\"Sicko\" and \"Frontline: Sick Around the World\" essay PDF

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Based on the films "Sicko" and "Frontline: Sick Around the World" viewed in class, this is a critical analysis paper of the healthcare system in the United States versus healthcare systems in other countries of similar economic and political systems as our own....

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Providing the Necessary Help

Elizabeth Adam SOC 1030: Social Welfare System Critical Response Paper Due: April 5, 2018

Providing the Necessary Help Both films “Sicko” and “Sick Around the World” give an insight into how drastically the United States suffers in the healthcare world. It takes a deeper look at healthcare and health insurance in a number of countries around the world and compares them to the healthcare system and lack of universal federal health insurance coverage found in the United States. Although both films are exaggerative for effect and show the scarier side of healthcare coverage, both directors have the common goal of bringing awareness to the fact that something needs to change in our country, that the way our health care system is run today needs to be changed, needs to be fixed. Both films shed light on a serious matter while keeping the atmosphere light and comical, in the narrators’ quirky dialogue and sarcastic comments on the quality of healthcare in the United States. From past lectures and assigned readings it is not an unknown fact that the United States was well behind other countries of similar economic and social structures in forming and instating a social welfare system. To this day, we do not have a national health insurance program. Ultimately, there is just a lack of compassion and care for people who are suffering in our country, and this is seen in both films about healthcare in the United States versus healthcare in other countries. For example, in “Sicko,” there was a scene that portrayed how a patient who could not afford their hospital stay and care at one of the hospitals in Los Angeles would be put unknowingly into a cab. The hospital nurses and workers would instruct the driver to drop the unwell patient off at a certain street corner in Skid Row, the neighborhood with the highest level of homelessness in the entire nation. The people working at a nearby shelter who witnessed this took the confused patients in and gave them the care and assistance they were deserving of but were not given at the hospital they had been kicked out of. Denying care, and especially going as far as kicking the sick and elderly out into the streets, is not a safe or caring way to help the 2

helpless, the sick, and the poor. It’s also seen in the film how volunteer first responders at the September 11th terrorist attacks in 2001 were not given adequate health care or insurance for their injuries sustained on scene, because the government claims they were volunteers, not stateemployed workers, so they are not under their responsibility. These are men and women who took time out of their days and their weeks to help these strangers who lost their lives or were injured in the attack, who put other people before themselves in one of the country’s greatest times of need. Rather than they get the help they needed and deserved, more money and help from the government was being put into the health care needs of the terrorists tied to the attack and other acts of terrorism across the country at the high-security prison in Guantanamo Bay. This just goes to prove that people who work in the healthcare industry in the United States are more focused on the money they can make rather than the health and safety of the people who are entrusting them with their lives. Why our country is in need of a drastic change in their health care policies nationwide is evident in a number of ways, our world today being so money-driven being one. Humanity needs not be forgotten. Secondly, The United States has a much shorter life expectancy rate than other capitalist democratic countries. It also has higher infant mortality rates than countries similar to itself in economic and social structure. Too many people in the United States today lack the ability to receive the healthcare they need, either because they do not have health insurance or they do not have the required out-of-pocket money their insurance plans make them pay upon receiving medical attention. As Bernie Sanders mentioned in his “Health Care for All” book, doctors around the country can tell of “patients who have died unnecessarily because they put off their medical visits until it was too late” (Sanders, Ch. 4, 2). In fact, thousands of people die each year in the United States because they did not get the necessary medical help when they needed

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it. Perhaps if the nation had more affordable healthcare and more affordable health insurance, more people would visit the doctors when they begin to feel the ailments of an illness rather than when it is already too late for healthcare professionals to be able to do anything to help them. Perhaps then, our infant mortality rate would also decrease and our life expectancy rates could increase. In “Sick Around the World,” Washington Post journalist T.R. Reid visited five different countries, all of which provide universal health care coverage to its citizens in one aspect or another. Michael Moore visited a few countries as well in “Sicko,” so information on the health care system and health insurance program in these other countries with similar capitalist democracies as our own is readily available. These other countries that both T.R. Reid and Michael Moore visited have several different policies about their healthcare system that the United States could adapt or modify and implement in their own system so that their healthcare system could be much better off. This is what both narrators asked when comparing the countries they visited to our own, asking what the United States can do now. For starters, these other countries require all citizens to have health insurance. In Germany, the only citizens who even have the choice of opting out of the national health insurance system are the very wealthy, the richest citizens. These countries also have a not-for-profit insurance system so that the insurance companies—mostly private in the majority of countries the narrators visited—compete with each other to get the most customers but cannot compete for money. In today’s society in the United States, almost all of the health care world is focused on making money for themselves. Insurance companies compete with each other and inflate their prices depending on their competitors’ rates. Their primary focus is not on their patients as it should be, but instead is on the money they can make. It is the same way with prescription drug companies. In the United States, prescription

