I've spent the past three evenings at the movies. On Sunday, I saw "I, Tonya." On Monday, I saw "Citizen Jane," about Jane Jacobs and her activism with housing projects. That one was followed by a panel with a couple of local college professors and the head of the local council on economic development.
Then last night, I saw another documentary: Fix It: Healthcare at the Tipping Point. It provides an argument for "Medicare for All." You can actually watch this one online (https://fixithealthcare.com/). But what was extra special was that the producer and director of the film were both there and spoke after. It was also kind of neat that, even though the film speaks to national and international issues, it was made locally and you can see some nice footage of our city, the downtown (where I work), and the former mayor, who is interviewed and who works in the building next door and is still quite active locally.
The big roadblock to single payer isn't so much it being a conservative vs liberal ideological issue, but the lobbying money that the insurance industry and big pharma throw at the issue.
The producer and director also made two other films, one on Big Pharma, which they'll be showing locally next month (and which you can see online at https://fixithealthcare.com/big-pharma-movie/) and a third documentary, which they'll be releasing in about a month--no local screening or online access yet, but I expect there to be.
I feel so fortunate to currently have employer insurance, but I paid my own, first under COBRA and then outright (individually and then on healthcare.gov) from 2009 thru 2014. I don't really look forward to getting older but I can see the benefit of getting to Medicare age with my friends and clients.
Moves, movies, movies--and Single Payer healthcare
February 28th, 2018 at 09:26 pm
February 28th, 2018 at 11:32 pm 1519860776
March 1st, 2018 at 01:00 am 1519866021
There's already somebody telling you what you can get reimbursed for (and not what you can have done--you just pay out of pocket for unteimbursed expenses). How do you think it would be different if it was the government deciding on the reimbursements rather than a private insurer? There's always someone who can do "no, we won't pay for that." How do you think it would be different if it was a government institution rather than a myriad of private insurers?
March 1st, 2018 at 12:39 pm 1519907941
March 1st, 2018 at 08:55 pm 1519937716
March 2nd, 2018 at 01:22 am 1519953746
It's lucrative for the pharma companies, medical professionals, government, and processed 'food' companies to help one another feed the epidemic. The more I learn, the more disgusted I get. To CCF's point, a doctor cannot treat a cancer patient with nutritional remedies without risk of losing his license. If you want to use the Gersen therapy approach, it not only isn't covered by insurance - you must leave the country to save your life.
Hopefully the repeal of the individual mandate will remain so that healthy people who use preventive approaches to healthcare - not covered by insurance of course - can pay for them along with small premiums for a catastrophic policy. But unfortunately, that won't help the growing number of chronically ill. For that, our culture would need to change to embrace health over profits.