More on Health Care...

Sources for this week's 'toon:

• So, as you might have guessed, I finally got a chance to see Michael Moore's Sicko last week. I thought most of the film was excellent, a very impressive examination of the inequities of our health care "system" and comparative study of other countries' superior approaches to caring for the health of their citizens. I thought the most compelling argument for universal health care in the U.S. was the section on the old reliable, right-wing specter of "socialism," which of course is simply a code word to evoke the red scare. Moore gives a list of public services in this country which, by the definition of many on the right, would have to be considered "socialism." Mailmen? Socialists. Librarians? Socialists! Public school teachers? Socialists!! Police, fire, and military? SOCIALISTS!!
  
  Ralph Nader agrees that the movie is good, but now he wants to know where the movement for real change is going to come from. He laments the fact that movies only seem to stir up peoples' indignation on stuff for short periods of time.
  
  
• Check out Paul Krugman's expose on the right's "socialism" bogeyman, as well as the Heritage Institute's efforts to attack proposals to expand SCHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program).
  
  The Heritage Institute's arguments against SCHIP are well summed up in this cartoon by August Pollak from a couple weeks ago... they take a perfectly reasonable sentence (like "nearly three out of every four children would be eligible for taxpayer-subsidized health care"), and simply add an exclamation point and/or tone of outrage to it.
  


• Of course, when Sicko first came out, there were quite a few good columns on the subject, many of which were written by Krugman (predictably). In particular, he has us off to a good start in exposing the ultra-conservative underbelly of brand new presidential candidate Fred Thompson.
  
  Amanda Marcotte has Prezzidint Pipsqueak's quote on the subject, "people have access to health care in America... you just go to the emergency room." And, check out Barbara Ehrenreich's excellent post:
  

  Once, many years ago, I complained to the left-wing economist Paul Sweezey that America had no real health system. "We have a system all right," he responded, "it's just a system for doing something else." A system, as he might have put it today, for extracting money from the vulnerable and putting it into the pockets of the rich.

  
  
• Turns out the Dubster himself was treated for Lyme Disease last year. I'm guessing he has pretty good coverage, though...