On a mission for health care
By Bobby Caina Calvan, Aurelio Rojas and Carla Meyer
The Sacramento Bee
June 13, 2007
Michael Moore, the filmmaker and provocateur, rode to the Capitol on Tuesday, delivering impassioned — and sharply barbed — pleas for guaranteed health care.
He was embraced by throngs who bestowed on him the kind of hoopla usually given a rock star.
It was an opportunity for Moore to promote “Sicko,” his latest film to take a jab at a powerful American institution. This time: the health care industry.
“There is no room for the concept of profits when taking care of people when they are sick,” Moore told a crowd of nearly a thousand nurses who swarmed the west steps of the Capitol.
“It’s not a Democrat or Republican film,” Moore said. “When you get sick, the sickness doesn’t care if you are a Democrat or a Republican.”
But the California Nurses Association, which sponsored the rally and one of two screenings of Moore’s film at the Crest Theatre, is betting that public furor will swell against the health care industry as the issue takes a prominent role in the presidential race.
“The insurance companies are the problem,” said Rose Ann DeMoro, the executive director of CNA, during a briefing with Moore that was hosted by Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica. She’s the leading sponsor of Senate Bill 840, which seeks to provide every Californian with universal health care and has Moore’s support.
http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/219530.html
Comment:
By Don McCannem MD
(as posted by dmccanne on the sacbee.com website):
Listen to the nurses
Our nurses really do care about patients. They are in a unique position to recognize the tragedies caused by the barriers to care erected within our fragmented method of financing care, using a multitude of private insurance plans. The nurses have had it. When we are spending more than enough to provide comprehensive care for everyone, they want the private insurance industry that is interfering with their care to be removed from the scene. Moore’s contribution is that he shows us that many who are insured face some of the same financial burdens and impaired access as the uninsured. Moore and the CNA (nurses) and PNHP (physicians) have partnered to bring home the message that our health care system is about patients, not middleman business entities.
