HealthBeat FYI: Sick Sob Stories

September 13, 2007

With the health care debate still raging on Capital Hill and in homes across the country, today's Wall Street Journal published a commentary from John Stossel, co-anchor of ABC's news magazine show 20/20. Stossel's piece addresses one of the myths perpetuated by Michael Moore's movie SiCKO: that government-run health care would result in all patients getting every treatment they desire.

Viewers of the documentary are meant to understand that "experimental" is health-insurance code for "expensive," and that Ms. Pierce's husband was left to die for the sake of profit. According to Mr. Moore's movie, "Any payment for a claim is referred to as a medical loss," and when a claim is denied, "it's a savings to the company."

But Mr. Moore is so busy following the money that he doesn't take the time to follow the science. Treating cancer patients with bone-marrow transplants has a dubious history.

The sad truth is that the treatment isn't effective. When researchers released the results of their clinical trials to the American Society of Clinical Oncology in 1999, they showed that the treatment offered no benefit. Worse, it often killed women faster than their cancer, and caused them unnecessary pain.

Mr. Moore claims that because private insurance companies are driven by profit, they will always deny care to deserving patients. For this reason, he argues, profit-making health-insurance companies should be abolished, our health- care dollars turned over to the government, and the U.S. should institute a health-care system like the ones in Canada, Britain or France. But does Mr. Moore think, even for a second, that any of the government systems he touts in his movie would have provided a bone-marrow transplant to Ms. Pierce's husband? Fat chance.

Read the full commentary here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118964470258225901.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

(subscription required).

NCPA President John Goodman will appear tomorrow evening, Friday, Sept. 14, during a special edition of ABC's 20/20 with John Stossel, entitled "Whose Body Is It, Anyway?! Sick in America."  The show airs at 10 p.m. EDT. 

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=3580676&page=1

The show will discuss many issues about health care cost, quality and access detailed in an NCPA study "The Market for Medical Care" --http://www.ncpa.org/pub/st/st296/.

Stossel also corrects several assertions made by Michael Moore in his movie SiCKO.  Some of which were highlighted on our special SiCKO web site -- http://sicko.ncpa.org/?c=The-Rest-of-the-Story.

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