Time magazine was given a screening--and an audience with mikkel:
The movie, screened for TIME, is double-barreled Moore, a mix of familiar numbers (47 million uninsured Americans, the ever rising cost of care) and chilling moments (the 18-month-old baby who dies of a seizure when she’s denied emergency-room access, the husband and father with kidney cancer whose insurer won’t pay for a bone-marrow transplant). Together, they will have many moviegoers angry enough to gouge holes in their armrests.
But it’s not always clear how fair Moore plays. His romanticized take on Canada’s single-payer health-care system is a few data points shy of a controlled study, and his decision to shoot part of the movie in Cuba made him the subject of a federal investigation, which may be precisely the p.r. gold he was after. Still, the film will surely get people talking, which is just what Moore wants — and just what he did in a wide-ranging conversation with TIME.
And bits of the “hard hitting” interview:
TIME: So if there’s no argument that the system is broken, why use your energies to start one?
Michael Moore: Because what’s even more broken is the fact that our Congress and White House are bought and paid for by these two industries, which rival the oil industry in terms of money and influence. They have a vested interest in maintaining their control. But they’re not dumb. They know which way the wind is blowing and that this is the No. 1 domestic issue with Americans. Their job now is to try to control it so that universal health care is run through them, so that they can still skim the money, make the obscene profits and keep their investors happy.
So mikkel sets the table. The healthcare system in this country is broken because politicians want to control universal healthcare. So, what’s your solution, mikkel:
TIME: Of the declared presidential candidates, down to the Dennis Kucinich level, say, who do you think has the best health-care plan? Including Kucinich? We could include him.
Michael Moore: Then Kucinich, but he doesn’t go far enough. He supports what he’s calling a single- payer nonprofit plan, but from my read, it would still allow [private] entities to control things, as opposed to the government. What’s wrong with the government? The right wing and the G.O.P. have done a wonderful job brainwashing people that government doesn’t work, and then, as Al Franken says, they get elected and proceed to prove the point. [Laughs.]
So there you go. His answer to fixing the problem that was created by guvment is to let the guvment handle it. Brilliant. And he has a shining example of an Amerikan system that isn’t broken:
TIME: So you think Washington could handle a program this big?
Michael Moore: Ask anyone on Social Security if their check comes on time every month. Like clockwork. And it comes through the so-called dilapidated U.S. mail. My dad’s check literally will come on the same day every month. The government has been quite good and efficient at creating a number of systems. If I tell people the administrative costs for a private health plan —advertising, p.r., executive pay —are 20% and ask them what Medicare’s administrative costs are, they’ll guess 50%, 60%. The fact is, for Medicare/ Medicaid, it’s 3%. The last figure I read for Canada’s [government] system is 1.7%.
So mikkel seems to maintain that there’s nothing wrong with our Social Security system. It isn’t broken, even though it is going to run out of money within 25 years, precisely at the same time it will have the largest amount of Amerikans in history counting on it to survive. Sweeeeet. And mikkel says that administrative costs for the guvment programs are much less than private health plans. I guess that would explain all the unpaid medicare claims in his home state of Michigan, and his “home town” of Flint. Which is funny because I could almost swear that he has a rather large waterfront house just a short drive from my sister’s house near white bread and wealthy Traverse City. Some 2 and one half hours from Flint.
So anyway, apparently there is nothing wrong with the Canadian system:
TIME: Your movie paints an almost utopian picture of the Canadian system. You do show some American critics arguing that there can be long waits for treatments north of the border, and you refute them simply by interviewing a handful of happy, satisfied Canadians. Pretty unscientific, no?
Michael Moore: Canadians as a whole are pretty happy with their system. Yes, it’s a flawed system, and the main flaw is that it’s underfunded. The [in-depth] answers exist in articles and essays, and I’ll have them up on my website.
Underfunded? The brilliant and much beloved Canadian healthcare system is underfunded? But the Canadians that I know (my neice is married to one) say that they work through June to pay their federal taxes. That doesn’t include the provincial and city taxes. But I guestion wasn’t worthy of a mikkel response.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1622178-2,00.html
Perhaps the best part about the interview is when you discover that mikkel interviewed Che’s daughter. I wonder if he asked any Cuban homosexuals how they appreciated being jailed and beaten under Che’s orders?