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drugs are incredibly expensive. For example, Bernie Sanders discussed in the same book mentioned previously about how people in the United States pay almost twice as much for a common medicine than people in the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada pay for the same medicine. He gave several examples, including Nexium, a drug used to treat certain types of stomach or esophagus problems, including acid reflux, stomach ulcers, and even laryngitis. It sells for $30 in Canada but $305 in the United States (Sanders, Chapter 4, Page 10). A similar example is given in “Sicko” when, towards the end of the film, Michael Moore takes a group of the 9/11 responders he met to Guantanamo Bay. These volunteer responders complained about how they have been paying hundreds of dollars for their medications in the United States needed to treat their ailments gained on-site at Ground Zero, but were able to get the same exact medicine in Cuba for just a few cents. The one woman pays $120 one to two times a month for a prescription she needs, but was actually able to get it in Cuba for 3.80 pesos, or roughly 5 cents in United States currency. The reason the prices are so much lower for prescription drugs in other countries, such as Canada and Cuba, is the concept of fixed prices. This is another concept the United States could adapt from other countries’ health insurance system, keeping prices lower for patients and keeping powerhouse drug companies from raising their prices to unreasonable prices when these ill patients sometimes need these medications to save their lives. Another few beneficial techniques would be the ones found in Germany and in Taiwan. In Germany, health insurance is all privately funded and the system is set up so that the wealthy pay for those who cannot afford it. In Taiwan, everyone has a card with a chip on it that gets inserted into a system and shows the cardholder’s entire medical history. The government can see when you make too many healthcare appointments and visits and will even come knock on your door or send you to a psychiatrist if they notice such unwarranted behavior. Taiwan’s healthcare

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system is actually a lot like Medicare, a program the United States already has working, so adopting a program similar to either of these programs or a combination of both would not be such a dramatic difference. While all of this sounds great and way better than anything the United States has tried or currently has in place in its health care system, each of these countries explored have downfalls in their programs in one way or another. In Germany, doctors may not have debt from medical school loans, but they also don’t get paid as much as doctors in the United States. In Japan and Taiwan, the hospitals lost a lot of money because prices on health care and treatments were too low from the nations’ price control being set too low. In Switzerland and England, their health care system was entirely funded by the federal government, to the point where people living in Great Britain have no insurance premiums. This means that all citizens of Great Britain receive health insurance without themselves or their employers having to pay the insurance company or federal government a determined amount of money to make sure they are receiving such coverage. However, putting all of this financial responsibility on the federal government makes citizens pay a lot more in taxes and fees. In the films “Sicko” and “Sick Around the World,” narrators Michael Moore and T.R. Reid give a laid-back and slightly comical look at how other countries run their healthcare system and insurance programs in order to demonstrate how behind the United States is in the healthcare industry. In “Sicko,” Moore visits France and Great Britain, as well as Cuba, talking to residents there about the benefits and potential costs of their health insurance and healthcare visits. In “Frontline: Sick Around the World,” Reid visits Germany, Great Britain, Switzerland, Japan, and Taiwan, showing the positive aspects of their system, while also making sure to point out the aspects in which it is not excelling. In this way, Reid is giving ideas that the United States

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government could adopt and implement into its own healthcare system but also provides the problematic sides of the ideas with the suggestion that the United States could change or alter the programs these other countries use so they could have a system that works better than their current one – or lack thereof – and not have the negative impacts the other countries have witnessed. Both films have the common goal of bringing awareness to the fact that something needs to change in our country’s healthcare industry, in the way our health care system is run today. They are bringing awareness to the fact that people’s health and livelihoods need to be put before money and profit. The directors and narrators of these films shed light on the importance of universal healthcare, especially in a nation such as our own where more than forty-five million people live under the poverty line, with the hopes that someday this importance is recognized by the right people and change happens and a better health care system is put into place.

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