I assumed there would be at least one progressive among you.
No, you assumed that there would be some here who were dumb or who didn’t have enough experience in the real world to believe Michael Moore’s drivel. I’m not insulting you — when I was in college I was a liberal, too, and would probably have liked Moore’s film. I campaigned for Jimmy Carter in 1980 — the first election in which I was allowed to vote — and believed the wingnuts who said that Reagan was an idiot and would start World War III. Fortunately, by the time I was 24 I was on the road to being a conservative and was a full conservative by the time I was 30.
My company posted me to the Laurentian Mountains north of Quebec during the late 1980s. A co-worker of mine injured her back and was told that it would be 3 months before she could see a doctor. She was in so much pain that she drove to New York to see a doctor and received treatment the same day.
As for 50 million people (the numbers differs every time I read it) not having health insurance in the USA, that’s a red herring. Everybody who needs medical attention in the USA gets it. I have a nice but not overly expensive house in a Dallas suburb and pay over $2,000 per year in Texas to support free clinics and hospitals in Dallas county. The majority of women giving birth there are illegal aliens. No one knows the true percentage since the hospital is not allowed one’s immigration status. However, Snope’s says in the article reference above that “[a] recent hospital analysis concluded that the average maternity ward patient at Parkland [hospital] is a 25-year old, married Hispanic woman giving birth to her second child.” Draw your own conclusions. I do have friends who are illegal aliens (through teaching ESL at church) and they are happy going to Parkland. Yeah, they might have to wait a few hours but they don’t wait a few months.
To sum it up, when Moore says that poor people in the US don’t have the same access to quality health care as they do in other countries, he is telling the truth — but not the truth you want to hear. Poor people in the US have access to health care that rich people in other countries only dream of.
You sound smart and you write well. Keep your mind open, seek out facts and not opinions, and you’ll be a conservative in a few years.
