Thanks

Graham, thanks for the fact-checking. At the lowest, most conservative number, 8.2 million is still a lot of people.

Steve, I love the Canadian voice. It’s a nice doze of reality. Moore’s always making Canada look good!

I’m actually most helped by Danny’s link to Frontline. Far more balanced than Moore. I love this program in general (esp. after an expose on the porn industry), and it was helpful to hear the different strategies that countries have taken. I like how the program concludes with three suggestions, even though it seems open to having either health care run by government or private practice. But here are his three:

1. Health insurance companies must accept everyone and cannot be for-profit.

2. Have mandatory insurance for everyone (like we do with car insurance in many states).

3. Create a standard set of medical fees for health care in the country.

I think it’s great, and Taiwan set a good example by learning from other healthcare system’s pros and cons. And our purely market system of healthcare really does leave many hung out to dry.

Thanks for the conversation. I feel like I have a better idea of what’s needed in healthcare reform than when I first started. And if we go the whole way, tort reform could be helpful to drive costs even lower — thanks Doug! A holistic answer is better than a one-sided approach anyway!

Now, how do we get this to happen?

Also, some good news: my father-in-law has been declared clean of cancer! Thank you for your prayers.

You wrote:
“…I can’t seem to find the fact checkers on this particular movie.”

This article attacks the “47 million Americans” number as too large, by looking further into the census data.
http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2007/20070718153509.aspx

And here’s a kind of fact-check from CNN. It’s actually a response to Moore’s response to their initial on-air fact-checking.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Movies/07/15/moore.gupta/index.html

Britain, Japan, Germany, Taiwan, Switzerland.

Watch the full episode online!

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/

Clumsy, I know, but I’m an engineer, not a professional writer :) As Christians and as citizens we have a responsibility to choose the wise course of action. Caring for the least of these involves finding a way to meet their needs – feeling compassion for them is not enough. I love how to marginalize the “government haters” at the end of your post. What basis do you have for believing that universal health care will work any better than universal retirement coverage (Social Security)? I’ve dropped the free, because paying your health care bills to the government in the form of taxes is just a different mechanism, the doctors will still get paid. Do you really want your doctor and nurse to provide the same level of customer service that you get from the driver’s license bureau? Do you want your health records maintained by people like the IRS? While attempting to fact-check Moore’s work is a good start, a better approach for the concerned Christian should contain research from those that you know will disagree with you. (http://www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/RequiredReading.cfm)

Health care is an exceptionally poor area to nationalize because of the issue of accountability. If you’ve ever travelled Europe, you’ll see an immediate difference between us and other Western countries – we are FAT. We smoke and drink to excess. American citizens create the majority of their own health problems through poor diet and lack of exercise. Health insurance doesn’t help much with this, which is another problem with our current health care system.

I know it’s rude to criticize without providing some constructive ideas. In addition to the reading at the Heritage Foundation, how about these ideas.
- Tort reform so medical malpractice insurance is not such a huge expense but so that patients are still protected.
- Health Savings Accounts so that health care benefits are tied to the individual, not to the job.
- Government backed medical insurance for those with pre-existing conditions who can’t get other coverage. Similar to government-subsidized flood insurance for the Gulf coast, this will always lose money. That doesn’t mean it isn’t the right thing to do.

Compassion is not enough. When I go to war, I want a commander who will accomplish the mission and bring me back alive. It would be nice if he or she was a nice person, but that’s secondary.