"I'm great, but everyone else is screwed"

Sicko.

I haven’t seen. I have no desire to see it. I have no need to see it. I honestly don’t think you have enough money to entice me to sit through it without attempting suicide by artificial butter flavoring. One of the nice things about being an American, and likewise being a pompous ass, is that I can make full judgment on something I have very little first hand knowledge of. I know Michael Moore’s penchant for posing his movies as documentaries while including about as many facts as the latest installment of the Harry Potter series (England is real, owls are real, but after that, all bets are off.)

But what Moore has done well is bringing into the light a glaring problem in American society that has gone far too long unnoticed. Wait, scratch that, we’re talking about health care problems.

Healthcare seems to be the hottest of the hot-button issues this election season now that the terrorists have all gotten jobs as fry-cooks at Arby’s or whatever it is they’re doing these days. Apparently there are big problems with health care these days, and some 50 people show up to emergency rooms every hour with AIDS-embossed spears stuck in their kidneys and are stuck waiting an average of 6 hours before entering triage. Sounds like one dilly of a pickle to me.

Let’s try to skirt around the sensationalism and look at the facts.

According to The Health Care In America survey (found here) taken by ABC News/Kaiser Family Foundation/USA Today, “Most Americans are not satisfied with the nation’s health care system.” Startling news, to say the least. The survey found that 80% of Americans are dissatisfied with the cost of health care, along with 54% being disappointed with the quality of care. Also startling. Americans dissatisfied with thing they receive? Unheard of!

But if we look deeper, we see a discrepancy that shines some interesting light on the issue. The Health Care In America survey also found that 88% of those same Americans were satisfied with the cost and coverage of their personal insurance, along with 89% being quite satisfied with the quality of care they received through said insurance.

Par-don? You read right, America. Americans are frustrated with the quality of care in America, and quite upset with the cost of insurance, but when asked about the insurance they personally have, and they quality they’ve received, they’re peachy keen. Americans are very concerned and worried about a system that they feel is treating them just fine.

Continuing with the idea of unaffordable health care, according to the aforementioned survey, one specific group of people reported over 40% having trouble paying medical bills. Wonder which group it was? Americans with income less than $35,000. I don’t know about you, but I’m frankly astonished that people who don’t make very much money would have trouble paying for things which are notoriously expensive. The group with the second most trouble paying for medical bills? College students and those just out of college. Also not very surprising. What was quite surprising, at least I felt, was that only 12% of Americans over the age of 65 reported having difficult paying medical bills. With all that I’ve heard about grandma living on the streets out in the cold and not being able to get the care she so desperately needs, either the sensationalism surrounding these claims is worse than I thought, or grandma is just too proud to tell the Kaiser Family Foundation that she can’t afford Zoloft.

With all this talk, one wonders what the solution to our health care problems might be. And before you can even ask the question you’ll find a democratic campaigner diving through your window to tell you of the wonderous thing called “Universal Health Care” in that magical land just above us that we sometimes call Canada.

You pay your taxes, government jumps in and takes the reins, everyone gets healthy, and Mexicans, Blacks, Asians and Whites alike stand outside a hospital in their Sunday clothes posing and looking chipper for a photo-op. Sounds like heaven, right? Actually, it sounds like a badly written episode of Grey’s Anatomy to me, but that’s beside the point.

Even if we ignore all the real reasons Universal Health Care would be a colossal failure (long lines, waiting lists, lower quality of care, less incentive for doctors to be innovative, less incentive for citizens to become doctors, lower pay, fewer medical discoveries, fewer new techniques and medications, my mother’s job at Aetna becoming redundant) we can see that a good chunk of Americans don’t even want Universal Health Care once it actually starts to cost them something.

If we look at the same survey we’ve been talking from this entire time, 65% of Americans who originally gave their support for a Universal Health Care system, would no longer support it if it meant they would have to pay higher premiums or higher taxes. 67% would beg for their HMO’s back if Universal Health Care meant there would be waiting lists for non-emergency treatments, 72% if it would limit their choice of doctors. And an astonishing 82% would go running to Aetna for a PPO if Universal Health Care meant that some treatments that are currently covered in their insurance would no longer be covered under a Universal Health Care system.

Yup, that’s right. Universal Health Care is the greatest idea in the world and should be implemented immediately…as long as I don’t have to sacrifice anything for it. So much for the party that speaks for the unspoken voices.

Alright, I know this didn’t really cover all the talking points in what you wrote, Aerin. But I think I hit on some of the topics that you mentioned, and did my best to keep my Moore-bashing to the first section.