Today’s San Diego Union-Tribune carries a rebuke to the “Sicko” maker for extolling Britain’s National Health Service by Liz Mair, a writer and political consultant who “serves the needs of center-right political organizations, political leaders and candidates.”
Ms. Mair seems to have a thing for Mr. Moore. Her web site recently savaged him for attacking CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta phonetically by pronouncing his name “‘Dr. Saaanjay Guuuupta,’"laying incredible emphasis and vitriol on his foreign name. Without doubt, it was an oblique comment on the reporter-cum-doctor's ethnicity. What a crazy and unacceptable way to discredit a foe.”
A former resident of London, Ms. Mair wants us to know that “no matter how great socialized medicine may sound, the best that it achieves is dishing up very poor care for all, as opposed to good care for all, or even most.”
The main point of Ms. Mair’s indictment is health care for all at times involves longer waiting for services, which is presumably a horror not visited on U.S. patients since so many of the riff-raff have no coverage and are not clogging up the waiting rooms. They go to hospital emergency units.
While Ms. Mair keeps harpooning Michael Moore, elsewhere she has advice for Republican Presidential candidates. Attacking Mitt Romney for attempting universal coverage in Massachusetts, she suggests to the others: “Since excess regulation contributes greatly to skyrocketing costs--which in turn makes it tough to buy insurance if you're among the working poor--rather than proposing more regulation, Republicans might consider pursuing deregulation of the insurance market.”
While Ms. Mair keeps harpooning Michael Moore, she is busy trying to dismantle the pitiful controls that do exist on HMOs and private insurers. It makes one wonder if she consults for clients other than politicians. Or is she just idealistically wrong-headed?
Showing posts with label Michael Moore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael Moore. Show all posts
Monday, August 06, 2007
Friday, August 03, 2007
Covering the Super-Healthy Only
If Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney or Chief Justice John Roberts applied for private health insurance, they wouldn’t get it.
Neither would Michael Moore for his obesity or Arnold Schwarzenegger, who went to the hospital in 2005 for rapid heartbeats.
An organization called the Medical Information Bureau would take a quick look at their histories and tell 470 companies they are hopelessly bad risks. Their work helps health insurers cherry-pick prospects to cover only those who are unlikely to get sick.
So much for universal coverage and the faith that Republicans, including President Bush, have in the marketplace. After the removal of his five polyps last month, he would have trouble getting health insurance himself.
CBS reported recently that a survey by the Commonwealth Fund last year found that 89 percent, or 52 million, of those looking for individual health insurance didn't get it because it was too expensive or they were turned down.
“Insurers are getting double the profit that they make in the group market. Why is it so lucrative? Because they exclude anybody and everybody who has even a remote sense of risk associated with their health care," said Dr. Bryan Liang, who has studied the insurance industry for more than a decade.
Someone should break the news to Rudy Giuliani, who loves the current system. His 2001 treatment for prostate cancer would rule him out for coverage in a New York minute.
Neither would Michael Moore for his obesity or Arnold Schwarzenegger, who went to the hospital in 2005 for rapid heartbeats.
An organization called the Medical Information Bureau would take a quick look at their histories and tell 470 companies they are hopelessly bad risks. Their work helps health insurers cherry-pick prospects to cover only those who are unlikely to get sick.
So much for universal coverage and the faith that Republicans, including President Bush, have in the marketplace. After the removal of his five polyps last month, he would have trouble getting health insurance himself.
CBS reported recently that a survey by the Commonwealth Fund last year found that 89 percent, or 52 million, of those looking for individual health insurance didn't get it because it was too expensive or they were turned down.
“Insurers are getting double the profit that they make in the group market. Why is it so lucrative? Because they exclude anybody and everybody who has even a remote sense of risk associated with their health care," said Dr. Bryan Liang, who has studied the insurance industry for more than a decade.
Someone should break the news to Rudy Giuliani, who loves the current system. His 2001 treatment for prostate cancer would rule him out for coverage in a New York minute.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Mighty Mouth Eats the Media
Michael Moore is like one of those huge cartoon creatures on Monty Python that would suddenly open its maw and swallow up the contents of city blocks. This week Wolf Blitzer, Sanjay Gupta and all of CNN are in the path of his giant jaws.
For a time, the Mouth with a baseball cap was funny and even marginally useful with his cutesy primers: Gun Control for Dummies, George Bush for Idiots and now Health Care for Those Who Haven’t Been Paying Attention.
