The Michael Moore Film Few Will See

I recently returned from Ontario where my mother had a Cochlear implant done compliments of the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP). The latest figures from the National Association of the Deaf state that these implants cost from $40,000 to $60,000 dollars in a U.S. hospital including follow up and diagnostic (Wikipedia says $45,000 to $75,000).

How much did my mother's implant cost her ...... ?

If you've seen the new Michael Moore film, "Sicko", you already know the answer. Not a single dime. In fact, my mother was going to complain about the $30 she had to pay for two prescriptions as she left the hospital but I stopped her.

The movie along with the surgery showed me was what the sad truth really is. My Canadian mother's taxes cover her health benefits, almost entirely, as there is very little that is not covered by the provincial health plan in any Canadian province. My mother lost all her hearing in her right ear in December of last year and, six months later, she has been diagnosed, treated, given surgery and is expected to be fully recovered in a few weeks. Thats about par with the waiting period in the U.S. for those who can afford the operation.

She paid a smaller percentage of her pay last year federally and provincially than I ever have since returning to the U.S. almost 20 years ago. I pay about 30% of my salary in taxes and she pays about the same.

I know how this is possible and its the one thing that I wish Moore's film would have focused on, why can't WE have great health care, too? How can we PAY for it?

We need to start by voting for people who will cut Pentagon spending by small amounts. Ben Cohen has pointed out that if we just stripped the FAT (15%) from the Pentagon budget, we could fully fund education, give health care to all uninsured children and repair social security. If taking that 7.5 cents per tax dollar collected away from the military industrial complex would result in so much good, what would happen if we took away 15 cents or 30 cents???

Free health care for all, no starvation or homelessness, alternative energy research and production, free college for all, a living wage for all .......

Moore's film is great! Its shows the average American how flawed and corrupt our system is (I have a feeling we all already know that). But then, it gets truly powerful as it shows Joe Moviegoer the Utopian (by comparison) systems in France and Britain and Canada and Cuba. When put side by side with our immoral, greedy, evil, murderous system of health "care", eyes are opened that hopefully will stay that way. Go see it. The fact that "Sicko" is not getting the kind of press that "F911" got should show us that Moore is hitting a home run and TV's "silent" partners don't like it one bit.