Sicko by Michael Moore

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My husband and I rented this movie, ironically enough, from our gym. My husband is a BIG fan of Micheal Moore. I have liked some of his documentaries but not all. I must say that working in health care for most of my adult life, for nonprofit hospitals, for very much FOR profit hospitals, to clinics that were hospital write offs (meaning they were expected to loose money), to public clinics, to private physicians, even I learned a lot about our health care system from this movie. I now understand why one of the private physicians that I worked for was so very angry that he could be the kind of physician his father was, why her seemingly put off testing that a patients signs and symptoms seemed to necessitate. Why he would make exceptions for people with certain insurances verses people without any or with a lower tier plan. I am not saying any of that was right behavior but I understand why he was doing it more. I also miss working for two of the nonprofit hospitals where everyone was treated the same by the policies of the facility, the care givers own preconceived (including my own) prejudices did not always make each patient experience equal however. There the homeless patient in 204 had the same benefits as the Spanish speaking immigrant in 409, and as the fully insured patient on rehab. I DO NOT miss working for the hospital that was run by the first HMO mentioned in the film. I saw patients that weren't stable, that were in our ICU, that were transferred out because they didn't have the right insurance, that no doctor wanted to take calls for when they were having active cardiac events, where bed alarms were used on up to 4 patients per nurse instead of making the patients one on one or bringing in a patient safety aide. I saw a patient brought in for a suicide attempt (this was not their first), given to a nurse that had 2 other very busy patients, overdose and end up on a ventilator while in our ICU because no one checked her belongings for more pills and her nurse was stuck in another room. I saw patient falls left and right, I saw employees get hurt and great well trained nurses and staff get feed up and leave. The morale at that hospital was the worst I have ever seen yet it was one of the best paying facilities in the area. I have worked in clinics were patients were given medication samples instead of prescriptions we knew they couldn't fill and in hospitals and Dr.'s offices were the patients were given prescriptions and shoved out the door. When the patients sometimes called back to say they couldn't find a pharmacy in their area that was open that carried the prescription they were suppose to start that day, or that they couldn't afford it, they were given the brush off. I have worked with travel nurses from Canada who do tell me that they can make more money in the US. I have worked with US nurses that have traveled to Great Britain who couldn't believe the expanded scope of nursing there. I have long wanted to move to Europe, especially London (LOVED IT), now maybe I can start researching how to make it a reality. I especially was shocked to learn about the free college in France. Since my husband has a $40 thousand student loan debt, free college sounds like it might be worth a move to France for Lilith. Did I love France? Well, we could learn especially after watching this film!