Writing Feedback / I need help on an Essay for the Documentary SiCKO [3]

I'm attempting to write an Essay on the Documentary SiCKO and I'm having a really hard time, I'm really new to this. Please help with any tips, my professor dislikes me and is really hard on me so I have to make this perfect or she'll fail me :(. And I'm sorry it pasted all funky.

The current health care plan in the United States is hazardous to your health, because it keeps people in debt, it's not available to everyone, and it can kill them.

The current health care plan in the United States is hazardous to your health because it keeps people in debt. The health insurance available to the general public is usually received through their job. It comes out of their checks before they get them. Often the insurance for a single person is reasonably priced, however most people want to include their family in their plan as well. The United States is the only major country in the western world that doesn't have free health care for its citizens. Why would this be? The documentary "SiCKO" would have us make our own conclusion, however it gives us a good look at greed as the motivating factor.

Many elected officials and policy makers have taken bribes from insurance companies and drug companies to pass policies that empower those companies and demoralize the citizens they are elected by. The movie shows that even Richard Nixon fell prey to his greed and is caught on tape talking to his advisors about health maintenance organization before he proposed a new health care plan the next day, which was later enacted.

On February 17, 1971, Richard Nixon met with John Ehrlichman to discuss the Vice President's position on health maintenance organizations, as heard in the film. The Miller Center of Public Affairs has this audio recording (conversation number 450-23. "Richard Nixon - Oval Office Recordings,"

The next day, Nixon called for a "new national health strategy" that had four points for expanding the proliferation of health maintenance organizations, or HMOs. "Special Message to the Congress Proposing a National Health Strategy," February 18th, 1971.

This is a hard thing to prove but it seems that it pays, and pays a lot to keep the American people from having free health care. Keeping it expensive is big business and apparently in the best interests of the government, but not the people. The movie "SiCKO" interviews Tony Benn, former member of British parliament, he says:

"If you're shackled with debt, you don't have the freedom to choose People in debt become hopeless, and hopeless people don't vote. They always say everyone should vote, but I think if the poor in Britain or the United States voted for people who represented their interests, it would be a real democratic revolution. So they don't want it to happen. So keeping people hopeless and pessimistic -- See, I think there are two ways in which people are controlled.

First of all,

frighten people, and secondly, demoralize them. An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern. And I think there's an element in the thinking of some people: "We don't want people to be educated, healthy and confident because they would get out of control." The top 1% of the world's population own 80% of the world's wealth. It's incredible that people put up with it, but they're poor, they're demoralized, they're frightened. And therefore, they think perhaps the safest thing to do is to take orders and hope for the best."

Health care in the United States is hazardous to your health because it keeps you in debt, and this makes for a hopeless country and an all powerful government not for the people but for the greedy.

The current health care in the United States is hazardous to your health because it isn't available to everyone. The movie "SiCKO" shows us how the health care plan in the U.S. is not available to everyone who needs it. It shows many people who didn't have insurance that were thrown out on the streets because they had no insurance. They couldn't afford to get any. It wasn't available to them for any number of reasons. The documenter shows how many other countries have free medical insurance and that they are doing very well. It asks the question "Why in the richest country in the world, do we not have free health insurance that is available to everyone?' The United States is the only major country in the western world that doesn't have free health care for all.

The current health care system in the United States is hazardous to your health because it can kill you. In the movie "SiCKO" the documenter shows us that it is almost more dangerous to have health insurance. They showed several examples of those that were covered under their health insurance and found out only when they needed it that there was some loop hole that would allow the insurance company to not pay for a life sustaining procedure, treatment, or surgery.

There was a case of a mother that had a little girl named Mychelle. She was fully covered by Kaiser-Permanente health insurance. She had awakened one night to find her daughter had a fever of 104 degrees. She rushed her to the closest hospital. When she arrived she found out that the doctors wouldn't help her daughter because they weren't in the network of hospitals that were covered by her insurance. She pleaded with them to help her daughter. They refused she begged for hours and finally they decided that she was a threat and had her removed by security. She was taken to another hospital only to get there just in time for her little daughter Mychelle to go into cardiac arrest and die.

This was not an isolated incident either. The documentary gives several more examples of people that have died because their insurance company denied treatment that could have saved their lives. These people were killed so that the insurance companies could profit. The fewer people helped the more the insurance managers got paid. One of these managers admits to this in court.

May 30, 1996, Testimony before U.S. Congress, MANAGED HEALTH CARE QUALITY STANDARDS [Linda Peeno, M.D.] "My name is Linda Peeno. I am here today to make a public confession. In the spring of 1987, as a physician, I denied a man a necessary operation that would have saved his life, and thus caused his death. No person and no group has held me accountable for this because, in fact, what I did was I saved the company a half a million dollars for this. And, furthermore, this particular act secured my reputation as a good medical doctor, and it insured my continued advancement in the healthcare field. I went from making a few hundred dollars a week as a medical reviewer, to an escalating six-figure income as a physician executive. In all my work, I had one primary duty, and that was to use my medical expertise for the financial benefit of the organization for which I worked. And I was told repeatedly that I was not denying care, I was simply denying payment. I know how managed care maims and kills patients. So I'm here to tell you about the dirty work of managed care. And I'm haunted by the thousands of pieces of paper on which I have written that deadly word -- "denied." Thank you."

It is time for a change in this deadly healthcare system. It is not only robbing us of a happier, healthier life by keeping us shackled to debt, it is in the worst cases actually killing us. There are better ways that would make our lives better in many ways. The current health care system in the United States is hazardous to your health because it keeps people in debt, it isn't available to everyone and it can kill you.