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Take a Republican, Get Michael to wash your clothes

See the Movie, Start the Revolution …a letter from Michael Moore

Thursday, July 26th, 2007

Friends,

I am overwhelmed by the response to “Sicko.” And I’m not just talking about all the wonderful, heart-felt letters you’ve sent me and the stories you’ve shared with me about the abuse you’ve suffered from our health care system.

No, I’m talking about how thousands of you are taking matters into your own hands and using the movie to do something. From Seattle to New England, each day I learn of numerous groups holding meetings or dinners after the movie to discuss it and to plot a course for action. A church in Plano, TX took its weekly bible study group to see “SiCKO.” 70 people crammed into a Wisconsin coffee shop’s back room. Groups are plotting over pancakes in Illinois and microbrew in Missouri. E-mail addresses are being exchanged in theater lobbies. A Connecticut group is inviting legislators to see “Sicko” and keeping a tally on their website. Local groups have been buying out theaters to have special screenings for their members. Information tables are set up, literature is distributed, action groups are formed.

It’s all an amazing sight. I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to see the impact a movie can have. For all of you who have written me to ask, “What can I do,” well, read more about what others have done, and then try these simple steps:

1. Call or write you member of Congress right now (I’ll wait) and tell him or her that you insist they become a co-sponsor of H.R. 676 — “The United States National Health Insurance Act.” It’s sponsored currently by Rep. John Conyers and 76 other members of Congress. Insist that your congressperson be one of those co-sponsors. I want to see 100 co-sponsors by Thanksgiving. Will you help make that happen?

2. Call and write to each of the candidates running for President. Tell them you expect them to back H.R. 676, and to take the Senator Brown pledge. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio refuses to accept his free, government-run health insurance until EVERY American is covered.

3. Organize your own local HealthCare-Now! coalition. You can do it in your own neighborhood. It has to start somewhere. Everyday people have to make this happen. Don’t wait for someone else to do this. Ask yourself, “if not me, who?”

4. Call your local media and tell them about your health care horror story. Many papers and TV stations have been running these since “Sicko” arrived in theaters. They like the local angle. Tell them you saw the movie and that there’s a “Sicko” story happening right here in (fill in the blank). Tell them you are passing it on to me.

Well, that’s a start. Here’s what I’m going to do. Because last weekend’s “Win a Trip to a Universal Healthcare Country” was so successful (the winner will be announced next week), this weekend we’re going to try something different: it’s “Take a Republican to ‘Sicko!'” C’mon, we all have a conservative in the family! They mean well. It’s just that they believe what they’ve been told about that scary “socialized medicine.” Treat them to the movie this weekend and tell them to send me their ticket stub and entry form. I will hold a drawing and the lucky winner will get to have me come to their home and do their laundry — just like in France! Now, what would make a Republican happier than to see me working away in their laundry room?!

I truly believe that the health care issue is one where we can find some common ground with those who may hold different opinions than us. After all, they’re getting the shaft by the same insurance and pharmaceutical companies we are. And sooner or later, they’re not going to take it any more, either.

Yours,
Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

P.S. I will be on Jay

Brilliant essay on private health care

BARBARA EHRENREICH|
Health Care vs. the Profit Principle
Posted July 12, 2007 | 12:35 PM (EST)
Read More: Breaking Politics News, Barbara Ehrenreich, George W. Bush, U.S. Congress, Aetna Inc., U.S. Republican Party

It’s always nice to see the President take a principled stand on something. The man formerly known as “43,” and now perhaps better named “29” for his record-breaking approval rating, is promising to battle any expansion of government health insurance for children — and not because he hates children or refuses to cough up the funds. No, this is a battle over principle: private health care vs. government-provided health care. Speaking in Cleveland this week, Bush boldly asserted:

I strongly object to the government providing incentives for people to leave private medicine, private health care to the public sector. And I think it’s wrong and I think it’s a mistake. And therefore, I will resist Congress’s attempt … to federalize medicine…In my judgment that would be — it would lead to not better medicine, but worse medicine. It would lead to not more innovation, but less innovation.

Now you don’t have to have seen SiCKO to know that if there is one area of human endeavor where private enterprise doesn’t work, it’s health care. Consider the private, profit-making, insurance industry that Bush is so determined to defend. What “innovations” has it produced? The deductible, the co-pay, and the pre-existing condition are the only ones that leap to mind. In general, the great accomplishment of the private health insurance industry has been to overturn the very meaning of “insurance,” which is risk-sharing: We all put in some money, though only some of us will need to draw on the common pool by using expensive health care. And the insurance companies have overturned it by refusing to insure the people who need care the most — those who are already, or are likely to become, sick.

