Cockney Robin 
| In The Times Online, columnist Minette Martin spouts off about
Michael Moore, denouncing him for misleading the American public by painting (in his film "Sicko") a deceptively rosy picture the British National Health System. You would think from reading her angry diatribe that the central theme of the film is the superiority of the NHS to the American system rather than the mind-boggling (to a Brit) cost of citizen access to the American system, the role of insurance companies in limiting access even by people who can afford insurance, and the stress and grief endured by citizens who are neither poor enough to have free access to needed treatment nor wealthy enough to afford it.
In fact, the NHS segment is simply part of a detour in which Moore presented---with considerable and obvious humorous hyperbole, I'd have said---the alternative arrangements by which other nations provide care to their citizens.
American conservatives will---and doubtless already have---latched on to Marrin's indictment of Sick and of the NHS as "evidence" in favour of a privatised system. In fact, in the midst of attacking Moore's admittedly glossy portrayal of the NHS, Ms Marrin acknowledges:...
None of these problems mean we should abandon the idea of a universal shared system of healthcare. It’s clear we would not want the American model, even if it isn’t quite as bad as portrayed by Moore. It’s clear our British private medical insurance provision is a rip-off. I believe we should as a society share burdens of ill health and its treatment. The only question is how best to do that and it seems to me the state-run, micromanaged NHS has failed to answer it. (Times of London Online)
In fact, it's standard practise in the UK to whinge about the NHS. We all do it reflexively, all the time. And a number of quite intelligent Americans I know would argue from much more direct experience than Ms Marrin that the American model is very nearly, if not exactly, as bad as portrayed by Moore
But most British people who have never experienced directly the particular form of privatised health practised in America are deeply shocked by its major drawback: the immense, and potentially life-altering expense.
The following is anecdotal evidence, but it's all gleaned from people I've met who would have had no reason to lie to me. I know one woman whose family went bankrupt financing the cost of treating a family member's prolonged, painful death. A friend of mine whose husband had emergency surgery for a head injury and who died in intensive care a few weeks later received, a month or so after the funeral, a bill for $25,000 (the amount remaining after her insurance provider had covered the other 80%). When a friend who suffers from a seizure disorder collapsed in a restaurant, the ambulance ride (not covered by insurance) cost her $500, or 1/3 of her month's pay.
Basic maintenance costs are also---from a British standpoint---astoundingly high. One friend of mine recently paid $3000 to have her colon inspected; another paid $800 to have a skin cancer removed from the fold between her nose and cheek. A root canal cost our mate Nicholas $1500. One woman I know had two molars pulled (cost $120) because she couldn't afford the necessary root canals ($3000).
In addition to tests and surgeries, the cost of essential medications can be astonishingly high. British citizens who complain of the NHS might find instructive this video footage
of a cancer survivor discussing the stress
she suffered and the sacrifices she made to pay for her treatment.
Americans who can afford insurance against the high cost of treating illness must often confront the reluctance of of insurance companies to pay for the treatments they need. If Ms Marrin doesn't quite believe this, she should read the article posted here in this blog by our very own WMD concerning her own struggles with her insurance provider after she became gravely ill. British people such as Ms Marrin and I may whinge about the messiness of the NHS, but at least we know that we don't have to choose between medical treatment and losing their homes.
The fact is, Moore's film was an awakening for many Americans. Many of them seem not to understand that most countries in the civilised world provide health care for their citizens. It's true that Moore made the systems in place in the UK and France look as if they operate far more satisfactorily and efficiently than they probably do. But the purpose of Sicko was not to recommend that the US adopt wholesale the system in place in France of the UK, but to illustrate to US citizens that such systems exist and that sick people are assured of receiving treatment. While Moore certainly didn't show the messier side of the NHS, he at least got across to Americans the notion that universal health care (like universal education) is considered a right of citizenship, not a privilege of wealth, in other civilised nations.
Whatever the limitations, problems, stupidities, and inefficiencies of the NHS may be, British people at least have the assurance that it's there and that they don't have to choose between, say, paying the rent or paying for a root canal. Marrin, who has never had to make that sort of choice, had better have stuck to pissing and moaning like the rest of us about the ways in which our system lets us down than have a go at Michael Moore.
Setting aside its gratuitous spitefulness, her article misses a great deal of the point of Sicko, which is intended not only to provoke the compassion of Americans for the suffering of their fellow citizens, but also to evoke the ironic laughter with which intelligent Americans respond when unacknowledged realities are made manifest. Has Marrin even a grain of humour beneath her obvious self-importance? Did she really miss the point of the film by as wide a margin as it appears? There is a "delicious irony"---to employ her own phrase---in her dismissal of the film:
The fourth estate has always had a bad name, but it seems to be getting worse. Journalism should be an honest and useful trade, and often still is. But now that journalism has more power than ever before, it seems to have become ever more disreputable....
