I absolutely loved this film. I did have the honor of seeing it at the NYC premiere at Alice Tully Hall and the level of excitement in the air made it an unforgettable experience. This film could not be more timely and attempts to cover massive amounts of information from the current economic meltdown, to the human side of foreclosures, the abhorrent nature of pyramid capitalism and into the fact that power and money always corrupts our elected officials. Moore’s film seems scattered at times but he pulls it together in the end revealing more about his personal life then in any other film. His stunts are priceless and he captures some great moments. I misted up hearing FDR’s plan for a new Bill of Rights that never made it to law, for if it had this country might actually live up to the propaghandized claim that the USA is the best country in the world. One thing is for sure, Moore’s work is the best film of the year.
Dr. Jay Parkinson spits forth more brilliance about American Healthcare:
Healthcare delivery is a process. If we have no “System” to facilitate this process, that’s sort of like asking a bunch of disconnected, independent auto workers to find a place and come together on their own accord to build a ton of cars. Sure, they could build cars. It would take a ton of time and would be astronomically expensive, but it could be done. That’s sort of like healthcare in America. The ROI for a disconnected, perversely incented system shouldn’t even be measured. Like Obama says, “its kind of like the Special Olympics.”
This is based off of Umair Haque’s work on Harvardbusiness.org:
How much bang for the buck we really get in terms of life itself? I began with a measurement of Potential Years of Life Lost (PYLL). PYLL works like this: If a male lived to age 60, but average life expectancy was 69, 9 years of potential life would have been lost. PYLL is an interesting number to economists because it is a measure of opportunity cost: how much life is foregone in different healthcare systems.
Where does the United States stand compared to other countries? It loses the most potential years of life amongst developed countries. In the United States, 6397 years of life are lost per 100,000 males — compared to just 4574 in the United Kingdom, or 4018 in Italy.
The United States gets the smallest bang for the buck in terms of life itself amongst developed countries: it realizes the lowest level of “life returns.” The U.S. healthcare system returns the fewest life years for each dollar spent. The United States, for example, has invested an additional 8.3% of GDP in health since 1971. That investment yielded a PYLL reduction of 5157 years. America realized a return of 621 potential years of life gained for each additional percentage point of GDP invested in health.
6 Corporations control all conventional media outlets and thus all media has the potential to be filtered accordingly to benefit their corporate interests. This is a great presentation by Clay Shirkey on how social networking has circumvented this blackball effect and could signify the new media landscape we need to get the real truth out about so many important things you may never hear about.
Wow, has it really taken this long for them to move past warnings on Vicodin and Percocet and actually do something about the devastating effects these combination drugs have on the liver? The NY Times reports on the recent federal advisory panels ban on Vicodin and Percocet. I guess the 500 or so functions the liver must perform all day long were not monitored in clinical trials when narcotics (a class of opiod based analgesics) + acetaminophen were introduced. The acetaminophen is the danger here – it will destroy the liver. And about 400 people die a year from Vicodin and Percocet.
From Medscape via the Journal for Nurse Practitioners:
More than 200 million persons take acetaminophen each year. Of these, about 200 persons a year die of fulminant hepatic failure from acetaminophen overdosage. The median acute dose causing liver failure is 24 g (48 extra-strength tablets).
The concern here is for people who are in chronic pain and won’t have any options if there is a ban. Now I can’t speak on behalf of an individual in pain – but there are so many ways to reduce pain symptoms through acupuncture, Structural Integration, massage, movement and exercise (the body will produce its own opiod substances when actually moved off the couch and put into a sweat). So skip the Tylenol, Percocet, Vicodin, Oxycodone, and Hydrocodone and look for safe, effective therapies that can improve your life while reducing your symptons. It’s a win-win for you and your liver.
