The lackeys of capitalism compete to become employee of the month, just as the donors of Never Let Me Go take a pride in their donations. In both cases, the system has indoctrinated them so successfully that they’ve ended up perfectly willing to accept their part in an apparently unalterable scheme of things.
Source: Bill Moyers Journal Maggie Mahar announced today (on her Health Beat blog) that the documentary of her book, Money-Driven Medicine , will be available for free on the web for two weeks. As Mahar says in her post today, the director and field producer “did a brilliant job of finding doctors and patients who…
Source: Bill Moyers Journal Here’s the third and last installment from the documentary Money-Driven Medicine. The topics this time focus on the financial issues of health care: Insurance premiums, competitive hospitals, the control of medicine by profit-driven corporations, the disconnect between money and health. The first and second installments are in previous posts. Is it…
Source: Bill Moyers Journal Here’s a second installment from the documentary Money-Driven Medicine. The producer, Alex Gibney, is an Oscar-winning filmmaker (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room). See the previous post for the first installment. Bill Moyers: “Money-Driven Medicine is one of the strongest documentaries I have seen in years and could not be…
Source: Bill Moyers Journal I grow weary of the politics of health care reform. Powerful interest groups buy the politicians. The need to get re-elected takes precedence over the national interest. Paul Krugman writes: “Actually turning this country around is going to take years of siege warfare against deeply entrenched interests, defending a deeply dysfunctional…
Source: Bill Moyers Journal Wendell Potter, who was once the head of Public Relations at health insurance giant CIGNA, recently testified before Congress on the nefarious practices of the insurance industry. Last Friday he did an extended interview with Bill Moyers. In the video excerpt below, Moyers and Potter discuss the insurance industry’s comprehensive strategy…
In today’s Dose: Health care reform (Congressionional Budget Office numbers; Why Maggie Mahar isn’t worried; Kevin MD, Daniel Callahan) Foodborne illness (Cookie dough) Industrialized agriculture (Food Inc.) The risk society (Jodi Picoult novels) Health care reform A recent Ezra Klein Klein column in the Washington Post discussed the bad news this week from the Congressional…
A new movie, Food, Inc., will be in theaters starting June 12. The film documents how industrialized agriculture has changed the food we eat and explores the impact of this change on health, food safety, and the environment. In the movie’s trailer (see below), a woman eyeing vegetables in a grocery store says “Sometimes you…
Among those opposing Obama’s choice of Sanjay Gupta as the next Surgeon General is Adrian Campbell, a Michigan woman who appeared in Michael Moore’s film Sicko. Gupta told his television audience: In Canada, you can be waiting for a long time. A survey of six industrialized nations found that only Canada was worse than the…
It’s Thanksgiving and I’m feeling ‘Ich habe genug’ (I have enough). I’d like to share some poetry, music, and a film while continuing the ‘death’ theme of my last blog post. First the film, Wit, starring Emma Thompson and directed by Mike Nichols. It’s the story of Vivian, a woman with ovarian cancer who spends…
Despite a growing dissatisfaction with the doctor/patient relationship, does our traditional respect for the medical profession leave us susceptible to disease mongering?
