It's enough to make you sick

Last evening, Occupy Greenville sponsored a Teach-In featuring a showing of Sick Around the World, followed by a spirited and lively discussion. There were maybe a dozen of us in attendance.

This follows our showing of Sick Around America last week--both shows produced by PBS Frontline.

It's a depressing situation: how did this country's health care system get so messed up? Can we fix it? Will 'Obamacare' make it better or stretch our existing makeshift solutions to the breaking point?

Sick Around the World profiled five rich, capitalist, Western countries, and how they have managed health care for their citizens: Taiwan, Switzerland, Germany, Japan, and the UK. All systems are far superior to ours, and running on less.

From the transcript of "Sick Around the World"--some highlights:

T.R. REID: [voice-over] Here's something else that's different. Japanese patients have much longer hospital stays than Americans, and they love technology, like scans. They have nearly twice as many MRIs per capita as Americans, eight times as many as the Brits.

So how do they keep costs under control? Well, it turns out the Japanese health ministry tightly controls the price of health care, right down to the smallest detail. Every two years, the physicians and the health ministry negotiate a fixed price for every single procedure and drug. Like the items in this sushi bar, everything from open heart surgery to a routine check-up has a standard price, and this price is the same everywhere in Japan.

If a doctor tries to boost his income by increasing the number of procedures, well, then, guess what? At the next negotiation, the government lowers the price. That's what happened with MRIs, which are incredibly cheap in Japan. I asked the country's top health economist, Professor Naoki Ikegami, to tell us how that happened.

[on camera] In Denver, where I live, if you get an MRI of your neck region, it's $1,200, and the doctor we visited in Japan says he gets $98 for an MRI. So how do you do that?

Prof. NAOKI IKEGAMI, School of Medicine, Keio Univ.: Well, in 2002, the government says that the MRIs, "We are paying too much. So in order to be within the total budget, we will cut them by 35 percent."

T.R. REID: So, if I'm a doctor, why don't I say, "Well, I'm not going to do them, then. It's not enough money"?

Prof. NAOKI IKEGAMI: You forgot that we have only one payment system. So if you want to do your MRIs, unless you can get private-pay patients, which is almost impossible in Japan, you go out of business.

T.R. REID: [voice-over] So that shafts the medical device makers and must limit innovation, right? Well, no. Japanese manufacturers of scanning equipment, like Toshiba, found ways to make inexpensive machines they could sell to doctors. And guess what? Now they're exporting those machines all over the world.

The whole show was like this, a series of PRICE REGULATING realizations that blew my little mind. (Why do we accept the AMA's flimsy-ass excuses for everything?)

In Taiwan, everybody must opt into the system, and they issue a standard government health care card that you just pop into a slot, like paying to park: Zip. All I could think, watching them flip that wonderful little card in and out of various slots, was how these rabidly-anti-government guys around here (waves to my radio-show callers!) would never go along with something like that: galdurnit, I won't get a guvmint ID card! I can hear it now--echoes of last week's Ron Paul rally dancing in my head.

What is interesting is that once they finally get it established, even conservatives in these countries appreciate (and want to continue) universal health care for all of their citizens. And at that point, it becomes another political football, as liberal politicians threaten the populace that conservatives want to cut benefits. (Could that actually happen here?)

In Switzerland, their system was a wreck as late as 1994. It took a lot of political will to change it. Their administrative costs are now 5% of their medical budget, compared to our whopping 22%. From the transcript:

[on camera] One of the problems we have in America is that many people -- it's a huge number of people -- go bankrupt because of medical bills. Some studies say 700,000 people a year. How many people in Switzerland go bankrupt because of medical bills?

President PASCAL COUCHEPIN: Nobody. It doesn't happen. It would be a huge scandal if it happens.

T.R. REID: [voice-over] But here's Switzerland's challenge. Having achieved universal health care, it has to decide how much citizens are willing to pay. Today, an average monthly premium for a Swiss family is about $750. But there's pressure to raise the premiums. And it's already the second most expensive health care system in the world, although still much cheaper than ours.

What's interesting about Switzerland is that after LAMal's success, people in this proud capitalist country see limits now to the free market.

[on camera] Could a 100 percent free market system work in health care?

Pres. PASCAL COUCHEPIN: No, I don't think that. If you do that, you will lose solidarity and equal access for everybody.

In conclusion, there appears to be three major factors to make universal health care work:

These capitalist countries don't trust health care entirely to the free market. They all impose limits.

There are three big ones. First, insurance companies must accept everyone and can't make a profit on basic care. Second, everybody's mandated to buy insurance, and the government pays the premium for the poor. Third, doctors and hospitals have to accept one standard set of fixed prices.

Can Americans accept ideas like that?

Well, the fact is these foreign health care ideas aren't really so foreign to us. For American veterans, health care is just like Britain's NHS. For seniors on Medicare, we're Taiwan. For working Americans with insurance, we're Germany. And for the tens of million without health insurance, we're just another poor country.

But almost all of us can agree that this fragmented health care mess cannot be ignored. The longer we leave it, the sicker it becomes, and the more expensive the cure.

I'll repeat the question here: Can Americans accept these ideas, do you think?

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Update: Walkupy's recent bust in Madison County, Georgia, did not dim the hardy spirits of our Occupiers! We tweeted news of the arrest to the world and the Madison County Sheriff's Office was bombarded with phone calls from all manner of lefty busybodies such as your humble narrator. The Powers-That-Be responded by setting them free with all charges dropped--WOOT! Very happy about that, as one of our local Greenville Occupiers has joined up with Walkupy for a stint. (We love you, Lynne!)

