How would you like to be in my next movie?
I know you've probably heard I'm making a documentary about the health care industry (but the HMOs don't know this, so don't tell them -- they think I'm making a romantic comedy).
If you've followed my work over the years, you know that I keep a pretty low profile while I'm making my movies. I don't give interviews, I don't go on TV and I don't defrost my refrigerator. I do keep my website updated on a daily basis (there's been something like 4,000,000 visitors just this week alone) and the rest of the time I'm... well, I can't tell you what I'm doing, but you can pretty much guess. It gets harder and harder sneaking into corporate headquarters, but I've found that just dying my hair black and wearing a skirt really helps.
Back to my invitation to be in my movie.
Have you ever found yourself getting ready to file for bankruptcy because you can't pay your kid's hospital bill, and then you say to yourself, "Boy, I sure would like to be in Michael Moore's health care movie!"?
Or, after being turned down for the third time by your HMO for an operation they should be paying for, do you ever think to yourself, "Now THIS travesty should be in that 'Sicko' movie!"?Or maybe you've just been told that your father is going to have to just, well, die because he can't afford the drugs he needs to get better -- and it's then that you say, "Damn, what did I do with Michael Moore's home number?!"
OK, here's your chance.
As you can imagine, we've got the goods on these crooks. All we need now is to put a few of you in the movie and let the world see what the greatest country ever in the history of the universe does to its own people, simply because they have the misfortune of getting sick. Because getting sick, unless you are rich, is a crime -- a crime for which you must pay, sometimes with your own life.
About four hundred years from now, historians will look back at us like we were some sort of barbarians, but for now we're just the laughing stock of the Western world.
So, if you'd like me to know what you've been through with your insurance company, or what it's been like to have no insurance at all, or how the hospitals and doctors wouldn't treat you (or if they did, how they sent you into poverty trying to pay their crazy bills) ...if you have been abused in any way by this sick, greedy, grubby system and it has caused you or your loved ones great sorrow and pain, let me know.
Send me a short, factual account of what has happened to you -- and what IS happening to you right now if you have been unable to get the health care you need.
Send it to: michael@michaelmoore.com.
I will read every single one of them (even if I can't respond to or help everyone, I will be able to bring to light a few of your stories).Thank you in advance for sharing them with me and trusting me to try and do something about a very corrupt system that simply has to go.
Oh, and if you happen to work for an HMO or a pharmaceutical company or a profit-making hospital and you have simply seen too much abuse of your fellow human beings and can't take it any longer -- and you would like the truth to be told -- please write me at michael@michaelmoore.com.
I will protect your privacy and I will tell the world what you are unable to tell. I am looking for a few heroes with a conscience. I know you are out there.
Thank you, all of you, for your help and your continued support through the years. I promise you that with "Sicko" we will do our best to give you not only a great movie, but a chance to bring down this evil empire, once and for all.
In the meantime, stay well. I hear fruits and vegetables help.
Michael Moore
4 comments:
Michael Moore is apparently so desperate to dig up dirt on drug companies and health-care providers for his next documentary, "Sicko," he's asking visitors to his Web site to help him out. But given the glaring conflict between what the filmmaker says about drug companies and how he invests in them, the title of the movie might well apply to Moore himself.
In discussing his new project, Moore has said that "being screwed by your [health-care provider] and ill-served by pharmaceutical companies is the shared American experience."
Why then, if horror stories about drug companies and HMOs are ubiquitous, is the "Fahrenheit 911" filmmaker asking for help?
On his Web site, Moore addresses his "friends": "How would you like to be in my next movie? I know you've probably heard I'm making a documentary about the health-care industry ... . Maybe you've just been told that your father is going to have to just, well, die because he can't afford the drugs he needs to get better ... O.K., here's your chance" [to tell about it].
He also invites employees of pharmaceutical companies and others in the health-care industry who "have seen too much abuse of your fellow human beings" to contact him via e-mail for possible inclusion in "Sicko." And he vows: "I promise you that with ?Sicko' we will do our best to give you not only a great movie, but a chance to bring down this evil empire, once and for all."
Perhaps Moore would be well served to read Peter Schweizer's blockbuster new book, "Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy."
In his chapter on Moore, Schweizer points out that "Sicko" accuses pharmaceutical companies of letting Americans die in order to boost profits.
But he also reveals that Moore - who has publicly claimed that he doesn't invest in the stock market out of moral principle - in fact has used his private foundation to invest in those very same pharmaceutical firms.
Over the past five years, Schweizer writes, Moore's holdings "have included such evil pharmaceutical and medical companies as Pfizer, Merck, Genzyme, Elan PLC, Eli Lilly, Becton Dickinson and Boston Scientific."
Moore told the Detroit News that the health-care system in the United States, "inferior to that of much poorer nations, benefits the few at the expense of the many."
Writes Schweizer: "Count Moore himself as one of those ?few.' He may savage HMOs in his film ?Sicko,' but he has also owned shares of Pharmacia Corporation and Tenet Healthcare. He must have liked their price-to-earnings ratios . . .
"Publicly, Michael Moore is a populist crusader who stands up to profit-minded corporations on behalf of workers, women, minorities, and the environment. Privately, he is the consummate capitalist single-mindedly focused on money."
07 February, 2006 16:12
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Funny that... Seeking postitive change in an industry you invest in? My Gawd! What's next! Voting for the lesser of two evils!
Who would have ever thunk!
Conservatives are the biggest hypocrites of them all. How dare a liberal make money and then turn around and do something positive! Why if you make money you have to be a lap dog to your income! Dumbasses.
Oh, I can tell you stories of "deny first, ask questions later from a few insurance companies," which is why I advocate taking control of your own health. What I mean is document EVERYTHING, save copies of EVERYTHING, and get EVERYTHING in writing!
I did not have healthcare for a few years (because I was paying for school and needed to cut costs to afford an education), got into a car accident and managed to get through the system with minimal bills.
It was because of those stories of denied claims, government resources that go unused (partly because these programs do NOT want you to know about them and the other is because they do not have the funds to advertise their services), and carefully examining the charges on my medical bills (which no one seems to do these days, and I found plenty of mistakes on my bills) etc that I was able to not acquire any debt. Thus, I was asked to write a book to help people navigate their way through our healthcare system without being taken advantage of. The book is "Healthcare for Less." Every piece of advice in that book works since I have done it myself, seen it done, and have double checked to be sure it can be done. If you want the truth about healthcare, go to the physicians themselves (the ones that are not retired), and the ones that are making a difference, and they will tell you what is really going on....
Tought & humor's is what typically happens every time the real truth is said. Apologists like himself come out of their ivory towers and do their "apologizing" for the system that could not be worse considering the wealth and ability of USA to do the right thing. The system would not allow it for obvious reasons including attitudes that are expressed above.
Michael maybe investing in these companies as many do. What are people like himself supposed to do? Give their money to the neo-cons. At least he is doing something positive and no one has seen him riding in Ferari. He would not do it even if he could fit in one I am sure. On the other hand look at some of those CEO's from big pharma and other businesses. It is simply sickenig what they do with their money also coming from profits from big pharma.
Yes 400 years from now when this nasty empire is longe gone, Michael and people like him will be the new Gandies and people like this. The ones on oposite side? Guess.
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