I have to disagree with the Professor on one point, though.  He says that if we focus more on the economic issues surrounding the health care system from the employer perspective, it could potentially lead to a shifting of the battle field and get business on the side of major reform.  While, I agree that the economic argument is important, I think it has been well discussed in debates about health care in the past, while the moral issue of health care as a right does not often get a lot of attention.  While Professor Oberlander is right to suggest that moral outrage only gets you so far, I think it is an essential component of any real reform strategy and it is that very outrage that is missing from the mainstream debates about this issue.

However, I don’t want to give the wrong impression about my opinion of the interview.  It was fantastic and Professor Oberlander did an excellent job explaining the history of our current system and fairly discussed the limitations and trade-offs of single-payer systems.  I especially liked his comment about how the U.S. does ration care, just as single-payer countries do,  but in the U.S. the 40 million people with no insurance have care rationed to a far greater degree than the universally covered people in the rest of the developed world.

It was a great discussion and I suggest that anyone interested in this topic download the podcast today.  It is one of the better examinations of the health care debate that I have heard.

SiCKO is a film that will make you very, very angry if you are unfamiliar with the darker side of the health care system in this country. For me, it was a captivating enumeration of information that I already knew, but had never seen so eloquently examined. Refreshingly absent most of the usual Moore shtick (Yes, yes, there is that Cuba thing, I said “most”), the film’s real heart revolves around examining a simple question, “Why?”

Why do we allow the kind of health care horror stories, detailed in SiCKO, to occur in the richest nation on Earth? Why do we spend so much more of our GDP on health care than the rest of the developed world and have so little to show for it? Why do we allow our political system to be hijacked by the health care lobby? The history of the situation we find ourselves in may be complex, but Moore provides a simple solution to our dilemma, a single-payer system, like in France!

When I talk to people about the film and as I have done for years, bring up examples of single-payer systems working in other nations, including our neighbor to the North, they are inevitably overcome with a pained expression and go into a litany of problems these countries allegedly have with their systems, from wait times for elective procedures, to lower doctor pay, and always there is the background assumption that government can do no right and we are better off taking our chances with the current system than daring to put our medical fate into the hands of a government bureaucracy (as opposed to the private, unaccountable bureaucracy we have now). But, I think these critiques really miss a fundamental point of difference between America and these other countries.

Moore may glaze over the problems these single-payer systems have (and they do have many), but that is in service to a greater goal. He is attempting to re-frame the health care debate in this country to that of a moral choice. The people of Canada, the UK, France, and the rest of the developed world chose to create health care systems, which far from perfect, at least treat health care as a right and not merely the privilege of the rich.

What Moore accomplishes in his film is a good slap in the face of the American people. After viewing the film, it is impossible to deny that our health care system is broken. But, I think in order to fix it, we must begin to admit that our current situation is not just the result of bad luck or the nefarious acts of an evil Nixon-led cabal (as suggested in the film). We supposedly live in a democracy and that means, we need to take responsibility for the situation we are in.

We listened to the corporate shills who said a universal health care system would be the end of freedom and we elected representatives who were more interested in lining their campaign coffers with health care industry donations than working in the best interests of their constituents. We, the people, let things get this bad, and it is time we fix our mistake.

The upcoming election, still so far off, is our best chance since the early nineties to change the frame of the health care debate in this country and maybe even achieve some real progress. What to do about health care is more than an economic question or even an ideological one. This is a moral question, one that is long overdue a healthy, open, examination.