Another film, not by Hollywood, has been generating buzz in today’s times. Probably picking up from where Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”, Michael Moore’s “Sicko” puts into the spotlight another issue that affects everyone; health care.

healthcareImpeccable timing for Moore especially now that the political climate of the US has shifted towards the coming Presidential elections in 2008, Moore has once again pulled a fast one. Some are saying that the issue about the war in Iraq is old-news, global warming and now health care issues are now at the tips of the electorates’ tongues and so the politicians are having a hard time catching on.

After all, politicians are amongst the last to catch on the latest buzz out on the street. Ironic and funny when you think that these people are elected by the public, clothed, sheltered and well-provided for by the same public they were voted to represent. Maybe elections should be ditched and citizens just take turns in running the government, but that’s for another story.

Word on the street and in the world of new media is this; private or universal health care?

Pretty tough choices huh? Conservatives, liberals, neo-liberals, fake-liberals, the whole circus have started to weigh in on the issue.

Turtlebella says that universal health care is a right and a necessity, she even quips that it may be just what the doctor ordered.

So, what the hell is wrong with the US? Why are we the richest country in the world and yet so backward when it comes to health care? We appear to buy so wholeheartedly into the myth of rugged individualism where one is responsible for one’s self and no one else and too bad if someone can’t afford to get the health care they need or get denied by their insurance company, it’s not my fault or my responsibility. We so clearly believe that capitalism is so the right system, even for something like health care. The insurance companies are there to make money, not to help people. The doctors that work for insurance companies get bonuses if they deny more claims.

Now three words are very interesting in this issue, not at the forefront or center of the issue, but it’s still worth mentioning because the words “Cuba”, “United States” and “health care” present some jaw-dropping picture of reality. Sweetness and Light is irked by a story in Reuters, Cuban Health Care Better Than US.

This “lie” according to him should not be repeated otherwise it would become the truth. Which is quite strange, for the figures used in the Reuters story came from the WHO which is partly dominated by the US.

The opening of his post elicits an interesting question; “Who would you go for? The dictator who provides one of the best health care system in the world or the elected war-monger who rather kill people from other countries while leaving his own people at the mercy of corporate health care?”

Moving away from the Left-Right view of things, Ezra Klein espouses what is not so common among so many, common sense. In a nut-shell, Health Insurance is Not Like Car Insurance. Amen!

To end this column, Jo Swift presents a rich selection of articles about how “Free market” health care kills Americans by as much as 18,000 a year.

Instead of greeting the film with hosannas or challenging it head-on, however, the leading Democratic presidential candidates have sidestepped direct comment on Moore’s proposals.

Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois and former Sen. John Edwards of South Carolina all have staked out positions sharply at odds with Moore’s approach. But none of them is eager to have that fact dragged into the spotlight.

If Moore’s fire-breathing proposal catches on among party activists, who tend to be suspicious of the private sector and supportive of direct government action, the candidates’ pragmatic, consensus-seeking ideas could look like weak-kneed temporizing — much the way their rejection of an immediate pullout from Iraq has drawn heated criticism from antiwar activists.

So the buzz goes on, private or universal health care? Which presidential candidate will have the guts to take a stand and actually run on it in 2008.

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