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5.0 out of 5 stars
IN THE SIXTIES EMERGED THE CONCEPT OF HOLISTIC MEDICINE, THE WHOLE PERSON, THEN NIXON COMMERCIALIZED AND DEHUMANIZED IT ALL AND, June 6, 2008
The most telling part of this excellent and important documentary, essential viewing in this electoral season (especially where he shows how Hillary got bought off after fighting briefly and with compromises for the universal health care enjoyed by most civilized Western nations, including here France, Norway, Cuba and Canada), arises when we learn how we went from a nation of concerned health care providers addressing the whole person and community to privatized corporations concerned only for the bottom line and thus aggressively denying any care at all in order to earn more profits, placing money before Americans. It once took a whole village to raise a child and heal the sick and to care for our elderly in peace and compassion; now our health management, insurance and pharmaceutical corporations in order to increase their records profits deny health care to anyone who is ill. The most telling and undeniable part of this important and pro-life documentary lies in the Nixon tapes, in which Erlichman in 1971 sells the concept of privatized health management of Kaiser Permanente to a Nixon growling at any whiff of our government providing health services to all. Erlichman forcefully assures the frowning one that this is strictly for profit, and so Nixon the Usurper, our own Richard the Third, gleefully agrees (wondering where he gets his cut of the pie) and the next night on national television sells this snake oil as good for Americans. Now we have the worst health care system in the once civilized world, which mercilessly denies health care to those who are sick in order to rake in greater profits at the cost of their lives and suffering, ignoring and abusing not only the once honored whole person, but also encouraging and waiting for their death by negligence. Thanks a lot, Dick. And now from Dick into Bush.
One of the major marks of the ministry of Jesus was his healing. We now have a nation which refuses to heal, having the resources to do so. As Michael asks, what have we become? Michael, a Catholic, in this documentary frequently resorts to Catholic clergy and religious for this explicit subtext, including a parish priest in south Texas lamenting the loss of a parishioner to conscientious industry negligence; a beautiful Eucharistic celebration is presented. Michael also interviews a nun in Havana who strongly and consistently assures us who view that there is no religious persecution in Cuba. And one of the extra features, on this disk documenting the US health care industry's exclusive eagerness for profit by denying health care, asks Whom Would Jesus Deny (WWJD)?
Despite the statement by Michael Douglass character Gecko in the epitome of capitalist films Wall Street (20th Anniversary Edition), in this case greed is not good. Greed never is. It does not clarify. It is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. It kills us, and when it does not yet kill us, it brings us the most profound suffering possible, and it does not care. It is greed.
To see children addressing their own parents who have lost everything to health care expenses, despite having insurance, and who must needs sleep in their children's basement, to see those children disrespect their own parents as failures and as burdens, and giving them no more than a corner in the basement computer room (without moving out the computer, which comes first), to see those children demand to know how long this stay is going to last, of their own parents who gave them life and home and education and food and warmth, to see those children so corrupted by the brave new US mentality as to despise their own parents for their infirmity and poverty, to see their own children do not care, do not feel, this is to weep. Then to see that grandmother weeping in Havana because for once her health care and her emotional needs are being addressed, for free, is to weep once more. To see Canadians and British and French laughing as if an embarrassing joke, a concept which makes no sense, at our health care industry's demands and abuses and our government's eager complicity in this avaricious extortion of the American people, is to remember that, yes, we must care for one another, and the only pre-condition for going to the hospital is to be sick, and that the sign of a decent society is one which cares truly and wholly for its infirm, its elderly and its poor. This is a normal society, and we have come so far from it that we can no longer recall normal.
We make war for record profits for the war industry, including Blackwater and Halliburton. We deny health care for record profits for the illness industry. We see a 9/11 rescue worker weeping to discover in Cuba that the same inhaler she buys in America for $120 costs in Cuba $5, as she weeps to be heard for the first time and releases all of her pent up emotion not only from her rescue experiences at ground zero, but at the persistent denial of care needed because of the effects of the selfless rescue, because of losing her home and everything and moving her children into hopeless situations because of the high health costs above and beyond insurance.
