Precept Employee Benefits Blog

Last night I spent the better part of two hours watching a “movie” bashing American healthcare and political system.  I have two more issues to add to the comments made by Ryan Jones on June 1 and June 29, 2007.

Mr. Jones touched on the first issue in his blog post titled “Mexican consulates enter healthcare business… leaves California holding $1.1 Billion bill“.  The three countries that Moore shows as having ‘free’ healthcare, do not have the rest of the world clamoring to enter their countries by whatever means necessary to take advantage of all our free services.  It has been known for years, that when blocks of immigrants enter this country they are schooled on how to obtain all these free services.  This occurrence seems to be directed at Mexican immigration, however, the same thing happened when we opened our doors to immigrants from Southeast Asia.  They were directed to big employers with great benefits, how to get low interest rates to buy homes and start business and how to get their children educated on the government’s dollar.

The second issue is the amount of healthcare fraud that is committed in this country.  Not one word was said about those that take advantage of our system for their own personal gain.  If you were to investigate the most grievant offenses of healthcare fraud, you will find that a large portion is committed by ‘foreign born’ professionals.  These professionals then recruit others to perpetuate their schemes and agendas.  I wonder if Michael Moore would ever do a “movie” on the Rolling Lab scams that have plagued our system for years.  At the root of this operation were Russian doctors that took years to investigate, ferret out and prosecute.  Before all was said and done, millions of dollars left our system and ended up in the pockets of these doctors.

Fraud is a multi-billion dollar a year issue in this country!  Until we can get a handle on the fraud issue, there will continue to be those unfortunate people that will pay the high price for those undeserving people that are reaping the benefits.

In his tribute to Hilary Clinton, Mr.. Moore drives the point that we, as a people, rejected her National Healthcare reform because the AMA and pharmaceutical companies convinces us that she was proposing socialized medicine and that it was a bad thing.  Once again, no mention of cleaning up fraud to allow for more dollars available for healthcare.  Nor did he mention the quagmire known as HIPAA, that duplicates regulations and processes that were already in place and has cost our country countless millions of dollars to administer.  Another example of government intervention when they had no clear picture on how the rest of the country was going to comply with these new regulations.

All the examples that were used in this film were extreme.  He alluded to the fact that we have a high infant mortality rate and that Americans are not as healthy as other countries.  I wonder how those statistics would play out if they were to eliminate counting illegal immigrants and those that are faking illnesses and injuries to help line another’s pocket.  I wonder how many dollars will flow into Michael Moore’s pockets by exercising his American right that is guaranteed by the First Amendment of the Constitution, freedom of the press and freedom of speech?    There is no such thing as a free lunch!  Maybe Mr.. Moore still has that lesson to learn.   My family has a saying, “Figures don’t lie, but liars figure”.  Numbers and statistics can be manipulated to serve those that are trying to make a point.

So the question remains, if America has such a lousy healthcare and political system, why are the rest of the world’s people so anxious to get here?