I once tried to explain to a Norwegian woman why it was so hard for me to find health insurance. I’d had breast cancer, I told her, and she looked at me blankly. “But then you really need insurance, right?” Of course, and that’s why I couldn’t have it.

This is not because health insurance executives are meaner than other people, although I do not rule that out. It’s just that they’re running a business, the purpose of which is not to make people healthy, but to make money, and they do very well at that. 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.

But let’s not just pick on the insurance companies, though I wouldn’t mind doing that — with a specially designed sharp instrument, over a period of years. Sunday’s Los Angeles Times featured a particularly lurid case of medical profiteering in the form of one Dr. Prem Reddy, who owns eight hospitals in Southern California. I do not begrudge any physician a comfortable lifestyle — good doctoring is hard work — but Dr. Reddy dwells in a 15,000 square foot mansion featuring gold-plated toilets and keeps a second home, valued at more than $9 million, in Beverly Hills, as well as a $1.4 million helicopter for commuting.

The secret behind his $300 million fortune? For one thing, he rejects the standard hospital practice of making contracts with insurance companies because he feels that these contracts unduly limit his reimbursements. (In a battle between Aetna and Reddy, it would be hard to know which side to cheer for.) In addition, he’s suspended much-needed services such as chemotherapy, a birthing center and mental health care as insufficiently profitable. And his hospitals are infamous for refusing to treat uninsured patients, like a patient with kidney failure and a 16-month-old baby with a burn.

But Dr. Reddy — who is, incidentally a high-powered Republican donor — has a principled reason for his piratical practices. “Patients,” the Los Angeles Times reports him saying, “may simply deserve only the amount of care they can afford.” He dismisses as “an entitlement mentality” the idea that everyone should be getting the same high quality health care. This is Bush’s vaunted principle of “private medicine” at its nastiest: You don’t get what you need, only what you can pay for.

If government insurance for children (S-CHIP) isn’t expanded to all the families that need it, there is no question but that some children will die — painfully perhaps and certainly unnecessarily. But at least they will have died for a principle.

Sicko discussion

Yesterday, we had a Sicko discussion at the Penn Newman Center. To our delight, we had about 30 or more people who came to hear Dr. Walter Tsou talk about the moral AND economic arguments for single payer and HR 676. Later, Chuck Pennachio spoke about the arguments for HB 1660 and SB 300, the Family and Business Health Security Act which would provide a single payer program in Pennsylvania. There was a spirited discussion mostly around people’s impression about the movie, about responses to critics of single payer, and about the need for local organization around the single payer effort. In that last regard, the Phila Area Committee to Defend Health Care has been a leader in the Philly area for single payer health care for many years and it was a welcome addition to use Sicko as a way of inspiring others to join us. If you are interested, come to our meetings on the second Tuesday of each month at 7 – 9 PM, Penn Newman Center, 3720 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA. Send a note to phillyhc4all@aol.com

"Sicko’s" Successful Weekend

“Sicko’s” Successful Weekend Puts My Movie in 200 More Cities Beginning Today!

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007

Friends,

The results are in from the weekend — and they are amazing! “Sicko” more than doubled what industry insiders had predicted it would do for the weekend and, as I predicted, it did indeed have the second largest opening weekend in film history for a documentary (after F911). It also had the second highest per screen average for the weekend (after the Pixar animated film, “Ratatouille”). All this in spite of the fact, as Variety wrote, it’s not been a very good year for documentaries at the box office. According to Variety, there have been 29 docs released in theaters in 2007, and they have grossed less than two million combined. What does it say about the state of affairs for non-fiction films if, in just three days, one film more than doubles what all 29 of them did together? I’ve decided I want to do something about this. I see so many great documentaries and it’s a shame that most of you don’t get to see them. Later this year, I will announce a new project that will help other filmmakers get the distribution they deserve.

Of course, if you live in Lincoln, NE; Bangor, ME; Reno, NV; New Haven, CT; Columbia, SC; or Oklahoma City, you didn’t get to see “Sicko” this weekend either. But thanks to the massive turnout in the 440 theaters who had it, the studio has decided to expand “Sicko,” TODAY (Tuesday, July 3) to 200 more theaters! And this Friday, they will add another 100 cities. Those of you who went to see it in the last few days have made it possible for others around the country to see my movie. Thank you.

