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Experts diagnose documentary, ‘Sicko’
by Holly
Auer
Of The
Post and Courier
Throughout the past three weeks, moviegoers nationwide have packed
theaters to take in a documentary skewering the American health care
system, a rather unlikely topic for a top-grossing summer film.
But last week, Michael Moore’s “Sicko” remained among the nation’s Top
10 films, beating out the glam, star-laden “Ocean’s Thirteen” but
coming in a few notches behind the off-color heartwarmer “Knocked Up.”
The Post and Courier rounded up a group of Medical University of South
Carolina health care workers and asked them to go see the movie, which
has polarized viewers. There’s ire from conservative groups that call
it anti-American, marches by fed-up nurses supporting the film’s
message, dismissal by politicians who say it’s too short on solutions
to be taken seriously, and heaps of “me, too!” stories from the
everyday folks who’ve gone to see it.
But putting the controversy aside, the doctors and nurses we talked to
say they’re just pleased to see how much dialogue the film has sparked
about the issue, warts and all.
They mostly agree that the American way of providing medical care is
indeed sick, beset by out-of-control costs, glitzy ads that make
patients push their doctors for drugs they might not need and
labyrinthine insurance rules governing who pays for what care and when.
Among the most pressing issues: how to provide for the nearly 50
million Americans without any health insurance at all. Some candidates
for the 2008 presidential election are crafting plans for universal
health care coverage, while others are calling for greater oversight of
the way insurance companies do business.
Those who work in the field see the results of system breakdown every
day, and they want change, too.
“We definitely have got to become a country where everyone has access
to care, and people can’t be completely devastated because they get
sick,” says Natalie Ankney, MUSC’s Heart and Vascular Center nurse
manager.
Care for all
In the tradition of his other films, Moore moves “Sicko” along through
a cherry-picked collection of anecdotes that best support his thesis:
evil insurance companies employing a band of well-paid people to deny
you treatment are making you sick. Meanwhile, he asserts, our neighbors
to the north and across the pond are flourishing in the loving care of
a robust medical care system paid for solely by the government.
And he tantalizes viewers caught in a landslide of inflating drug costs
and premiums with the constant reminder that in those places, every
doctor’s visit and hospitalization are free, and medications cost a
mind-bogglingly tiny price.
But Moore’s is no C-SPAN camera, capturing all the dry policy details
and problematic issues that make health care reform such a tough nut to
crack. In fact, notes MUSC President Dr. Ray Green-berg, it’s not even
“Anderson Cooper 360,” the jazzed-up, Gen X-grabbing nightly news
magazine.
This isn’t to say that Moore’s film is a reel of fiction. He does cast
attention on pressing problems, especially those that affect the
elderly and terminally ill. It’s just that it seems “there’s always
more to the story than what he tells,” said Dr. Patrick Cawley,
executive medical director of the MUSC Medical Center.
As a physician who has cared for just about every type of hospital
patient, he knows that most sick people have a complex story that can’t
be told in a 30-second, horror-filled snippet.
Take the clip that opens the movie, of a guy with a nasty gash in his
leg executing a home-stitching job on the wound because, we’re told, he
has no insurance. Did he try to get professional help first, or is he
just hamming it up for his buddies? Moore doesn’t tell us. Health care
workers say, though, that they’re bound by law to treat emergencies
regardless of a patient’s ability to pay. Clogged ERs are common
nationwide, so both insured and uninsured people likely will have to
settle in for a lengthy wait to be seen, but there’s not supposed to be
someone barring entry for those who can’t produce an insurance card.
“You were raised and taught that that is your responsibility,” said Dr.
Keith Borg, an emergency room physician at MUSC. “There’s very much a
culture that you’ll see and treat everyone. You don’t do a wallet
biopsy before you see someone.”
Government control
“Sicko” takes viewers along as Moore crosses the globe to countries
that provide nationalized health care, from France and England to
Canada and Cuba. Moore chats with doctors about whether the system has
eaten into their hearty paychecks, grills residents about whether
they’re strangled by huge taxes and trolls hospital waiting rooms to
see if anyone complains about their care. No, no and no come the
answers. Doctors, in fact, often are paid extra for doing “the right
thing” for patients, regardless of the cost.
