Sicko

Firstly, my confession: OK, I am a little outdated. Behind time for this 'movie review'.

Having just watched the film Sicko by Michael Moore. I cannot help but to feel sad for the Americans. It is about the American health care. Good grief. Things are sure bad. I feel very sorry for the poor. Do watch the show, it is a good documentary. USA is very good at marketing, at propaganda. When it comes to health care, it is bad - bad if you are poor. The insurance companies and pharmaceuticals make all the money and that's true. I will have a separate post on that later.

Is Sicko true? Here's my experience. I travel to USA fairly often for business (Nible2). I wanted to have a device X-rayed and asked my colleagues there if we could sneakily ask a radiographer to X-ray it. It's just a electronic device, no harm could be done to it, so, to me, it was a good idea. My colleague just laughed at me. He told me that the previous month, his son has broken his arm and was taken to a hospital. The hospital told him that the waiting time for an X Ray would be three months! No, there is no typo. Three months waiting time for just an X ray. He said that eventually, he took his soon to a private establishment and the X Ray alone cost USD 500. Here in Malaysia, private hospitals can do it for less than USD 20, to X-ray just the arm. So, indeed Sicko has truth in it.

Another experience, Australia - USA's closest ally - when Johnny Boy was the Prime Minister at least. Years back, my sister sprained her leg. She was a international student and had private medical insurance. When she showed up at the hospital, she was simply sent home, without any medical attention. The reason? There's a long queue and others in the queue have far more serious medical condition. Sad, but true.

Nett nett, in Malaysia, we have a good medical system - not the best the the world but heck a lot better than the USA or Australia. As a Malaysian, all I could say is, that is something I appreciate what the government has done.