So this will become the make-it-or-break-it week for “Sicko.” Will you help me? Here’s something you can do right now. Go to your address book icon on your computer and send a brief note to all your friends and associates about why they should see “Sicko.” Then organize a group of your friends to go see “Sicko” some night this week. I promise you that you won’t be disappointed. After all, what’s the worst that could happen — a pardon or a commutation from the President of the United States?

On Sunday, Canada celebrated the 45th anniversary of its free, universal health care system — with its built-in bonus of living longer than we do. Why do they have this and not us? We’ve already taken their Stanley Cup from them for good. Let’s demand we get to live as long as they do, too! What good is a dumb ol’ Cup if we aren’t around long enough to use it?

The letters you are sending me are powerful and profound. Thank you for sharing with me thousands of more stories about the criminal way our system operates. One woman wrote to say her dentist just gave her this choice: have all her teeth pulled, or pay him $30,000 to fix and rebuild them. She told me she’s made the choice to give up her teeth — a choice she was forced to make only because she lives from paycheck to paycheck in middle class America. This is a crime.

Go to your address book on your computer now and send out that e-mail to everyone you know and tell them to find their way to the theater this week. This film stands the chance of igniting a movement. Let’s not let this moment pass.

Yours,

Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
www.michaelmoore.com

We have a PA House Single Payer Bill

We have a PA House Single Payer Bill, HR 1660. Thank you, Rep. Kathy Mandarino and the 28 other co sponsors of this groundbreaking legislation.

Please call your state representative and ask him/her to support this bill.

Go See Sicko

Don’t miss the most important health care movie, maybe ever. If you want to help flyer at any of these theaters, here are some of the links with flyers:

www.sickocure.org
www.healthcare-now.org
www.healthcare4allpa.org

Here are the list of movie theaters showing Sicko in the area:

Bala Cynwyd, PA Clearview Bala Theatre

Bensalem, PA AMC Neshaminy 24

Cherry Hill, NJ LCE Cherry Hill 24

Doylestown, PA Regal Barn Plaza 14

Jenkintown, PA Hiway

King of Prussia, PA UA KingOfPrussia Stadium 15 & IMAX

Langhorne, PA Regal Oxford Valley 14

Newtown Square, PA Regal Edgmont Square 10

Oaks, PA Regal Marketplace 24

Philadelphia, PA Ritz East

Plymouth Meeting, PA AMC Plymouth Meeting Cinema 12

Warrington, PA Regal Warrington Crossing 22

Sicko Town Meeting

On Tuesday, July 10, 2007 at 7 PM, there will be a Town Meeting at the Penn Newman Center, 3720 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia to discuss Sicko, single payer health care, and what WE can do to help advance national health insurance in America. Everyone is invited. Donations to support this effort would be appreciated.

Here are some web sites to read more about helping in these efforts:

HR 676 – the US National Health Insurance Act of 2007
http://www.sickocure.org
http://www.healthcare-now.org
http://www.pnhp.org

SB 300 – the Pennsylvania Family and Business Health Security Act (state single payer plan)
http://www.helpfundpa.org

Single payer Go See Sicko

There was a sneak preview of Michael Moore’s documentary about the crisis in American healthcare at the Ritz East this past Saturday. It will return June 29tth to three Philadelphia theaters—the Ritz East, the Bala, and the Bridge. Moore’s film, I have heard, is heart-breaking, convincing, and very funny (the last is no surprise, from the director of Farenheit 9/11, whatever you thought of its politics). Moore contends that the answer to unaffordable premiums, insurance companies that try to elude giving you the benefits you have paid for, poor quality care, is an state-run not-for-profit healthcare system. He wants a national plan that is supported by taxes, which is what every other advanced country in the world has. And so it is indeed news that the appearance of “Sicko” coincides with groundbreaking activity in the Pennsylvania state house on behalf of the Family & Business Health Care Security Act.

Representative Kathy Mandarino, who recently agreed to be the Prime Sponsor of this bill in the House, last week circulated a Memo seeking co-sponsors (endorsement) for it. Here in our own state we could have the kind of healthcare system—often tagged “Medicare for All”—that Moore is calling for, which would make us a model for the nation. If we get single payer health insurance here, the national bill that has been stalled in Congress (despite numerous endorsements) since 2005, a bill subtitled “Medicare for All” (HR 686), might find itself infused with new life. Both bills offer comprehensive benefits: beyond “medical” care, they offer dental, mental health, vision, chiropractic, hospice, longterm, and other kinds of health services.