But the picture Moore paints of these medical systems is undeniably
oversimplified, and the mere word “socialized” is heavily loaded,
Greenberg said. But as Moore points out, plenty of other entities
Americans rely on each day—the Postal Service and public libraries, for
examples—already are run by government.
And, in fact, a huge chunk of U.S. citizens already get their health
care from the government through Veterans Affairs or other programs
such as the federal State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which
pays for care to low-income children.
That VA system isn’t perfect, and waits to see specialty doctors are
common. But the VA has been widely praised for its advances in the
standardization of care and its efforts to build a robust electronic
medical records system.
“Most vets are happy with it, and they probably don’t think of
themselves as being in a socialized medicine system,” said Greenberg,
who trained in pediatrics and has degrees in public health and
epidemiology. “You don’t have to have the theater of Gitmo to make the
point that there are some groups in this country getting care that way.”
But rather than look close to home for solutions that work, Moore
hauled a boat of sick 9/11 emergency workers to Cuba to demand care at
Guantanamo Bay’s high-tech prison hospital.
“They don’t want any more than they’re giving the evildoers—just the
same,” he hollers to military guards through a bullhorn before
retreating from the compound.
As a nation that prides itself on its bustling free market, Cawley is
doubtful that the U.S. would ever adopt a truly single-payer system of
providing health care. What he envisions, though, is a basic level of
care—preventive check-ups, hospital care and low-cost drugs—available
to everyone for free. Extra services and coverage, then, could be
purchased from private insurance companies by people who wanted and
could afford them.
Other bandages to the ailing system, doctors and nurses say, might
include an electronic system providing doctors and hospitals access to
patient records from anywhere in the nation (this could cut down on
medical mistakes and costly drug duplication), passing more legislation
such as motorcycle and bike helmet laws to reduce accident injuries and
funding more preventive tests and care to treat diseases early.
Costly decisions
When allowed to dream a little, health care workers do say they wish
cash were less a part of the care equation here. Some organ transplant
patients, for instance, must prove that they have a large cash reserve
on hand to pay for their surgery and aftercare before they can get the
transplant.
“It’s sad that we’re a society that places some sort of value on a
person’s life,” Ankney said.
And even middle-class, insured patients often shoulder enormous costs
to take lifesaving medications, she says. Plavix, for instance, is a
drug commonly used in patients who’ve had drug-coated stents placed to
prop open clogged coronary arteries. Because there’s no generic
equivalent available yet, out-of-pocket costs for a month’s supply can
run around $400.
Pamela Smith, a pediatric emergency room nurse who also has a master’s
degree in business administration, laments insurers’ short-sighted
focus on the bottom line. Among preventive health care tests often not
covered: Pap tests, which help screen for cervical cancer, and
colonoscopies, which are proven to detect and prevent colon cancer.
Smith considers herself somewhat of a testament to the value of paying
for risk-reducing care: She had gastric-bypass surgery several years
ago and lost enough weight to help her wriggle free of the health
problems that often accompany obesity. But these days, it’s much harder
for patients to get the weight-loss surgery paid for, even if they’re
headed for costly diabetes and cardiac care.
“Would they rather pay $100,000 for a coronary bypass 20 years down the
road?” Smith wonders.
“Sicko” makes a compelling case that these knee-jerk denials and
decisions are bad: harmful for you, harmful for your grandmother and
harmful for the country at large. But the film perhaps begs for a
sequel about what, exactly, ought to be done about it all. And maybe
another one, if the audience is still buying, in which the lens widens
to show some of the other players in the health care system.
Because there are bad doctors, too, and patients who don’t follow
instructions or take care of themselves. And fast-food companies and
snack manufacturers that raise the nation’s collective blood pressure
and cholesterol levels. And tobacco companies and alcohol distributors
who sell substances that can be addictive and make people sick.
In “Sicko,” though, Moore reserves his nastiest indictments for big
pharmaceutical companies and the nation’s largest insurance companies.
“It’s easy to make them the villains in the story,” Greenberg says.
“There’s plenty of ammunition there, but I think the picture is more
complicated.”
Editor’s note: The article ran
July 16 in the Post and Courier and is reprinted with permission.
Friday, July 202007
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