This is another great film by Michael Moore about the American health care industry compared to Canada, the UK, France and... Cuba. It is amazing to note that in the world's richest nation there is no free healthcare, and even for the people which have an insurance, insurers most of the time find a "pre-existing condition" to say to their "clients" that they will not get a buck for the healthcare they received. At the end, you have a totally biased system that focuses on money and profits instead of focusing on healthcare. You have insurance companies that make higher profits every year, CEOs that earn more than 2 billion dollars a year for their crap, a huge lobby that makes sure nothing is gonna change. Isn't it crazy? A big machinery working against the health of 300 millions of people. It is a bit like Hollywood films, that must be American to be true. So is it. What about the ideology of liberalizing the economy?!
The funny side of the movie is when Moore goes across the Atlantic ocean and comes to London first, and then to Paris. He meets a group of Americans that live in Paris. They say something that is worth of being mentioned: in France, the government fears the population, and the population does not hesitate to take to the streets and to shout its disapproval. Whereas in the US, people fear the government!
These Americans are glad to live in France and feel sometimes embarrassed when they see that their parents cannot afford medical care in the US. In France, everything is free. When you are pregnant, you get home help for free two days a week. When you are sick, you get free days as long as you are sick and in case of a serious disease, you even get few months to recover if needed, and still get paid 100% of your wage during that time. If you get sick, you can call a doctor that will come in less than one hour to your home, and that's still for free!
In the UK, the NHS was built up after the Second World War, in 1948. Since that time, no political party has ever thought of abolishing it. Healthcare works very well.
During that time, you see terrible stories happening in the US, namely the story of a guy which got two of his fingers cut and was told at the hospital, he's got to pay 12000 dollars for the ring finger and 60000 dollars for the middle finger. So he paid only 12000 dollars for the ring finger and now lives with a "smaller" middle finger. How can it be possible to put a price on parts of its own body? (that's the question his wife is asking, totally confused)
At the end, you see that the prisoners of Guantanamo in Cuba are better off than most Americans. And more than this, Moore goes to Cuba with few American citizens who worked as volunteers on Ground Zero and got ill because of it, to the hospital there, where they got a diagnose and a treatment for free - sic! A Cuban woman says that countries have to concentrate their effort on providing their citizens with healthcare, and the richer the country is, the more healthcare should be provided. Don't you think that these words are the most basic words ever heard? I think it is very wise, and you do not have to be graduated in economics to be able to say it. More than this, those graduates usually forget that kind of basic or common words, words that should not even be written down coz' they should be clear for everybody.
So this is how the film ends... leaving you alone - small citizen of the world - alone in your fears and in your dreams for a better world. You get to realize, bit by bit, how the world is manipulated by a few influencing persons, a few lobbies. What would healthcare in America look like if the Insurance industry were not giving a mass of money to the political parties for their campaigns? How would the world look like if there were no pressure from multinational companies over the different NG organizations? Well, it would certainly be worse for the dudes which are at the top of the machinery, which is to say less than 1% of the world population. That is why those guys have to keep vagueness about the way they impact the world's politics and economy, they have to keep people quite satisfied with what they have, so that they do not complain and ask for more.
The times are changing. Crises, wealthy crappy CEOs, the sour impression that some people do not deserve their position. Economic despotism is showing its limits. We have come to the point where most people are aware of the unfairness of the system. If we do not adapt it, it will disappear by itself. And at that time, the only countries that will go through the huge crisis of the mode of production will be amongst others African countries and Cuba!
To watch the movie, here is a link:
http://vidics.com/vidics.php?id=1571. Have fun watching it!