Single payer simply means that the money for the health system comes out of a single tax-supported fund. Not all government-run systems around the world are exactly like that, but one of the things that unites them is that profit is NOT their objective. Yet we are not talking about anything resembling what people associate with “socialized medicine.” With the kind of health system the Pennsylvania Family and Business Healthcare Security Act and HR 676 would provide, you could go to any doctor or hospital you wanted. and there would actually be less bureaucracy than there is now. The involvement of profit-making insurance companies that act as middlemen adds costly layers of paperwork (such expenses are about 24% of the American healthcare budget) while Medicare’s overhead is only 4%. Friends in France (widely considered the nation that has the best health system) tell me they have personal relationships with their doctors, who do not have money on their minds while treating them.

Americans pay about twice as much as people in other countries for health care, and yet are less healthy. Of course the 47 million without insurance, are less healthy: less likely to have early diagnoses for disease, less likely to get preventative care. But Americans in general have a higher infant and maternal mortality rate and have a 25 % greater chance of dying early. Moore’s film, focuses of those who DO have insurance. Because health insurance in the US is an industry with profit as its goal, it tries to get out of spending money, and thus “Sicko” tells horrifying stories. One is about a woman who was refused payment for an MRI on the grounds that it was unnecessary and then found out, after having the test in Japan, that she had a brain tumor.

Like Michael Moore I believe that health insurance, unlike car insurance, should have nothing to do with profit: access to health care is a fundamental right in a democracy. All Americans should have high-quality health care: rich people should not have better health care and hence better health than poor people! We do not find this to be an obvious truth because we have been brainwashed by the medical-insurance and pharmaceutical industries which spend tremendous amounts of money to keep the truth from us, often by paying lobbyists to keep the media silent.

Thus most of us know about Rendell’s Prescription for Pennsylvania, legislation that would not offer comprehensive benefits and would not come close to covering everybody. Yet few of us even know that the Healthcare Security Act is in the state legislature (and HR 676 in Congress). But the Governor knows: At a forum in Lancaster in early April he conceded that a single-payer model of healthcare for Pennsylvanians might be better, and he acknowledged that the state’s powerful health insurance lobbies was a “hurdle.” He has promised not to veto a single payer bill if it gets through the legislature, so let’s give him a chance to keep his promise. Call or e-mail your Pennsylvania House member right after reading this, and demand he or she endorse the bill—you can find the right phone number or e-mail by going to this website: www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/find.cfm And see “Sicko”!

State House single payer bill gathers cosponsors

From Chuck Pennachio, Exec Director of www.helpfundpa.org

Yes, folks, we have a House bill version of the “Family and Business Healthcare Security Act” on the way to introduction. Thanks to the courage and vision of Rep. Kathy Mandarino (D, Phila), her circulation memo encouraging colleagues to co-sponsor FaBHCA is making the rounds as of this morning. That means we have approximately one week to lobby the State House to get as many co-sponsors as possible on the bill before its formal introduction. So get those phone calls and e-mails off to your representatives right away!

Click on the following for resources to locate and contact those House members already committed to the “Family and Business Healthcare Security Act.” But please reach out to ALL members. Additionally, the Capitol Hill switchboard number is 717.787.2121. For name and local contact info. go to www.congress.org and to state legislators; put in your zip code.

http://www.healthcare4allpa.org/legislators.htm

Working together we are saving our economy, liberating all our citizens from healthcare insecurity, and restoring sanity to a medical delivery system that is broken. Virtually all economists now agree that the only means to achieving all of the above is through legislation like our universal single-payer bill. See you on the campaign trail!

Yours in unity,

Chuck

Sicko press event and movie premiere

The wait is over. Sicko is being released this Saturday. Here is the list. Locally, it will be at the Ritz East and the Ritz in Voohees, NJ. Next week will have a wider distribution list. Sylvia Metzler, RN, CRNP who has seen the film on a sneak preview called me excitedly to say, “you have got to see this film”. It will make you laugh, cry, cheer, and finally demand that our country get a better health care system. Don’t miss this movie. Send this to all your friends.

On June 19, the red Sicko bus came and it was filled with nurses ready to promote the movie. They came from all over, New York, Calif, Illinois, etc. Very exciting.

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