Michael Moore is the Real Sicko

Michael Moore and people with ideas like his are the real Sickos. Here's why.



Sicko
Michael Moore
Universal Health Care

Michael Moore and people with ideas like his are the real Sickos. Here's why. Read my letter to a certain socialist agenda group who are actively promoting the movie:

Why would you want people to see this movie "Sicko?" Why are you supporting socialized medicine?

First of all, 4 out of 5 Americans are satisfied with the health care system, so it is really a non-issue (this will likely be the reason the movie flops, which in its 9th week of release it is already doing with less than a million tickets sold). Only 50 million Americans are "without" health insurance. There are 250 million Americans. That's 1 in 5 who are not voluntary participants of health insurance. That doesn't mean that all of those individuals need health insurance... surely some are financially independent, others have reasonable means (such as myself) to cover health expenses as they occur. So that leaves darn few.

Second, collectivized, totalitarian provision of goods and services by a centralized government which redistributes wealth based on "need" is itself the most sickening thing an American could ever support and you should be utterly ashamed of yourself for it. People are not born with any "right" to health care, nor any "right" to any other product of the human mind which depends upon the willing, voluntary cooperation of another human being.

This smacks of Marxist Communist Russia where such ideals originated.

The answer to your "problem" is this: get rid of the governmental over-regulation, the restrictive licensing, the state supported tort threat, the unionism, and all other legislative and regulatory phenomena which are essentially conferring a monopoly to those currently in the business. This will promote competition, competition drives quality up, prices down, and everyone wins. Monopolies discourage competition (indeed, sometimes deliberately destroy it), drive quality down, innovation down, prices up, and everyone… EVERYONE… loses. (By the way, that is the answer to ANY problem in the free market, not just health care, so re-read it. And learn it. Spread the word.)

Use reason and logic, for once in your life. And while you're at it, use them all the time, too.

Read the eloquent words of Mark Valenti who put it so succinctly:

About ten years ago, I believed in the seemingly lofty goal of "universal health care". Who wouldn't support that goal? Doesn't everyone have a "right" to health care?

I was just a kid then. It was easy to agree with a meaningless campaign promise such as "Affordable Health Care for All". It takes effort to actually research the topic and understand economic logic, history and facts.

Once I questioned the sound bites, I realized that government intervention in the market (e.g., Medicare, FDA, physician licensing, insurance regulations) is the reason for artificially high health care prices.

So-called Universal Healthcare amplifies all problems because it:

1) Destroys patient incentives to find the best possible prices for the best possible services/products available.

I have worked in the health care field in various capacities for the past ten years and I see a majority of patients who currently receive "free" (read: taxpayer-funded) healthcare continually seek care for the most minor afflictions. Why wouldn't they? It's "free" to them so they visit the doctor's office several times a month. "Free" prescriptions for over-the-counter medication such as Tylenol are very common. Patients who refuse to wait for an appointment make their way to the ER for things such as headaches. If you were ever an ER nurse, I know you can verify this.

The current U.S. mostly statist healthcare system also decreases incentives to "shop around" for people who are not receiving direct taxpayer-funded care. If you are paying a set amount per month and your copay is ten dollars per office visit no matter where you go, why bother to look for a better price? Government imposed wage controls during the 1940's carry a large part of the blame for this current state of affairs. Unable to offer competitive salaries, companies started to offer healthcare benefits as a way to lure prospective employees into jobs.

2) Destroys physician incentives to provide competitive care and destroys drug companies' incentives to provide new drugs and treatments. The "brain-drain."

With no incentive to provide quality care, physicians and nurses leave the government-monopolized area for better opportunities in a freer country. Shortages result. Drug companies are hindered by price controls and regulations and soon cease research and development of new medication. In the U.S., start-up drug companies cannot afford to run the FDA gauntlet, so the market is dominated by a few established corporations.

3) Steals from your wallet to pay for my health care (and vice versa).

Yes, you do have a right to health care, just as you have a right to food, shelter and property. However, you have no "right" to force others to provide these things for you - All "free" medical care is paid for through taxes stolen from other people.

I know of one seemingly healthy individual who went to his physician's office 51 times in 26 months. He receives "free" health care from the State, so his trips did not cost him a dime. Who pays for his medications? Who pays for the physicians', nurses' and office staff wages during his visits? If you work within the health care industry, I would bet you could recount similar stories. In my experience, this type of abuse is the rule, not the exception.

4) The quality of "free" health care will deteriorate and the average citizen will get sicker.

As the poor and middle-class wait in agony for simple procedures, those with resources can travel to other countries for treatment. But hey, your moral arrogance and justification of coercion makes you feel good, doesn't it?

5) Destroys your privacy.

Suddenly your problems are mine and mine are yours. If you are eating unhealthy foods or driving a motorcycle without a helmet, I have a direct interest in your business - you are going to see a doctor on my tax dollars. Your neighbors might support government bans on smoking, "unsafe" sex or other "risky" behaviors to reduce costs. Politicians will use the federal bureaucracy to force you and your family to comply with programs such as the "New Freedom Commission on Mental Health".

