Sicko movie review and analysis of healthcare critique

¶ … health care system delivery with other nations (European/Canada) with emphasis on its relative strengths and weaknesses?

Michael Moore's Sicko reveals that nearly 50 million U.S. citizens are not insured, whereas many usually fall prey to insurance firm red tape and frauds. Interviews are carried out with individuals believed to be sufficiently covered; in truth, these individuals do not receive health services at all. Ex-workers of insurance firms explain cost-cutting efforts which provide insurance firm physicians and other individuals with excuses to avoid fulfilling the costs of policy holders' essential medical treatments, thereby increasing the companies' profitability (Heart, 2012).

The documentary-maker then moves over to Canada, where he introduces Tommy Douglas, the man voted in 2004 as the best Canadian citizen for the role he played in improving the nation's healthcare structure. The director interviews a Canadian micro-surgeon and emergency room patients at a public hospital in Canada. His interviews in the UK -- a nation where the National Health Service (NHS), an all-inclusive publicly-financed health system, operates -- involve patients. He poses questions regarding in-hospital patient expenses, only to find out that UK patients have no out-of-pocket hospital expenses at all (Heart, 2012).

The filmmaker also drops in on a characteristic British pharmacy, where medicines are provided free of cost to individuals aged below 16 years, or more than 60 years, and is mostly subsidized for all other age groups. They are charged only a set sum of approximately ten dollars (£6.65) per prescription drug regardless of NHS costs. Moreover, NHS healthcare facilities hire cashiers, whose task is partly to compensate poor patients for out-of-pocket traveling expenses (from home to healthcare facilities). The UK interviewees included Tony Benn, an NHS doctor, and a female American citizen living in London. In France, the filmmaker drops in on a hospital, where he interviews the gynecology and obstetrics departmental head and a number of expats from the U.S. He also accompanies the round-the-clock medical service "SOS Medecins" and its doctors on their house calls (Heart, 2012).

In his French visit, Moore learns that the government of France offers healthcare, daycare (1 dollar/hour), vacation, public education (up to university level), neonatal assistance to new mothers (including cooking, laundry and cleaning services), and various other social services). Back to the U.S., interviews with Americans revealed that voluntary rescue workers who assisted with 9/11 rescue activity were not granted governmental funds for treating the psychological and physical ailments they ended up developing, including post-traumatic stress disorder-induced bruxism and respiratory disease (Heart, 2012).

Give 5 major health care concerns that were identified in the film, in reference to population and public health, and the behavior of individuals and other groups that may influence health system.

1. Comprehensive healthcare services coverage: Sicko begins with a collection of interesting patient profiles, including a middle-aged wife and husband who lost their home to hospital bills, and, shockingly, a carpenter who had to decide on which of his two cut-off fingers to fix back to his hand as he could not afford to pay for having both reattached! The failures of the U.S. private healthcare system are, in fact, already publicly-funded. By adding the healthcare insurance tax deductions of organizations to public program costs (including Medicare), public contribution as of 2004 accounted for approximately 60% of healthcare expenses (Wright, 2007).

2. Healthcare organizations actually plan on keeping citizens unwell: No funds are directed towards disease prevention, particularly when it comes to cancer (Adams, 2007).

3. Medicinal failure: The U.S. healthcare practice, bound to a terribly corrupt structure of monopoly prices and financial exploitation, is witnessing its Dark Ages. Here, the Food and Drug Administration grows stronger, pharmaceutical giants get richer, and the public suffers (Adams, 2007).

4. Clever refusals to pay by healthcare insurance firms: One segment of the documentary features ex-President Richard Nixon's archival footage, which shows him strongly supporting the "HMO" -- a novel healthcare idea of the 70s, in which the more citizens are deprived of healthcare, the more profits healthcare insurance firms and healthcare organizations make (Adams, 2007).

5. Industry politics: The documentary's effect on the political sphere needs to be taken into account. The movie actually computes the monetary value of the healthcare sector's annual cost of buying politicians and garnering their support. After winning them over, the health sector can subsequently gain votes and impact the enactment of laws to its advantage. This impacts all classes of American citizens, particularly the poor (Black, 2009).

Discuss the role of information technology in our current healthcare delivery system?

More than 50% of health IT News subscribers who answered the latest poll by the News Monitor claim that Sicko is applicable to health IT and its ability of shaping healthcare reforms. Similar future costs will go to the billing and detraction of funds allocated to other areas, for improving care quality via IT, unless the nation converts completely to Medicare or a similar single-payer structure (Pizzi, 2007). Considering contemporary medicine's complexity, IT will undoubtedly have a progressively bigger part to play in the improvement of healthcare quality. The Committee on U.S. Quality Healthcare of the Institute of Medicine notes that IT should contribute significantly to the U.S. healthcare structure's redesigning if the structure is to attain an appreciable quality improvement in the next ten years. For making substantial headway, a major health delivery structure reengineering is required, including key changes like technical, financial, educational, sociological, and cultural changes (Ortiz & Clancy, 2003).