Critique of Sicko

The following is sent to me by a long time colleague and friend, Dana Lundquist. Over the years, Mr. Lundquist has held positions of executive leaderhip in hospitals, integrated health system and health insurance. He continues to be a respected voice of reason.


A friend of mine is working for a medical software company that provides support for physician monitoring of quality. She and her staff recently viewed "Sicko", so I forced myself to see it to allow me to participate in the conversation. Thought you might be interested in my observations.

Dana


Some good points are made about key defects in the US healthcare finance and delivery system. However, Mr. Moore's credibility is damaged by some obvious lies, promotion of socialism (eg free college, day care, healthcare, and extended paid vacations), and demonizing of our government in general and republicans in particular.

Factual Problems:

1) Moore's statement that 18,000 people a year die because they are among 50,000,000 uninsured is unsubstantiated.
2) Moore's ranking of the health of US citizens vs other countries is unsubstantiated.
3) Contrary to Moore, our government does not make any wholesale negative statements about either France or cuba.
4) Moore speaks of the recent expansion of Medicare drug coverage as a bad thing when, in fact, it has vastly improved reimbursent for the elderly and cut their liability.
5) Moore makes no presentation to compare income tax rates of France, England, Canada, and the US to accompany his advocacy of universal health coverage. Nor does he present any credible comparative data on worker productivity.
6) Moore makes repeated comments himself and via those he chose to interview to the effect that our government promotes debt as a way to control the population's behavior and make people more compliant to those (whoever they are ) in power. He also promotes the idea that our government tries to make law abiding people fear it.

Summary:

Some people in the US have no guaranteed health benefits (less than 20 % according to Moore) and some HMO's and other insurance carriers do not always act in the best interests of the patient. These are serious problems, but we do not need to turn the entire health care finance and delivery system upside down to address them. We already have plenty of experience to demonstrate the inability of government to manage current responsibilities without adding more challenges for operating management of healthcare or anything else beyond current responsibilities for the post office, military, police, fire control, homeland security, primary and secondary education, research funding, etc.

Addressing the legitimate concerns reported in the movie will require a lot of thought and organization. There is no quick fix available and too many people want more than they are willing or capable of paying for.