6) Destroys your liberty.

When you blindly support a system that gives politicians and bureaucrats the power to force others to follow a plan, those politicians and bureaucrats will receive their orders from those with the most money - and you can guarantee this will not be you, your friends or your family. The power of government will be used against you as you are forced to use medicines or accept treatments from well-connected health care companies.

A quick search shows that the pharmaceutical companies gave $29,370,351 to political campaigns in 2002. Who do you think has the ear of those elected politicians? You?

On the other hand, if government power is eliminated (e.g., abolish the FDA - whose restrictions benefit the most powerful companies by eliminating most competition), those same companies would have to use their funds and resources to sell their drugs to the most people in the least expensive, most reliable and safest way. They would need to outperform their competitors to get your money - otherwise they lose business.

Great Britain's National Health Service (NHS) was created on July 5, 1948. As with all government programs, bureaucrats underestimated initial cost projections. First-year operating costs of NHS were 52 million pounds higher than original estimates as Britons saturated the so-called free system.

Many decades of shortages, misery and suffering followed until 1989, when some market-based health care competition was reintroduced to the British citizens.

[Sheila added:]

Heck, why should government stop at Socialized Health Care? If we're going to be complete Totalitarians by which the government provides all our goods and services like the Soviet USSR and other communist nations did (and failed), why not government-made cookies, government-made movies, and EVERY OTHER thing we ever consume and pay for? WHY STOP AT HEALTH CARE? It's a Sicko who believes that government intervention in any service industry needs to be anything but decreased and completely eliminated.

Click to Expand Section... Collapse Section...

Avoid Windows Vista

Windows Vista will have you scrambling to recover or re-install Windows XP at all costs. Avoid this new operating system like the plague. DO NOT buy a new computer that comes pre-installed with Vista. Show the retailers who's boss. Insist upon Windows XP... or no sale.



Windows Vista problems

Windows Vista will have you scrambling to recover Windows XP at all costs. Avoid this new operating system like the plague. DO NOT buy a new computer that comes pre-installed with Vista. Show them who's boss. Insist upon Windows XP... or no sale.

Paul Thurrott of winsupersite.com says Microsoft is identifying the issues which are causing the most problems and fixing those first. Of the remaining 4 percent of incompatible devices, or about 70,000 devices, 4,000 account for about 80 percent of the problems. "This is our bogey list right now," Windows Client Partner Platform Group Director Dave Wascha told Thurrott in a recent briefing. "So we're on the phone with vendors, flying out to meet with them, and getting these issues addressed. Once that's done, we'll do it all again."

So what's the criterion for getting a device working in Windows Vista? Wascha told Thurrott that Microsoft will fix or create drivers for any device that generates 500 or more user reports. "We have legions of engineers dedicated to this one purpose," Wascha said. "And we will continue to churn through that list." The only exception, of course, is drivers for devices that are no longer sold because the company that made them went out of business. "Unfortunately, the answer there is that it will never work," he said.

What this boils down to is that, as of this writing, 70,000 devices that currently work just fine with Windows XP will not function with Vista by means of Microsoft driver fixes unless 500 people all complain about it. Good luck!

Consumer Reports just revealed their distaste for Vista. They reported that the operating system is dog slow, slower than Windows XP.

Many web surfers are discovering that they can no longer log in at many websites due to out of control overkill security settings that cannot be tamed or turned off. Websites are putting up warnings that users will have to log in using XP or a Mac. Citibank Virtual Account Numbers program users cannot use the desktop version of that program with Vista at all.

The list goes on and on.

Frik Els of fin24.co.za says: "It was only when I circumvented Vista and adjusted the controls of the graphics card from NVidia that I got it up and running. NVidia is being sued for not making its software Vista compatible. Perhaps it should be the other way around.

After the multimedia meltdown things went downhill. The system began to hang frequently without it being clear what caused the fault. And it wasn't just incompatible software from other vendors causing problems.

Even run-of-the-mill internet browsing ran into trouble. Resurrecting the machine from sleep mode and the battery power management controls also appeared to be behind many of the more serious system crashes.

Vista itself isn't very user friendly either. A simple task, such as backing up data to DVD and CD, is still a laborious process. And don't dare select too many files to burn at a time. If you exceed the capacity of the DVD you have to start the process all over again.

The biggest difference to the graphical user interface isn't the rather superfluous 3D rendering of translucent windows, a trick you get tired of quickly, but the built-in search function. The search is great to find music or document files fast, but system controls and the help database don't seem to form part of the index.

Microsoft allows the user to downgrade back to XP on Vista Business but Home Basic and Premium users are stuck with their operating system."

PC World, in an article entitled "Living With Vista: First 30 Days," says: "With the new version of Windows finally out, early users say they're bedeviled by hardware and software problems..."

