Yes­ter­day, I went to see Michael Moore’s new movie, “Sicko”, which inves­ti­gates the US health care sys­tem and com­pares it to the British, the French and the Cuban (!) “social­ized” health sys­tem. I’m telling you, I had a headache by the end of the movie.

I like Michael Moore. Sure, his movies are biased but since I’m left-wing, it doesn’t really hurt my feel­ings. On top of that, being an opti­mistic per­son, I do believe his inves­ti­ga­tions can make waves. But this time, I left the movie the­ater with mixed feel­ings. Since I’m famil­iar with both the Cana­dian and the French health care sys­tem, I knew Moore wasn’t telling us all the truth. And thus I started won­der­ing about the US health system .

First of all, the good old French sys­tem which I expe­ri­enced for about 18 years. You must have heard taxes were high in France, well now let me tell you what they are for : fund­ing the “sécu­rité sociale”, the free health­care sys­tem. Every French cit­i­zen has a “Carte Vitale”, a small chip card which enti­tle to free health care : fam­ily doc­tors, hos­pi­tal care, pre­scrip­tion etc. If you’re not a French cit­i­zen or have low income (or no income), you ben­e­fit from the CMU (Uni­ver­sal Dis­ease Pro­gram) and are enti­tled to have your health expenses reim­bursed, added to a com­ple­men­tary health pro­tec­tion of 100%.

Sim­ple Eng­lish : any­body in France (cit­i­zens, immi­grants – legal or not – home­less…) is enti­tled to free health care. What is not cov­ered : some den­tal care, some pri­vate prac­ti­tion­ers (around 3% of doc­tors in France) and some alter­na­tive treat­ment (home­opa­thy…). The sys­tem is pretty good although it’s expen­sive to run and it’s deficit is quite big.

But grow­ing up in France, I saw all kind of doc­tors and my par­ents never wor­ried about pay­ing off the bills. Social­ized health care is deeply enrooted in French soci­ety and no polit­i­cal party ever ques­tioned it, despite many debates where the deficit was pointed out. It’s taken for granted. I had never con­sid­ered health care being a lux­ury until I decided to move to North America.

When I first told my friends and fam­ily about my deci­sion to move in Canada, I was basi­cally advised to spend a day at the hos­pi­tal – not to recon­sider my deci­sion to move across the Atlantic, but to get a check up. “Cause in North Amer­ica, health care isn’t really good, and it’s so expensive !”.

Really ? I never though about that. So I did some researches about the Cana­dian health care sys­tem and I found out that Canada and France sys­tems were actu­ally pretty close.

In Canada, each province runs its health sys­tem under the fed­eral Canada Health Act. Every Cana­dian cit­i­zen or Per­ma­nent Res­i­dent has health cov­er­age. Den­tal care, drugs and optom­e­try (in many provinces) are the main things which are not cov­ered – very sim­i­lar to France. Also, some pro­ce­dures are only cov­ered under cer­tain cir­cum­stances, for exam­ple eye care.

The two main prob­lems in Canada are the long wait­ing lists and short­age of med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers, both reg­u­larly mak­ing head­lines in newspapers.

The sys­tem is also a bit tougher than in France, as I learned ear­lier this year when I was look­ing for an oph­thal­mol­o­gist. In order to see an eye spe­cial­ist, I needed to be referred by a fam­ily doc­tor – I don’t have one. So I looked for an optometrist, mostly for a refer­ral. It wasn’t easy. Optometrists in Ottawa charged what seemed to me very high fees, any­where from $80 to $100. I ended up in Que­bec, across the bridge, where it was much cheaper.

The optometrist was capa­ble enough, but stuck to the basic eye exam. When I asked for a refer­ral, I was told my con­di­tion (ambly­opia, lazy eye, I-have-a-blind-eye-and-I-don’t-give-a-damn, what­ever you call it) was too com­mon to inter­est a spe­cial­ist and wasn’t worth a visit. Basi­cally, don’t join the wait­ing list with a con­di­tion as basic as a blind eye. I left the prac­tice a bit dis­ap­pointed. In France, I’ve seen count­less oph­thal­mol­o­gists for free. I guess Canada mon­i­tors refer­rals a bit more.

But from what I’ve seen in “Sicko”, I really can’t com­plain. I mean, in the USA, you die in the street if you don’t have health insur­ance. These same insur­ance com­pa­nies spend bil­lions on lawyers just to deny your claim so that you go bank­rupt pay­ing for expen­sive surgery. Peo­ple are in bad shape because they can’t afford going to see doctors.

Or do they ? I mean, can any­one wise me up on the US health care sys­tem ? All I know is through Robin Cook’s nov­els and Michael Moore, and I’m reluc­tant to accept the fact peo­ple would be left out cause they can’t afford expen­sive health are.

Cause Michael Moore dis­ap­pointed me quite a bit with his com­par­isons and his exaggerations.

Among other, he showed an Amer­i­can woman going to see a doc­tor in Canada with her two kids, like if it was a rou­tine thing for her. She wasn’t a Cana­dian res­i­dent. But she man­ages to see doc­tors by say­ing she’s liv­ing common-law with a Cana­dian. Hello ??? Do you think Cana­di­ans are actu­ally gonna let you get free health care with­out an health card just because you’re sup­pos­edly a Canadian’s common-law’s part­ner ? Before I had Per­ma­nent Res­i­dence in Canada, I wasn’t cov­ered. I paid to see a fam­ily doc­tor in Canada, and I was mar­ried at the time.

Same goes with France. Moore shows a bunch of Amer­i­can liv­ing in Paris and describes all the ben­e­fits they get : free day­care cen­ter, free hos­pi­tal care, some­one to help you do the laun­dry at home… Huh ? Inter­est­ing. I really never heard of this lat­est ser­vice. No kid­ding… He also shows a wealthy French cou­ple in Paris who declares that “health care isn’t a big expense for them”. Well, yeah. When you make 8000 euro a month, it can’t really be. Moore rides along with an SOS Médecin doc­tor to point out French get house visit from doc­tors. He omits to men­tion “SOS Médecins” is basi­cally the equiv­a­lent of paramedics.

I got your point, Michael. The US health sys­tem sucks, social­ized health sys­tems are best. I agree. I wouldn’t imag­ine liv­ing in a coun­try where I have to pay to be healthy again. But some exam­ple just hurt the cred­i­bil­ity of the whole movie.

I’m curi­ous to hear from you guys in the US. What do you think of your health sys­tem ? How do you man­age ? Do you envy us ? Do you think the sit­u­a­tion in the US should change ?

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