Man they're insurance companies, they would just use *your* money to build a newer, better facility for themselves lol. :)

Funny because America's system is great if you're rich.

lol good point.. we'll blow them all up.. if it says insurance on the door it gets a bomb :1orglaugh

The biggest problem with the Canadian system is caused by the American system. Canada's biggest issues is a shortage in doctors because we train them and then they head south as specialists for the big money in the for profit system. Couple that with the fact the US refused to build more medical schools to meet their demand in house, has cause a huge need to import their doctors from elsewhere. This is being slowly rectified as states are now green lighting more medical schools to meet their own demand.

Also in Canada we train a lot more GP's than the US does as most doctors in the US chase the gold as specialists. So the GP's we train up here eventually get filtered off to be GP's down south.

Canada needs to increase wages a bit to keep doctors and nurses here, but also I think a law needs to be put in place that if your trained in Canada you have to give X amount of years back to the country. Some will choose to go down south to do their medical school but with the lack of schools there, they may not get in anyway.

In Costa Rica, its much much much more affordable to pay for what you want and need. In the US its quite different.

This is another big issues, especially with our doctor shortage. I think a small user fee is needed to help reduce the checkups where someone gets the sniffles and a cough and the first day they are in the doctors office. If they had to pay $10 to see the doctor they may think twice about it. If on day 5 or 6 they still feel it they probably decide to go see whats up. If you got 20% of the people to think twice before going for the common cold symptoms that would be a big help to the system.

MM wold be a manager at Wendy's if he wasn't making movies - because that's about all that he's qualified for.

MM tells us that health care in other countries is "free". Great, let's do that in the US. Let's double my taxes - which would cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars a year personally - so I can go see the same doctor the homeless person down the street gets to see. That's a brilliant idea.

Three years ago I was told I had to have an operation. From my first contact with a doctor to the operation was a month. I had the operation early in the morning, was home in the late afternoon, and all it cost me was $20 for some post operation treatment. I had no problems.

Meanwhile, back to the subject of your thread tehBoyAlley :winkwink:

It sure is surprising that CNN felt it necessary to respond to Moore on their own media network concerning their own conduct *lol*

The real reasons may not be obvious - I'm sure CNN did not elect just to have a pissing match with Moore - there are probably a number of "internal reasons" why this was thought necessary and odds on, we will never know these.

Both Moore and CNN may quibble about their own inaccuracies - any media has inaccuracies and it's the same the world over. (Hell.. I've even had em spell my name wrong and assigned quotes supposedly acting on behalf of an organization I was not even a member of!) These innaccrances may be petty, tho can be important in certain situations - but the Moore/CNN tangle is basically nitpicking and both have an agenda to continue this. From Moore's angle he is looking at overall criticism of CNN US's reporting over years (and he sure has a point in areas). From CNN's angle, their public face is being questioned and, ongoing from that, their integrity as the "most trusted name in news" (always thought that claim to fame is a sitting duck waiting to be shot, especially when you compare CNN US to CNN International *s*).

This is getting funny :) But doubt the final outcome will be unhealthy as long as the pair of em stay out of the swamp and stay on a sane level - transparency and accountability is a good thing :winkwink:

Cummon, I'm not going to get into the swamp with you Richard, but get some balance.

There is no point in attacking the messenger - Mr Moore is film maker who has a degree of credibility and has awards for his work. It's not a matter of whether you agree with him or not. He tends to hit on subject material designed to make people wake up and think - that is more than valid. Moore has achieved more in his lifetime than most of us, and I'd bet whether that is in the movie field or in general media, he'd be doing the same thing regardless - and not hold any position as an employee of that prestige international organization known as McDonalds.

Mr Moore never said healthcare was "free" - you claimed he did. It is common sense that any healthcare system costs money and this is raised by governments thru taxes within all universal healthcare systems. Nobody thinks otherwise. The end result of that is, for individuals, this is "free" and they do not have to concern themselves over the cost of this - it's already included in their taxation system.

No country providing universal health care has double the taxes of those in the US as you suggested. Give or take a few percent either way, all western nations are on a fairly level playing field re taxes. The diffences are mainly in the way these taxes are distributed and what level of services are "given back" to the public directly.

CNN should have also responded to their flag wavyness for how many years before they remembered they were supposed to pretend to be objective.

haha exactly.

OMFG.

This is absolutely hilarious, CNN actually comes across like a 3 year old child lying about who drew on the kitchen wall with a crayon.

Perfect example is :

CNN RESPONSE:

We believe our example of so-called "elective" procedures such as hip replacement and cataract surgery is accurate and is helpful information. More than 400,000 Americans have hip or knee replacements each year in the U.S. (http://www.niams.nih.gov/hi/topics/a...s/jointrep.htm). By age 80, half of all Americans either suffer from a cataract or have had cataract surgery (http://www.nei.nih.gov/health/catara...ract_facts.asp).

Basically Moore pointed out that CNN pulled out a stat from a survey of 6 countries for elective surgeries only...

I have lived in both US and Canada. Frankly there is no comparison. If you can affords private care, US is best hands down.

If you can't afford health care in the US you don't get any period. You may be faced with bills that you will spend a lifetime to pay off if you need an emergency operation in the US, without coverage...

Lady Mischief, I understand what you're saying. Our health care system is as flawed as that in the UK, but it's WAY better than the situation in the US.

I have had care in both countries, I have the experience to make comments on this subject.

