him fail. As President Obama maintains, to do nothing will only result in health care costs continuing to spiral out of control, demanding an ever expanding slice of the national budget, mostly due to wastage within the system and turning a blind eye to the greed of the insurance companies. (America currently spends about 13% of the budget on health care, compared to about 9% which is average for other developed countries, Canada included). Yet there are those on the far right who would rather live in denial than to confront the problem and work in a bipartisan manner to bring about new policy that will help to bring down wastage in the system and instead put that money directly towards universal health coverage.

I've written of my admiration for activist and filmmaker, Michael Moore in the past as well. In fact, years before he brought us the documentary, Sicko, which focused on the problems within the American health system, he had done this powerful segment condemning the health insurer, Humana, for ignoring the pleas of a man in desperate need of a kidney and pancreas transplant. Regardless of how you personally feel about Michael Moore, I would ask that you watch this entire clip I've linked to on Youtube. If this proof of bureaucracy and greed at one of America's big corporate private insurers doesn't make you angry enough to join in the fight for health care reform, I don't know what will:

Moore Power To Ya'!

This weekend will see the release of the latest Michael Moore documentary, "Sicko". I've seen all of his films thus far, as well as several episodes of his "The Awful Truth" TV show, so I'll certainly be seeing this latest film too. To be honest, though I generally like Moore and his principled stands, I take some of what he says with a grain of salt. In order to make his arguments, he sometimes ignores facts that don't support his case, while also making points from things that seem tenuous at best.

For instance, in "Bowling For Columbine", Moore finagles his way into Charlton Heston's home and, after a bit of conversation to soften Heston up and get him with his guard down, proceeds to confront him on his NRA presidency and a rally that was held very insensitively immediately after the gun-related death of a little girl. While this may be a fair attack, given Heston's longstanding, gun-loving, Second Amendment stance, I felt it rather uncalled for when he similarly ambushes Dick Clark on a matter that seems like he's really grasping at straws. He accuses Clark of being partly responsible for the gun use of a little boy whose mother was a worker in a Dick Clark owned restaurant chain, and therefore not at home to look after her son when the incident took place. As far as I could surmise, Dick Clark was guilty of nothing more than being involved in a government program meant to wean people off of welfare by giving them work in participating places of employment. I'm sure that Dick Clark was participating in this program in all good faith, hoping it would give people a leg up to a better future. As such, I felt Moore had overplayed his hand and was looking for any scapegoat that made for good melodrama in his film.

However, as I said, I generally applaud Michael Moore for his efforts. There are a lot of contentious issues in America that should be addressed and I'm glad a guy like Moore is out there to shine a spotlight on them. Here then is my caricature of Michael Moore in tribute to his efforts.