Through the Lenz

Michael Moore’s latest film SICKO reveals the struggle of America’s working and even its middle class’ to pay outrageous medical bills and compares their plight to the comparatively generous healthcare policies of Western European nations. The film places the blame for America’s healthcare crisis squarely on the shoulders of the pharmaceutical and health insurance corporations.
Unfortunately, while filmmakers like Moore, reveal the extent of this deepening crisis, the presidential candidates –with but a few exceptions-seem unwilling to endorse a fully functioning national healthcare system for fear of reprisal from their large corporate donors in the aforementioned pharmaceutical and health insurance lobbies. It is clear that the private market has failed to provide a solution. How are American politicians going to respond to this market failure? Are they going to allow the crisis to deepen further and exasperate the already shaky financial stature of America’s middle classes? Are America’s politicians going to remain mum on the issue and allow the very real suffering experienced by our working class to continue?
Clearly, our healthcare system must be torn down and rebuilt a new. The flaws inherent within the system are so deeply engrained within the fabric of its power structure(all authority and decision making resides in the hands of powerful corporations) that only the radical transfer of power from the healthcare lobbies to the people in the form of a government funded single payer system will adequately solve this crisis. Perhaps, we could expand Medicare and make it open to all Americans; one pictures the populist politician’s slogan of “Medicare for all.” Or perhaps, we will have to rebuild the system from scratch in accordance with the realities of the 21st century.
One thing is clear, the shared corporate/government partnership being conveyed by the likes of Barrack Obama and Mitt Romney will not address the problem.
Change is always the hope, but short of an economic down turn on the scale of another Great Depression, it appears unlikely that the corporatist liberal and conservative politicians will rush to embrace a national healthcare system.
Listed Below is a breakdown of the amount of campaign funds the presidential candidates have received thus far from the healthcare lobby:

Hillary Clinton $848,872
Mitt Romney $830,285
Barack Obama $566,638
John McCain $409,751
Rudy Giuliani $401,422
John Edwards $212,200
Bill Richardson $185,000
Christopher Dodd$84,900
Joseph Biden $57,775
Sam Brownback $38,050
Mike Huckabee $18,050
Ron Paul $11,000
Tommy Thompson $9,100
Jim Gilmore $7,500
Dennis Kucinich $7,050
Tom Tancredo $5,050
Duncan Hunter $4,250
Mike Gravel $500 source:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/sicko/sickos-for-sale/candidates/