CNN do have a number of respected journalists on their staff or contracted, and they do produce balanced footage within their reporting. Much of this appears to be shot "on the ground" and the final result is what it is - hard to re-script or reshoot these events.

Where there appears to be a difference is when content comes from a studio. That opens up a whole range of possibilities to sway and it's a more controlled situation - from basic background graphics, "opinions" from pundits (who often have never been in these situations in their lives) - to anchor personalities who elect to give their "opinions" of the news they are supposed to be delivering to the public. (The latter is prob more "amateurism" than anything - doubt their "opinions" are scripted - just that they talk too much :))

CNN is more than capable and fully understand what delivery of straight news reports involve. The do exactly that on the CNN International version. It is hard to imagine the editorial staff in Altanta and New York get so carrying away attempting to produce colorful news delivered by "all hair and smiles" anchor girls that they manage to produce the same studio news stories in a totally different way for the US market (allowing leeway, since there is nothing wrong with regionalized news and accented on what affects people in that region).

On CNN's side - they have a commercial problem to overcome in that their revenue depends on sponsors. It would probably be a conflict of interest with sponsors when discussing, in this instance "Sicko", aspects of healthcare and the pharma industry when every ad slot is yet another advertisment trying to purvey pills and attempting to convince the US public they need them :) But.. that's their biz angle problem...

to the best of my knowledge, you're an employee. Maybe a high priced one, but I doubt VERY much that your additional taxes would be hundreds of thousands of dollars. *I* don't pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes and I'm pretty damn sure you're not in my tax bracket.

Just because YOU didn't have any problems doesn't mean there aren't problems. You /= everybody else.

Are you saying the homeless guy down the street has no right to live because he's poverty stricken? Shall we eat his children?

Bang on...

As for LadyMischief whining about our system... the grass is always greener... Even with our problems there's no way in hell I'd want to give it up for a US system of letting the uninsured die.

The problem MM is pointing out is that it's not just the uninsured who die. It's the underinsured who in many cases thought they had all the insurance they would ever need.

Whoever it was who pointed out that CNN and other news organizations have a conflict of interest due to corporate sponsorships, you're exactly right. At one time news divisions were excluded from the profit machine. They weren't expected and weren't asked to make a dime in order to prevent just such a situation as we have today. That system was preferable to our current one, I believe...

hit it right on the nail :thumbsup

That's a pretty insane letter. Well written.

that would be fun :1orglaugh

i hate Michael Moore

Actually, there is a ton of stuff the govt doesn't pay for. Everytime I go to the dentist or get new glasses I have to pay for that stuff.

How often do most people get surgery? Probably almost never. So in my personal case, I pay for almost everything medical that I have to do.

The main problem with our "free" system, is that people abuse it. We literally have people who just go to the doctor (GP not specialist) for fun because they are unemployed and bored or simply have nothing better to do. Everytime someone gets a sniffle its, "uh oh better go see the doctor". Of course, this is stupid and it just increases their workload unecessarily. The people who are ACTUALLY sick have to wait in line until all these other losers are done.

moore is a fat fuck...what a sloppy person, you cant listen to a sloppy fool l like moore

I will give credit to CNN on one point: They have the nuts to at least address the issue. If this was Fox News, they would be running a major smear campaign against Michael Moore and interviewing all the hookers he has been with.

CNN actually sound like they almost care. Almost.

I love how many people try to say that the wait times in Canada and other first world nations with universal healthcare are "unbearable". One of my aunts started getting severe headaches, then about a week later she started to see nothing but blackness for a few minutes at a time. Her doctor was somewhat concerned and wanted her to get a CT scan. It took them six weeks to see her! Six damn weeks to get a CT scan. She had blue cross/blue shield at the time… not sure if she had different insurance would there have been any difference in wait time.

On a note, they never found out what was wrong with her. She still has the 'blackouts' occasionally but the scans didn't reveal anything in her head.

Will quote you an actual situation re Canada/US - tho it's only one example and can't say if this is a norm.

Was involved with coding of a "patient system" to permit healthcare professionals to access patient data as rapidly as possible. This depended on laws and whether private data would be permitted to be shared in this way etc and plenty other factors - too many and not relevant to the point.

Anyways... The software was developed in Canada and was implemented there are various centers. Among others, a fair number of US healthcare companies expressed interest. It was astounding that the attitude to pricing of that system (it cost a good lump of serious money) was more than doubled for the US market. Why? Because that is what they expected to pay and reflected the ROI by using it. There was no real sense in this - it was just another group of US healthcare corps who were charging excessively high costs to patients who felt they could throw away money at this level (and presumably attempting to reduce the balance on their profit/loss accounts).

Can't say - there is a benefit to a system of this type, but smells very similar to US pharma companies who have a blank check on what they can charge hospital groups for their product. US laws allow this is to specifically happen and without any tenders or competitive quotes. Who pays? Individual patients. It's too swamplife and immoral - tho "legal".

The vendor corp in Canada was, of course, happy to do that biz - they never got more money from any other country for the background abuse of patients - tho that could still possible under any healthcare system.

We pay a lot of taxes... They go to ear-marks... Why does the entire nation need to pay for a bridge in Alaska or drug programs in Memphis? Let their own states and localities handle that shit.

Also here in America we sit in line just as much as the rest of the world. Call your doctor and tell them your ear is ringing for some unknown reason... How long are they making you wait for an appointment? Mine is making me wait 3 fucking weeks... Tell me that doesn't compare to socialized medicine.