From the Anderson Independent Mail, here are some very nice pictures of Walkupy on the roads.

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At left: Daisy and the dangerous sign-carrier. (Would this man hit anybody with a sign?)



Speaking of busts, the official consiglieri/producer of the DAISY DEADHEAD SHOW, Gregg Jocoy, was cited for having a sign that was TOO BIG, outside the federal courthouse last week, during the Occupy the Courts action. Yes, there is some dopey Greenville County ordinance about the size of signs.

And what about Newt's enormous signs all over the county (that still haven't been taken down by his lazy supporters)? Well, they don't count, since it's a PICKETING ordinance! Big signs are okay, but not if you are walking around with it... I guess he might hit somebody with it? He'll poke his eye out!

So, an expensive citation, which I suspect was really because he was out there yelling about the courts. Occupy the Courts was a national succcess, if (as usual) receiving little media coverage.

I love seeing the Occupy movement stretch out in all directions!

Repulsion (1965)

As my regular readers know, I am an old movie geek. I pepper my conversation with lines from old movies. I inspect old movies like old maps, old gems, old still-photographs...I wait for great moments, great scenes and great facial expressions. I know I have written about these hundreds of times on this blog.

I also look for mistakes; I find boom-mikes in the margins of the frame, I find hippies in movies supposedly set in the 40s (The Godfather has a hippie in one frame, if you are fast enough to catch him). Movies are like songs and records to me, I watch them over and over. I know them by heart, I know the climax and the resolution. I wait for the Jack Rabbit Slim's commercial to play on the car radio as Bruce Willis is running by in PULP FICTION. I wait to hear Luke Skywalker say, "Prisoner transfer from cell block 1138." (I love THX 1138 with a passion.) I eat that stuff up.

And I've watched Roman Polanski's movies over and over, too.

Years ago, I decided that REPULSION could be the subject of a feminist dissertation. The story of a woman's sexual disintegration and pathological fear of men (driving her to kill them), is simply a stunning, amazing film. The scene in which the incredibly beautiful Catherine Deneuve picks up her roommate's boyfriend's t-shirt off the bathroom floor, recognizes it as... a MAN'S shirt... and involuntarily gags... that is a great moment and a great scene, one of those I wait for. (There is also a moment of fun inside-trivia, wherein Deneuve receives a postcard from the roommate and her boyfriend in Italy, announcing that they are enjoying "La Dolce Vita"--the title of the Fellini film Deneuve's former partner, Marcello Mastroianni, made in 1960.)

The scene in which Deneuve thinks she sees a man behind her in the mirror is utterly terrifying, and has been used by every horror-movie director in the world... but as far as I know, Polanski was the first. When the church bells wake her up and she hallucinates a man in her bed, who overpowers her? Jesus H. Christ, people. And then, her famous nightmare, the hands descending from the walls. The maze of hands, groping, grabbing, seeking to hold onto her, to harm her.

Deneuve is being hounded, to say the least. MEN will not leave her alone. And don't lots of us feel that way, at certain times in our lives? That we are being forever hounded by men?

Which females in our culture are most likely to feel this way? Well, I know that when I did, I was about 13 or 14 and just becoming accustomed to being one of the hunted.

Put another way, I was the age of Roman Polanski's victim.

The last scene shows us a photograph of Deneuve as a scary-looking child, as if to say, the kid's always been strange, but even in this photo we see her jarring, uncanny beauty. By choosing a woman of such world-renowned beauty, Polanski is telling us that she deserves to feel hunted, because she IS hunted. Men throughout the movie, poor saps, want to party with her. She has been called one of the most beautiful women in the world. In a postmodern sense, we know who she is, she is Catherine Deneuve; and this pushes the film into a dreamlike realm. One can't help but think that she HAS been stalked and followed all of her life; of course she has. She is a famous beautiful woman. She has good reason to be afraid. Men all over the world have wanted her. Imagine, we are thinking, how that feels?

Doesn't feel good.

Deneuve stands in for all of us; her coveted beauty is suddenly frightening, a notable weakness. We realize there is no escape for her, because she is too beautiful. The "princess" fantasy is that every man will worship us, and Polanski flips this adolescent daydream on its head: Yes, every man will want you. See what it's done to poor Catherine? Her sanity is gone, gone, gone.

Now that Polanski has been busted in Switzerland, and both Hollywood and Blogdonia are ablaze with defenses and counter-defenses, let me make it clear that I believe Polanski is scum. Yes, a great artist, but total and complete scum. And this movie is how I know. Yes, right here in this stunning WORK OF ART, I see what a horrible man he is.

I see a rapist.

I've always seen him, the reflection in the movie-mirror.

It's like Woody Allen's MANHATTAN, wherein Woody is unabashedly involved with high-school girl Mariel Hemingway: How can you miss it? Certain film-directors let us know, in ways large and small, exactly who they are. And Roman Polanski projects his consciousness onto Deneuve in REPULSION. Polanski is the man who has created this character, after all. And it is his incessant interest and desire that has caused Catherine to flip out, to imagine men are everywhere. Polanski's arms are the arms that emerge from the walls; Polanski is the man who appears when the church bells ring.

Roman Polanski is the man Deneuve is afraid of.




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Please read these threads for further Polanski discussion: Polanski Defend-a-Thon Part 1 and Part 2, and Getting Over It (by Lauren at Feministe, a must-read).

EDITED TO ADD: Her reasons are not yours (Shakesville)

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Repulsion trailer (may trigger, etc)