A poster to that same article in PC World reported this: "I had to replace my broken business laptop with what was available in retail stores. I selected a HP Pavilion DV2000 with Vista pre-installed. It would not work with my office network, also very sluggish!

I contacted HP via live web chat about switching (back down) to XP and was told I could do this by utilizing the drivers on their web site. Bought a copy of XP, tried to install and could not - HP's very rude Vista support rep. reversed the other tech's advise, and said that the equipment (designed for Vista) would not work with XP. After persistent inquiry on my part, she finally admitted that the XP drivers were just not ready for this (Vista compatible) computer. They might be ready in 3 months, but if I installed XP, my (HP / Vista) warranty would be void and they would not assist me in installing.

Now I have a computer I can't use unless I void my (HP / Vista) warranty and even then, not for 3 months. I also have a copy of XP I can't seem to install!"

Click to Expand Section... Collapse Section...

Googe?

New Dictionary Definition:

googe (goojz) verb: To make an attempt at flare and instead wind up garbling your meaning entirely. Example: "He'll try to impress the bosses and just wind up googing it." googed, googing, googes




Google Googe

Doesn't this say "Googe?" Are we crazy, or did Google make a mistake on Valentine's day? Google ran this logo on Valentine's Day in 2007. We can't find anything in this stylized version of the Google logo that represents the seemingly absent L. Let us know if you find it somewhere. Like on the floor at the Google offices amid the empty beer cans and cocktail umbrellas.

Click to Expand Section... Collapse Section...

Time Warner Cable Problems

Time Warner Cable: "...under-trained, ignorant people..." according to an actual Time Warner Cable employee.



Satellite TV is Worth the Extra Cost!

Time Warner Cable Problems

This horror story about Time Warner Cable was reported on the CONSUMERIST by Devlin from Simi Valley, CA:


GoToDish says (in response to a previous poster's rant about never getting a call back in a Time Warner Cable service request):

I know why you were never called back. As a former Time Warner Cable employee who recently quit, it was a result of under-trained, ignorant people and a desperate attempt on TW's part to fill positions due to Adelphia employees leaving. I was hired in July under written notice that we would be in four weeks of in-class training and two weeks of nesting (side by side training on the phones with tenured employees). What my class received was one week of half-assed training by one trainer who was leaving and the second trainer was amazed at what we DIDN'T learn and crammed two weeks into one. Bottom line, we were thrown onto the phones in two weeks and two days, basically set up to fail. The choices left were to either ask for the training you felt you needed and be marked a 'problem, not qualified employee,' or sit there day in and day out and (provide) the exact type of service you experienced, and that is to BS the customer into believing the problem has been resolved. I've been in customer service for years and years and happen to be one of the few who took pride in what I did. Unfortunately, TW wouldn't allow me to do that. They prefer the BS'rs in order to buy time. Considering the major transition within Time Warner/Adelphia/Comcast, many of us felt that not even four weeks in-class training would have been adequate enough in order to make up to valued customers legitimate complaints. I fought hard to retain my position in order to give all of you the service you rightly deserved, but nothing gave me more pleasure than to get a customer who had been struggling, just like you, and I resolved her problem in a timely manner, received her gratitude and simply unplugged my phone in the middle of the day, packed up my desk and said Adios. I am currently employed, making much better money, but most importantly, I'm building a customer base I am proud of and providing people with what they honestly deserve.

Devlin
Simi Valley


PS.. The first poster pretty much has the Crackhead point accurate.

Click to Expand Section... Collapse Section...

Conan the Totalitarian

Conan the Totalitarian, otherwise known as Arnold Schwarzenegger, the "left-est" rightwing Republican who ever existed, California's governor, seeks universal health care. Look out, Middle Class!



The plan, which Schwarzenegger estimated would cost $12 billion, calls for many employers that do not offer health insurance to contribute to a fund that would help pay for coverage of the working uninsured. It would also require doctors to pay 2 percent and hospitals 4 percent of their revenues to help cover higher reimbursements for those who treat patients enrolled in Medi-Cal, the state's Medicaid program.

According to the Herald Tribune, the governor outlined his proposal to an audience of health care experts and reporters via satellite from Los Angeles. He made it clear that a variety of mechanisms would be used to provide all Californians with insurance and that the responsibility of providing it would fall on the government, employers, health care providers and (emphasis added) the uninsured themselves.

"Everyone in California must have health insurance," Schwarzenegger said.

What he and others who propose such haughty socialist plans fail to realize however, is that you cannot mandate any qualitative state that depends upon the products and services of voluntarily cooperative individuals. You can no more legislate away the "problem of health insurance" than you could walk up to a bum on the street and outwardly proclaim that he will be made affluent because it is now the law that he must be.

What's that? Can't afford health insurance? The Governor isn't helping you with the costs; he's attempting to make the problem vanish by making you a criminal instead. Don't put up with it. Sound off!

Click to Expand Section... Collapse Section...