Sicko: The Real Horror Movie

I had been intending to write about Korean director Chan-wook Park, but last night I watched a film by another man who makes scary movies, Michael Moore. Very little of what I saw surprised me. Not the men and women whose insurance companies allowed them to die of treatable diseases. Not the children who died because the closest hospital wasn’t covered by their health plan. Not even the taxi that dumped a dazed woman in a hospital gown in the middle of the street. The very same thing happens here in my hometown of San Diego. The practice came to light when a local homeless advocate was stabbed trying to break up a fight between two men beneath a bridge. Confused by blood loss and unable to identify himself to hospital personnel, he was given minimal treatment, stuffed into cab, and left half naked on the street, all because it was assumed he was indigent.

As you have no doubt gathered from reading my posts, I have chronic medical problems. My heart has three chambers instead of the usual four. I was born this way, and I will need medicine and regular surgery for the rest of my life. I have been lucky. I have hardly ever been denied medical care. Physicians who have watched me grow up have sometimes seen me off the books, skipping lunch or golf to make sure that I am well. I have received some of the best medical care this country has to offer. But I too have waited hours for emergency treatment, days and even weeks for treatment of routine illnesses. In the spring of 1996 I lay on the floor of an emergency room waiting area, curled in a fetal position, because my heart was racing at 200 beats a minute. Though barely conscious, I was handed a clipboard full of insurance forms. Luckily, my wife was there to fill them out.

Sicko also shows the story of an American who receives free hospital care in England after stupidly injuring himself in the famous Abbey Road crosswalk. Moore doesn’t make this up. I too have experienced the generosity of Britain’s NHS. In the summer of 1992 I flew to London with the intention of working abroad. The day I arrived, I got caught in the rain between the Blackfriars tube station and my youth hostel and caught a cold. As I looked for work over the next week, my cold got steadily worse. After ten days I found myself shivering and hallucinating in a bottom bunk in an unlicensed boarding house in South Kensington. That morning, a naked English girl explained the National Health Service to me. She had spent the evening screwing the Frenchman in the bunk above mine, which I thought I had imagined. She gave me directions to the local clinic as she pulled her clothes out from under the sleeping Gallic Romeo. When I arrived at the clinic, the receptionist asked for my name, date of birth, passport number, and the reason for my visit. Nothing else. The doctor saw me immediately and listened while I explained my situation. He diagnosed me with bronchitis, a potentially lethal problem for any heart patient, and prescribed me some antibiotics. He gave me directions to the nearest chemist (pharmacy), and strict instructions to eat and rest. At the chemist, I was charged nothing for the medication. Nothing at all. Remembering food, I went into the a little grocery store next door. The elderly Irishman behind the counter took one look at me and gathered up a bag of orange juice, fresh bread, and soup. The whole outing took less than an hour.

By the fall of 1996 I was married and back in San Diego. While at home recovering from open heart surgery, I received a call from a physician / administrator in my insurance company, asking me to abandon the doctors who had treated me since childhood in favor of ones that were less expensive. I refused. The man on the phone asserted that since I had a less expensive form of insurance, I should be willing to see less expensive physicians. I explained that I had inexpensive insurance because I was unemployed, that the doctor he wanted me to see had no experience with my condition, and that I had no desire to compromise my health simply because I was poor. And then this man, who went to medical school and swore the Hippocratic Oath, began to scream at me that I was costing him too much money. He screamed so loudly that I had to hold the phone away from my ear. After five minutes of continuous abuse, I hung up the phone because he would not stop. Not long after that I changed my insurance provider, a decision that made both of us happy.

I still fight small battles. To get appointments and tests. To get the medication I need at a price I can afford. I drive all over town to get blood work and X-rays that I could easily get in one place, simply because my insurance requires it. Every few months someone visits my home to see if I really do need the oxygen concentrator I use every night. My wife will work until the day I die, so that I can have insurance. She is reluctant to look for a better job because I have so many preexisting conditions. I’m not a religious man, far from it. But God bless Michael Moore for bringing the issue of America’s corrupt health care system out into the open. And God help America, the only civilized nation on Earth that still treats health as a business. Now that’s scary.

Dave Hurwitz