Sicko

I recently watched Michael Moore's new movie. I don't have the patience to write a review, but this one is pretty good. In short, I thought this was the best Moore movie so far. The subject is important, the stories interesting, some parts funny, and Moore doesn't do too much of confronting and ridiculing individuals but instead focus on the problem and the alternative of socialized health care.

Seeing this movie made me take a second look at the Social Security Statement i received earlier this week. The statement is straight forward. In the "Work to build a secure future..." paragraph, it states that one should not rely on Social Security as an only source of income after retirement and in "About Social Security's future..." it further explains that "the Social Security system is facing serious financial problems".

The interesting part is "Your Estimated Benefits". Here it tell me that I have 8 credits of work and what this buys me. "To get benefits if you become disabled right now, you need 9 credits of work". Guess I'd better not become disabled before earning that 9th point. It also tells me that if I die now a spouse caring for my child may get some monthly benefit and "may be eligible for a one-time death benefit of $255".

I don't know the details of the American health care system or any other countries' system, but this doesn't seem very good to me. While on the phone with a Swedish friend today we started talking about Sicko. My friend and his wife recently had a child so I asked about this. In this case the mother had stopped working 5 weeks before birth and was going to stay at home with their child for another 8 months. After that my friend was going to be a home dad for another 8 months. Needless to say he had a hard time believing me when I told him how it works over here...

In the movie Moore also talks about various health insurance companies, including the one I use. The stories are pretty scary. Luckily, I don't have much personal experience with these sort of things, but a friend recently had a bad experience. In short, he lost two teeth when punched in the face by a random drunk guy, fixed it and got a $6000 bill just to discover that his dental insurance had a "life time maximum" of $2000. This is the dental insurance provided to employees of Seattle's largest software companies.

Since this post is already is mostly random remarks and comments, I figured I'd toss in this funny clip of CNN challenging facts in Sicko:

Moore later responded on his web site.