Aussies assess American health care

Maybe “Sicko” is not a great name for an important and serious movie that all Americans should watch.  If I’d been judging by the name alone, I wouldn’t have given it a second glance.

Lots of people, of course, will know that it was made by Michael Moore and that it’s an expose of the medical care system in the United States, so by the time they’re in a video rental place, they’ll have decided, on grounds other than name appeal, whether they want to see it.

I wish everyone in America would watch it between now and the next time they get a chance to cast an election ballot.  Perhaps you should know that this wish comes from a person who, as a senior in high school, wrote a prize-winning essay opposing “socialized medicine.”  The statewide contest that gave me a cash award for second place was sponsored by the American Medical Association.  (Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned …)

Having now experienced health systems here in Australia and in the US, I have been positively impressed with the care I’ve received in both places.  I am alive and healthy today because of excellent doctors, technicians, and equipment provided to me a few years ago in Oklahoma and Texas.

I was, fortunately, well insured. Having insurance makes all the difference in the US.  A brother of mine had a heart attack a couple of months ago and had a pacemaker installed.  He’s fine, now.  If he had not been insured, he told me, “We simply couldn’t have afforded a pacemaker.”

As Moore’s movie points out, America is alone among developed countries in letting insurance issues and companies determine life and death health decisions for its citizens. I thought I already knew how dire the medical situation in my home country is (50 million without coverage, etc.), but “Sicko” showed me that things are even worse than I thought.

A few days after my partner and I watched Moore’s documentary, I stumbled onto an intense discussion between Australians about the American health care system and I found it fascinating to read the views of people who grew up with universal health care but, as expatriates, don’t have it now.

Their sometimes-heated discussion took place in a Yahoo group called Ozinamerica.  Over a period of days and after several thousand words, these articulate Aussies produced general agreement on at least a couple of points.

GENERAL AGREEMENT 1 – Insurance in the United States is expensive, but if you can get it and you can afford it, you’d be an idiot not to do so.

One Aussie said he’s considering saving several hundred dollars a month by not being insured, reasoning that if he gets seriously ill he can pack up and fly home to the security of the Australian system of universal care.

Some of the respondents, replying to him, came close to shouting.  A woman named Lynelle, although she wasn’t one of those, epitimized their views by saying that being uninsured in the US is like playing Russian roulette: “What happens if you get into a serious accident… What you would pay out of pocket for a situation like that will leave you financially destroyed!”

Another wrote, “If you don’t have health insurance in the US and you can afford it you’d have to have lost your mind (not to) get it.  There is a difference in the care you’ll get (with insurance) and where you can get it.”  Without insurance,  “the costs are extreme.”

A woman named Simone who lives in the San Francisco Bay area of California says that she and her husband are paying just under $1,000 a month for health insurance that is “not the best.”  They have pre-existing conditions “that we would not even be covered for anyway.” Health insurance in the US, she says, “basically sucks.”

GENERAL AGREEMENT 2 – Medicine as practiced in the US may, or may not, have some advantages, but the Australian system is better.

An Ozinamerica regular named Andrew noted that insurance for his family of three, which he finds to be “complicated, frustrating and of limited use,” costs about five times what he’d be paying for health coverage in Australia.   He and his wife and child are not, he says, getting five times the coverage or care.

One man named John wrote that he and his wife “find the medical services in the US to be a bit better.”  He thinks the doctors in the US are the best in the world, although that “will change in the next decade (because so many) doctors are leaving the industry” because of their own insurance-premium problems.

Katrina, an Aussie woman who works in healthcare in the US now after having done similar work in Australia, disagrees.  She wrote that “healthcare in the US is a mess and doesn’t provide any better care than in Australia.”

And Sam P. wrote: “Having worked in a US hospital for three years, and (having) had myself and my sons treated extensively in many hospitals in Australia and the USA, I would choose the Australian system every time.”

Private rooms are rare in Australia and one of Sam’s sons was recently discharged from four days in a four-bed ward of a hospital, but “people are treated according to the degree of their issues.”  By contrast, he wrote, ‘If you have loads of money, then the US system is great, (but) if you’re less than a multimillionaire, the Australian system is the way to go, at least right now.”

In what came close to being a summation statement for the discussion, John, mentioned above, noted that the US is the only developed country in the world where there is no universal health coverage and that the “US has a flawed system.”

His conclusion? “Everyone should watch ‘Sicko’.”