Sicko, like all Moore’s films, is about an important and emotive subject – healthcare. He contrasts the harsh and exclusive system in the US with the European ideal of universal socialised medicine, equal and free for all, and tries to demonstrate that one is wrong and the other is right. So far, so good; there are cases to be made.
Unfortunately Sicko is a dishonest film. That is not only my opinion. It is the opinion of Professor Lord Robert Winston, the consultant and advocate of the NHS. When asked on BBC Radio 4 whether he recognised the NHS as portrayed in this film, Winston replied: “No, I didn’t. Most of it was filmed at my hospital [the Hammersmith in west London], which is a very good hospital but doesn’t represent what the NHS is like.”
I didn’t recognise it either, from years of visiting NHS hospitals. Moore painted a rose-tinted vision of spotless wards, impeccable treatment, happy patients who laugh away any suggestion of waiting in casualty, and a glamorous young GP who combines his devotion to his patients with a salary of £100,000, a house worth £1m and two cars. All this, and for free.
This, along with an even rosier portrait of the French welfare system, is what Moore says the state can and should provide. You would never guess from Sicko that the NHS is in deep trouble, mired in scandal and incompetence, despite the injection of billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money.(Times of London Online)
That the NHS is poorly administered or even that it is "mired in scandal and incompetence" is of course not an argument against the US trying to achieve something better; and that our state-run taxpayer-funded free-for-all system is riddled with problems is hardly a refutation of Moore's argument that the US should provide health care of some sort to its citizens.
And Sicko, like Moore's other films, contains much that is---and is intended to be---humourous hyperbole intended to awaken not indignation or self-righteous but the ironic laughter of recognition at the absurd gap between aspiration and reality. As noted, the whole film is richly infused with irony.
Did Marrin not notice this at all? Seemingly not. In her rather nasty and self-righteous conclusion, she jeers:
One can only wonder why Sicko is so dishonestly biased. It must be partly down to Moore’s personal vainglory; he has cast himself as a high priest of righteous indignation, the people’s prophet, and he has an almost religious following. He’s a sort of docu-evangelist, dressed like a parody of the American man of the people, with jutting jaw, infantile questions and aggressively aligned baseball cap.
However, behind the pleasures of righteous indignation for him and his audience, there is something more sinister. There’s money in indignation, big money. It is just one of the many extreme sensations that are lucrative for journalists to whip up, along with prurience, disgust and envy. Michael Moore is not Mr Valiant-for-truth. He is Mr Worldly-wiseman, laughing behind his hand at all the gawping suckers in Vanity Fair. Don’t go to his show.
"Don't go to his show," eh? Perfectly sound advice in a way to our fellow British citizens---because they don't need to. Though those who have the requisite grain of humour and no axe to grind might well enjoy Moore's pranks and japes as well as the deadly serious testimony who have suffered. And they may also find in it ample grounds to thank their lucky stars for the UK's flawed, scandal-mired, inefficient NHS.
thanks again to D for posting this for me & for other assistance...
Memeorandum blogger round-up here
IF YOU'VE READ ALL YOU WANT TO ABOUT THE HEALTH CARE ISSUE, SEE MR J.Q. PUBLIC FOR FUN:
Mr. J.Q. Public: Which GOP Candidate Will Keep Us Safe Against the Threat of Illegal Aliens?
TO READ SOME ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT OF MOORE'S CENTRAL THESIS, SEE THE FOLLOWING RELATED BN-POLITICS POSTINGS
My health insurance blues
Contractor Fraud: Driving up Healthcare Costs?
Hearing Tomorrow: Did the FDA Endanger Diabetics?
Judge Determines that Three Drug Companies engaged in Unfair and Deceptive Pricing.
Drug Companies Scammed Taxpayers, Cancer Patients, Others
Threats to Doctors: Was it Pranksters, Patients, or Peeved Biotech Investors?
FDA Faces Bipartisan Criticism Over Bureaucrats' Bonuses
The Cost of Health Care for the Seriously Ill: A Survivor Speaks to the Edwards Campaign.
Jane Hamsher on the Trouble with "Getting Sick in George Bush's America" -- and She's not Alone
Death by Hospital (Infection), Consumers Union Wants Congress to Act
National Health
Why Drug Prices are so High: GAO & Other Sources
Private Insurers Milking Medicare (i.e., Seniors & Taxpayers)
LINKED
Quack Michael Moore has mad view of the NHS (Times Online)
Woman dies in ER lobby as 911 refuses to help (MSNBC)
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