Cuba sent medical teams to New Orleans to save lives before the brutal Bush military regime even woke up, as our poor and elderly and infirm drowned and died.
The Bush military regime turned the life-bringing medical teams away at the point of heavy artillery. Watch Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke - A Requiem In Four Acts (Documentary).
What's wrong with this picture? Just ask Michael.
Cuba exports doctors while we export war and deny health care to our own people. What is wrong with this picture? Go ask Michael. Ask your Congressional representative. What health care have we brought to Iraq?
We wish to laugh with the woman whose ambulance fee was denied because it was not pre-approved, as she asks how she could ask for approval while unconscious, but we realize this is too true and too common. It is very common. We weep with the mother whose baby daughter was let die of a fever because she was not in a hospital owned by Kaiser Permanente but a competitor, the closest one to the mother's home. The illness industry's only response was to throw that agonized mother out of their hospital for disturbing the peace. I guess that I would, too, as my baby daughter dies, denied care. We see injured and lost people dumped on skid row because their insurance money has run out, while still in pain and suffering, with IV's still attached.
Nixon. In the pursuit of impure profit turned our once great and committed health care industry into a bloody avaricious carnivorous monster as brutal as any prison doctor in an old chain gang movie demanding cash for relief from pain and suffering and lethal illnesses easily cured. Bobby would never have permitted this, and this is why they killed him now forty years ago. Bobby would have made America, not Cuba, the greatest exporter of doctors to the Third World. Bobby would have cared for all Americans, and eased all suffering without thought of cost, as do the civilized nations of the Western world. But, then, Bobby was a Catholic too, and heard the command of Jesus to heal the sick and to do unto others what we want them to do for ourselves, to love our neighbor as ourselves, to love our enemy.
See this movie again today. See this movie before you vote. See this movie and all of the excellent extras attached on this Special Edition disk.
Corporate capitalist illogic, recently condemned again by the good Pope Benedict, echoing the words of his predecessors, laughed at in disbelief by the citizens of our civilized Western nations, as applied to human rights and needs: limit supply to increase costs; deny care to cut costs and increase profits. Only in America. The most telling part of this excellent and important documentary, essential viewing in this electoral season (especially where he shows how Hillary got bought off after fighting briefly and with compromises for the universal health care enjoyed by most civilized Western nations, including here France, Norway, Cuba and Canada), arises when we learn how we went from a nation of concerned health care providers addressing the whole person and community to privatized corporations concerned only for the bottom line and thus aggressively denying any care at all in order to earn more profits, placing money before Americans. It once took a whole village to raise a child and heal the sick and to care for our elderly in peace and compassion; now our health management, insurance and pharmaceutical corporations in order to increase their records profits deny health care to anyone who is ill. The most telling and undeniable part of this important and pro-life documentary lies in the Nixon tapes, in which Erlichman in 1971 sells the concept of privatized health management of Kaiser Permanente to a Nixon growling at any whiff of our government providing health services to all. Erlichman forcefully assures the frowning one that this is strictly for profit, and so Nixon the Usurper, our own Richard the Third, gleefully agrees (wondering where he gets his cut of the pie) and the next night on national television sells this snake oil as good for Americans. Now we have the worst health care system in the once civilized world, which mercilessly denies health care to those who are sick in order to rake in greater profits at the cost of their lives and suffering, ignoring and abusing not only the once honored whole person, but also encouraging and waiting for their death by negligence. Thanks a lot, Dick. And now from Dick into Bush.
One of the major marks of the ministry of Jesus was his healing. We now have a nation which refuses to heal, having the resources to do so. As Michael asks, what have we become? Michael, a Catholic, in this documentary frequently resorts to Catholic clergy and religious for this explicit subtext, including a parish priest in south Texas lamenting the loss of a parishioner to conscientious industry negligence; a beautiful Eucharistic celebration is presented. Michael also interviews a nun in Havana who strongly and consistently assures us who view that there is no religious persecution in Cuba. And one of the extra features, on this disk documenting the US health care industry's exclusive eagerness for profit by denying health care, asks Whom Would Jesus Deny (WWJD)?
