Analysis: "SiCKo" and My Experience with Socialized Healthcare

The other day, I was watching Michael Moore talk about his new movie, "SiCKo with Chris Matthews on MSNBC's Hardball. Moore and Matthews discussed socialized health care, and at some point, Moore said that the media typically talked only about the negatives of the socialized Canadian health care system. He said that the waits weren't so bad and the Canadians he talked to were happy with their health care.

On Moore's website , he shares a link to a Canadian newspaper, in which one Canadian official says: "If they've (Canadians) ever doubted the merits of the Canadian system or wondered if we'd benefit from for-profit health care, this film will bring them back to reality very quickly."

Now, I haven't seen the movie "SiCKo," yet, but I've watched a lot of the movie "hype" on Larry King and other shows. I like Michael Moore - I thought he did a great job on "Fahrenheit 9/11" and I'm looking forward to seeing what he has to say about our current health care crisis in "SiCKo." I've looked through the "SiCKo" facts that Moore outlines regarding the Canadian health care program regarding the relatively short wait times and that "70 to 80 percent of Canadians find their waiting times acceptable." As an American who lived in Canada for almost three years, this certainly wasn't my experience.

No, I had to get on a 6 month waiting list just to see a doctor for my annual exam. Routine procedures that are done in the doctor's office here were done in hospitals in Canada, and I had to wait months for those to be done too. I watched coworker after coworker receive substandard healthcare. One coworker who had a heart attack in his early 40's was put on a 6 month waiting list for more tests. The 1 year old daughter of another coworker was sick and spent months waiting for diagnostic testing to tell if she had cancer or not (luckily, she didn't). A friend received such poor care in a Canadian hospital that he almost died (he was relatively healthy and in his 20s).

Canadians pay a tax rate of almost 50% in order to pay for their socialized health care system, so it certainly doesn't come for free. I think we can all agree that our current health care system is broken - I don't understand why simple medical tests cost so much and why so much of our country is without basic care. But we need to think twice before we make the troubled Canadian healthcare the model for our own country's healthcare system.

Sources:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/

http://www.michaelmoore.com/sicko/index.html

http://www.mississauga.com/article/5106