Tell the fear mongers who say "socialized medicine will lead to the goose step and communism" to take their red herring arguments and go jump in a lake.
John Edwards did say one thing during his stump that really just resonated with me - "Our lives depend on a change". I can't recall if he was talking about health care or not, but he is right in more ways than one. The health care crises impacts everyone - this isn't some plight reserved for just the poor. That must be said given the lack of compassion for people down on their luck.
I've got to go and convince my wife once again that it is safe for our family to remain here in the United States. She is from Japan - and she watched the movie. I will be lying.
I'm trying to figure out just what to say about Hillary Clinton - who ranks 2nd in contributions from the health care industry. The only thing I can come up with is a simple question: why is she, who once lead a fight for universal health care, now taking their blood money? I would like Senator Clinton to answer that question herself.
Michael Moore rocks as usual. There was one thing in this movie I didn't realize...that contracts are renewable...
so in other words, I'm paying for health insurance and obviously if I actually get sick, no only are they going to try to deny the claim, they don't have to renew the contract on a yearly basis.
That's probably the most frightening thing in the film where people think they are covered and guess what, they are not.
Although he was clearly right on Iraq, his position on OBL and Afghanistan is startling.
I too noted Moore's implied criticism of Hillary Clinton regarding her alleged acceptance of commercial health care campaign contributions, and I too would like for her to respond to this implied criticism of her. Anyone who sees "Sicko" will probably react by regarding such contributions as blood money. If Moore's allegation is correct, Clinton can no longer have moral standing to advocate health care reform. More generally, we (all of us) should insist that our political leaders and candidates no longer accept *any* political contributions from the health care industry. We should raise this standard as a fundamental populist issue in our country.
I would like to see Jim Webb and other progressive leaders make universal healthcare be a part of the populist fairness agenda.
What Moore didn't do enough was explore the numbers. How much does a national health care system cost - say per capita? Now, compare that with our health care system's cost per capita.
I don't know the precise numbers, only that we pay more. I also know that we have higher infant mortality and shorter life spans. Given that we are paying more, one would think we would be healthier. Why aren't we?
The only other newcomer in wide release, the Michael Moore documentary Sicko, was No. 9 with a middling $4.5 million, about $3 million less than expected. Playing in 441 theaters, the film did a solid if unspectacular $10,200 a theater.
Apparently, "Sicko" is no "Fahrenheit 911" at the box office.
Second, there's a great blind spot in this country that refuses to let us see past it to the core problem. Only people who've had problems with the health care system seem to care about the situation. The rest of the American public walks around with its collective fingers jammed into its collective ears while yelling "na, na, na ... I can't HEAR you!" No one likes to hear the unpleasant truth of how precarious the line is between relative good health and economic well-being and a sudden descent into poor health and eventual bankruptcy. No one likes to think about how unfair it is to deny coverage to people for "pre-existing conditions" or to link it to their employment, thus making their access to insurance directly related to their continued employment and the well-being of the companies for which they work. Just look at the recent Delphi deal. The reason the union went for the substantial drop in hourly wages was because the company was threatening to go under due in large part to health care costs.
(above link via A Healthy Blog http://blog.hcfama.o...)
Trouble is the politicians remember that Clinton tried to do something about health care in his first term and had a couple hundred million dollars of negative advertising dropped on him. (Remember those actors that played the couple in all those ads back then -- I wonder how they are doing these days, health-wise.)
So it will take a lot of political courage to try again.
The actors Harry Johnson and Louise Caire went on to star in an ad in 2002 in favor of stem cell research or cloning, or something like that.
In the 6th district we're lucky because we actually have a candidate, Sam Rasoul, ready to run for Congress in 2008 who supports the bill, and today he was right behind us walking with our 2007 Democratic candidates. If I get any pictures I'll send them along so you can see Sam dressed up as Uncle Sam, but in the meantime you can find out more at www.SAM2008.com, if you haven't already met him. He's incredibly energetic and busy so you may know him already.
We have plenty of work to do with only 73 Congressional Reps signed on to 676 (and only one Virginian ---- why don't we have 10 more Bobby Scotts in this state?). But that's what we have to produce, one congressional district at a time a Bobby Scott or a Sam Rasoul. I've been working with Healthcare-NOW for almost two years, an organization focused on just this one bill, and talking with people all over the country who are working on it too. Check us out at www.healthcare-now.org --- we're a little excited about Sicko and glad to be working with Michael Moore.
We have no idea how we got lucky enough to have Sicko open in Staunton, but we're taking advantage of it. I've been passing out flyers at almost every showing----certainly the most political fun I've ever had.