06/10/2007

This message should strike a nerve

By Kathy Gibbons
Features editor
kgibbons@
record-eagle.com

Read Kathy's past columns here

It seems a day doesn't go by here that we don't get a phone call, or email, or letter about a medical fundraiser.

You know what I'm talking about — the spaghetti dinners, concerts and anything else people can do to raise money when someone's sick. These events are designed to help pay for medical care when people don't have insurance, or just as commonly, it seems, for the parts that aren't covered when people are insured, which can be nearly as bad. Or the person has been too sick to work and can't pay bills. Or maybe the person died and there's a spouse and/or children eking out an existence without income — and with a pile of unpaid medical expenses.

These events have become so common that we can't do a big story spotlighting each one like it deserves, even though one is just as painful and important to those involved as the next. Sometimes we can shine a spotlight on one, say, if there are unusual circumstances as in the case of an Iraq soldier whose wife nearly died in childbirth, or the man who just needed enough money to go to Mexico for life-saving surgery.

But the rest get a few paragraphs and a calendar listing. Meanwhile, people suffer, and try to cope, and help each other as they can. As if being sick isn't bad enough, the fact that so many make life and death choices based solely on whether they can pay or not, and undergo financial and emotional distress that equals or outweighs their bad health, is even worse.

All of that came to mind when I got a chance to watch Michael Moore's new film, "Sicko,” the other day. Until then only having seen it in digital format, Moore was previewing it for the first time on film on a big screen at Petoskey Cinema. The purpose was to check it for production flaws that need to be corrected before it's made into 1,800 prints that will be distributed across the country for a June 29 opening, and he'd invited a few people to watch. It's also being premiered as a fund-raiser in Bellaire this Saturday.

There isn't space here to go into the thoughts that were rushing through my head on the drive back. I've always agreed with the messages of Moore's films, but what I particularly love about "Sicko” is that he didn't employ confrontational tactics to get this one across. He gives his detractors nothing to seize upon and attack as a means to divert attention from the message, unless they go after his trip to Cuba, which, once you see how that plays out, well, it would be hard to do that either.

I can't imagine any American except the most well-off and sheltered from the frustrating to just plain dismal health care realities most of us face on varying levels arguing with this message. Not when they see people in countries where government-provided care is the norm getting the care and support they need regardless of income.

Though there's one thing they won't see as part of the health care systems in those other countries.

Spaghetti dinners. Not one.