His shtick of confronting the rich and powerful was amusing to a point but, now that he has expanded beyond a cottage industry, Moore is blurring the lines between self-promotion and being a total pain in America’s ass.
To promote “Sicko,” he has eaten his way through the State Department, Fred Thompson, Good Morning America and is now regurgitating CNN on his web site while chomping on “secret” memos from Blue Cross trembling in fear of his film.
Get it together, Michael. Others were against corporate greed, wanted gun control before you were born and tried to stop the war in Iraq, so get out of our faces and take it outside and start playing nice with the other rich kids. Being obnoxious while raking it in is not the only career choice.
For a time, the Mouth with a baseball cap was funny and even marginally useful with his cutesy primers: Gun Control for Dummies, George Bush for Idiots and now Health Care for Those Who Haven’t Been Paying Attention.
His shtick of confronting the rich and powerful was amusing to a point but, now that he has expanded beyond a cottage industry, Moore is blurring the lines between self-promotion and being a total pain in America’s ass.
To promote “Sicko,” he has eaten his way through the State Department, Fred Thompson, Good Morning America and is now regurgitating CNN on his web site while chomping on “secret” memos from Blue Cross trembling in fear of his film.
Get it together, Michael. Others were against corporate greed, wanted gun control before you were born and tried to stop the war in Iraq, so get out of our faces and take it outside and start playing nice with the other rich kids. Being obnoxious while raking it in is not the only career choice.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Dwarfing Jon Stewart
It's hard to get to sleep being haunted by visions of the hugeness of Michael Moore on the Daily Show a few hours ago. Did he eat Al Gore?
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Michael Moore, Cheap-Shot Messiah
It must be wonderful to be the smartest guy in a world of morons, the only honest person left on earth, the last great truth-teller in the universe.
On Good Morning America yesterday, Michael Moore took time out from promoting The Word on health care in America, to lecture Chris Cuomo on the failure of “the people in this building” and the rest of the media to prevent the war in Iraq. To his credit, Cuomo was having none of it.
Deconstructing Michael Moore is difficult because his heart is usually in the right place, but his judgment and journalistic ethics are off on some other planet. Documentaries are journalism, not audio-visual polemics, and he has erased the line between them.
Jon Stewart, no defender of MSM, was on point as usual when he told Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala on “Crossfire” that they were partisan hacks: “You should be doing debate, which would be great, but you’re doing theater.”
Moore is purporting to enlighten, but despite his pretensions, he is doing theater. He may give audiences vicarious satisfaction in dramatizing the idiocies of our health care system, but he isn't telling them anything new and he certainly isn't making any positive contribution to the debate over improving it. He is, however, making money and getting a lot of attention for himself.
Analyzing the media’s share of the blame for the war in Iraq is important, as Bill Moyers showed in “Buying the War,” but taking smug cheap shots is something else.
When Moore blithely blamed his hosts for the death of 3500 American soldiers and Cuomo challenged him to be careful about such sweeping assertions, Moore’s answer was “I don’t have to be careful.”
That says it all. Moore has made his reputation and millions of dollars by aspiring to be the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind. But his visions have been, to put it kindly, cockeyed.
On Good Morning America yesterday, Michael Moore took time out from promoting The Word on health care in America, to lecture Chris Cuomo on the failure of “the people in this building” and the rest of the media to prevent the war in Iraq. To his credit, Cuomo was having none of it.
Deconstructing Michael Moore is difficult because his heart is usually in the right place, but his judgment and journalistic ethics are off on some other planet. Documentaries are journalism, not audio-visual polemics, and he has erased the line between them.
Jon Stewart, no defender of MSM, was on point as usual when he told Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala on “Crossfire” that they were partisan hacks: “You should be doing debate, which would be great, but you’re doing theater.”
Moore is purporting to enlighten, but despite his pretensions, he is doing theater. He may give audiences vicarious satisfaction in dramatizing the idiocies of our health care system, but he isn't telling them anything new and he certainly isn't making any positive contribution to the debate over improving it. He is, however, making money and getting a lot of attention for himself.
Analyzing the media’s share of the blame for the war in Iraq is important, as Bill Moyers showed in “Buying the War,” but taking smug cheap shots is something else.
When Moore blithely blamed his hosts for the death of 3500 American soldiers and Cuomo challenged him to be careful about such sweeping assertions, Moore’s answer was “I don’t have to be careful.”
That says it all. Moore has made his reputation and millions of dollars by aspiring to be the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind. But his visions have been, to put it kindly, cockeyed.
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