Siko Reviewff

8/11/2019 Siko Reviewff

1/5

Public Policy-formulation and implementation

(A review is being submitted as a partial requirement of the course)

Submitted to: Dr. Amir Saeed

Submitted by: Muhammad Ahmed Sheikh

Roll No. 12

Institute of Administrative Sciences, University of the Punjab, Lahore

Review on Documentary Movie titled Sicko

Introduction


2/5

The presenter of video documentary has made American HealthCare System (that

includes Health Care, Health Insurance and Pharmaceutical Industry) as his focal theme

which according to him need be reformed and restructured into a system which he

romanticized as Socialized Medicine (i.e. Medical and Hospital Care for all at a nominal

cost by means of Government Regulations of Health Care and subsidy derived from

taxation). The author tries to show that the healthcare industry is a maze of blinding

bureaucracy and callous indifference. The author filmed and contrasted for-profit, non-

Universal and NPM based U.S health Care system with those in vogue in France, Great

Britain, Canada and Cuba which are working on the very ethos of Non-Profitability,

universality, need, well-being and morality.

Background

The documentary is not about 50 Million US Citizens who do not get any Health

Facility but about 250 Million Americans who have Health Insurance Umbrella but

health facilities are still a long way from them. They get indiscreet treatment on the part

of Insurance Companies which have profitability and money maximization their sole

raison deter. The companies exploit every means possible to avoid actually paying for

their customers demand. This callousness and skepticism on the part of Insurance

companies degenerates into emergencies occasionally talking tolls of customers in form

of their lives.


3/5

The fortunate ones who live would stuck with substantial medical bills. They

decline funding the lifesaving operations on gOne woman was denied an operation to

remove her brain tumor because the insurance company said it was non-life-

threatening. Then she died rounds of would-be procedural lapses, technicalities and

whimsical reasons.

A scene was filmed where a woman was denied an operation to remove her brain

tumor because the insurance company said itwas non-life-threatening. Later on,she

died.

Enabling them are their hundreds of lobbyists, whom Moore says outnumber

members of Congress 4-to-1. Billy Tauzin helped get the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill

passed, which helps the pharmaceutical companies make more money. Then what did

he do? He left Congress and took a job as the CEO of the drug industrys main lobbying

organization. He knew the real money was to be had in pharmaceuticals, not Congress.

Moore takes us to several foreign countries that have universal health care, where

citizens (and even visitors) get everything for free or almost-free, paid for by the

government. The hope is that we will see the merits of these systems and create

something similar for ourselves.

And they certainly do seem appealing. Moore informs us with eye-opening

instances. In England, not only is your hospital stay free, but they will even reimburse

you if you had to take a bus to get there! In France, doctors make house calls! In Cuba,

prescriptions cost a nickel! In Canada, everyone has their own personal doctor assigned

to live in their house, and the average citizen lives to be 150(which seems imaginary).


4/5

One subject Moore does address smartly is the reason a lot of Americans dont

want universal health care: because another term for it is socialized medicine, and if

we allow socialism to infiltrate any part of our society, then the next thing you know

were marching through Red Square with hammer-and-sickle flags. Americans, as a rule,

dont like anything that sounds like socialism, and Moore has the amusing clips from an

old anti-socialism educational film (narrated by Ronald Reagan!) to prove it.

The problem with that argument, as Moore explains, is many elements of

American society already ARE socialized. You get mail delivered to your house for free,

you send your kids to school for free, you can call the fire department for free, you can

borrow books from the library for free, you can call the cops to investigate a crime for

free. Everyone has access to those things, and no one has to pay for it, except through

their tax dollars. Socialized medicine works exactly the same way. If we trust the

government to hire teachers to educate us, and firefighters and cops to protect us (and

there are private alternatives we can pay for if we dont), why dont we trust them to hire

doctors to cure us?


5/5

Yet theres that underlying kernel of legitimacy. As it happens, these sick Americans do

get excellent treatment in Cuba. Some of them are given procedures and prescriptions

that theyve needed for months, but that their insurance companies refused to pay for.

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