Despite the statement by Michael Douglass character Gecko in the epitome of capitalist films Wall Street (20th Anniversary Edition), in this case greed is not good. Greed never is. It does not clarify. It is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. It kills us, and when it does not yet kill us, it brings us the most profound suffering possible, and it does not care. It is greed.
To see children addressing their own parents who have lost everything to health care expenses, despite having insurance, and who must needs sleep in their children's basement, to see those children disrespect their own parents as failures and as burdens, and giving them no more than a corner in the basement computer room (without moving out the computer, which comes first), to see those children demand to know how long this stay is going to last, of their own parents who gave them life and home and education and food and warmth, to see those children so corrupted by the brave new US mentality as to despise their own parents for their infirmity and poverty, to see their own children do not care, do not feel, this is to weep. Then to see that grandmother weeping in Havana because for once her health care and her emotional needs are being addressed, for free, is to weep once more. To see Canadians and British and French laughing as if an embarrassing joke, a concept which makes no sense, at our health care industry's demands and abuses and our government's eager complicity in this avaricious extortion of the American people, is to remember that, yes, we must care for one another, and the only pre-condition for going to the hospital is to be sick, and that the sign of a decent society is one which cares truly and wholly for its infirm, its elderly and its poor. This is a normal society, and we have come so far from it that we can no longer recall normal.
We make war for record profits for the war industry, including Blackwater and Halliburton. We deny health care for record profits for the illness industry. We see a 9/11 rescue worker weeping to discover in Cuba that the same inhaler she buys in America for $120 costs in Cuba $5, as she weeps to be heard for the first time and releases all of her pent up emotion not only from her rescue experiences at ground zero, but at the persistent denial of care needed because of the effects of the selfless rescue, because of losing her home and everything and moving her children into hopeless situations because of the high health costs above and beyond insurance.
Cuba sent medical teams to New Orleans to save lives before the brutal Bush military regime even woke up, as our poor and elderly and infirm drowned and died.
The Bush military regime turned the life-bringing medical teams away at the point of heavy artillery. Watch Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke - A Requiem In Four Acts (Documentary).
What's wrong with this picture? Just ask Michael.
Cuba exports doctors while we export war and deny health care to our own people. What is wrong with this picture? Go ask Michael. Ask your Congressional representative. What health care have we brought to Iraq?
We wish to laugh with the woman whose ambulance fee was denied because it was not pre-approved, as she asks how she could ask for approval while unconscious, but we realize this is too true and too common. It is very common. We weep with the mother whose baby daughter was let die of a fever because she was not in a hospital owned by Kaiser Permanente but a competitor, the closest one to the mother's home. The illness industry's only response was to throw that agonized mother out of their hospital for disturbing the peace. I guess that I would, too, as my baby daughter dies, denied care. We see injured and lost people dumped on skid row because their insurance money has run out, while still in pain and suffering, with IV's still attached.
Nixon. In the pursuit of impure profit turned our once great and committed health care industry into a bloody avaricious carnivorous monster as brutal as any prison doctor in an old chain gang movie demanding cash for relief from pain and suffering and lethal illnesses easily cured. Bobby would never have permitted this, and this is why they killed him now forty years ago. Bobby would have made America, not Cuba, the greatest exporter of doctors to the Third World. Bobby would have cared for all Americans, and eased all suffering without thought of cost, as do the civilized nations of the Western world. But, then, Bobby was a Catholic too, and heard the command of Jesus to heal the sick and to do unto others what we want them to do for ourselves, to love our neighbor as ourselves, to love our enemy.
See this movie again today. See this movie before you vote. See this movie and all of the excellent extras attached on this Special Edition disk.
Corporate capitalist illogic, recently condemned again by the good Pope Benedict, echoing the words of his predecessors, laughed at in disbelief by the citizens of our civilized Western nations, as applied to human rights and needs: limit supply to increase costs; deny care to cut costs and increase profits. Only in America.
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