Look, nobody would be able to convince me that Sicko is a completely even-handed review of the health care situation in America. Moore certainly has an agenda, and he's as free to make his opinion into a feature film as any of us. But take a look at this film and see if you can't see some merit in simply comparing our system to the health care received by other countries:
I don't buy all of Moore's arguments. He clearly does cherry pick data. And given all the corporatist propaganda having been parrotted over the years, I'd say he's in damn good company. It's kind of insulting when supposed free market types breathlessly warn us about Moore's blind spots when the other side of the debate has been trafficking in it for so long. Earth to socialized health care opponents and proponents: we're not stupid; we know you both have a horse in this race; we know we can't count on any of you to educate us completely (even if we get sick of the whole matter and fail to educate ourselves properly).
But there is one argument I do buy: the spiritual weight of worry that afflicts those who are on the ever-growing fringes of the system cannot be good for a nation of free people. However unfree they may be, this fundamental insecurity doesn't appear to exist in other countries. The loads of debt that keep people feeling they have no choice but to go along with an establishment that consistently rapes them - not really there in the other industrialized countries to the extent it is here. There is something to be said for that, and that something is a lot more than I hear any standard neoliberal or Republican say.
Moore admits that the French, the British, and the Canadians pay higher taxes. But they seem to get services out of them that, while not always the best, alieviates their worry and allows them to focus on other life issues. Maybe we don't need people from the government doing our laundry when we're sick; but the fact that a system exists which does provide this service shows us, as Moore argues, that there are other possibilities than what we experience (and realizing the possibilities is what anarchism is all about). In the same sense that we spend untold billions for a bloated, ineffective "national defense" because, well, at some level "we've" (let's pretend that the policies of a nation reflect the popular opinions, caeteris paribus) decided that it's a national priority worth spending on, they've decided that health care is something they want to prioritize. I don't really see why one is so different than the other.
And let's be clear: we have a government instituted system in this country: a heavy layer of regulations, laws, and privileges that allow certain favored corporations the ability to oligopolize the provision of health care in this country. It is the type of system, not the lack of one, that is the problem. Fifty cents of every health care dollar spent in the U.S. is spent by the government. We don't have some entrepreneurial free market in health care as the Right seems to want (but never seems to actually fight for in government). Given that our government's not even a consistent example of the principles those who fight universal health coverage promulgate and utilize as ammunition against arguments for a single payer system, whom exactly does it help to maintain the status quo even as more and more Americans find themselves sinking into debt, hopelessness, and wage slavery to pay medical bills?
The problem isn't collectivism, socialism, or government necessarily: the problem is, in fact, privilege - the enemy of the libertarians, communists, and anarchists of the 19th century, back before they all bought us off with promises of a utopia. If we're going to socialize our health care system, which we've already effectively done, shouldn't that socialism work in favor of the masses and not the corporations? It's not like capitalism is the enemy of collectivism; it just likes a certain kind of collective.
I want a truly free market in health care as much as anybody else, but if I have to choose between a system of corporatist serfdom and a socialist serfdom, I know which one I'll choose every time. Is it a principled choice? No - it's just a preference, but I think it's one most people hold when they have no escape from one soulless bureaucracy's thumb or the other's. The former MP from Britain shown in the film was right on the money about one thing: it's about choice, and nobody in this country has a choice unless they have the resources to buy their admission past the glass ceiling.
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