I wonder if there’s anything to Fitzgerald’s complaint that Moore lumped the for-profit HMOs together with non-profit HMOs like Blue Cross?  If Blue Cross truly is non-profit in spirit as well as fact (i.e. not just complying with IRS regulations to remain a technical “non-profit,” but managing it operations and salaries and policies roughly the same way the government would if it were providing health care ... then many of Moore’s strongest criticisms of the “system” don’t apply to it. 

I believe firmly in a single-payer, government-run healthcare system (“Medicare for everyone”)—but for as long as we have the system we currently have, I’d like to see Moore (or others) comment on this non-profit / for-profit distinction - specifically, whether non-profit HMOs are any more likely to be prone to the horrors shown in SICKO than a similar government-run single-payer health system (witness the government’s failures in the Katrina disaster and at providing health care to returning Iraq veterans at Walter Reed hospital).

Never heard anybody mention that claims by business owners and key personnel are sometimes paid when they are clearly for services that aren’t covered.  We called it “paid ex gratia”.  If you read a claim right, it can even be paid for face-lifts for the CEO’s wife. 

That’s how you keep a group policyholder!

As a reformed flack, I marveled at the corporate speak talking points. Imagine point #1 actually being read by a customer service rep to a customer inquiring about the film: “The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association (BCBSA) and the 39 Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies are committed to improving the U.S. healthcare system for our nearly 100 million members through continuous innovation ...”

Bound to evoke an “Oh, thanks, I feel so much better about Blue Cross now.” When will companies learn to talk like people? So glad I got out of the PR racket   many years ago.

Their mantra is going to be “consumerism.”  I was reading an article about Sicko and in the corner was a Humana ad.  I clicked on it and there it was, consumerism and how it works.  Blue Cross has something similar, along with b*s* about transparency.

I worked as a temp for bout 3 months for one of the big insurance companies about 15 years ago. The regular staff of claims employees were encouraged to come up with stalling tactics for reimbursement of insurance claims, to ask for one more test, etc. I learned that pretty much everything I had been told and suspected about big health/medical insurance corporations was true.