Google Faux Pas Retracted

“More than a few people agree with that statement…”

You mean “disagree” right?

It’s not only all this, but I imagine her premise to be demonstrably false. I haven’t seen “Sicko” yet, but if it’s like Moore’s previous films he does in fact attempt to get the industry’s side of the stories. That they reject his overtures for balance is not his fault and is entirely the fault of the industry itself.

Yeah, that was a really bad idea on Google’s part. Especially since anybody who has worked in the healthcare industry, or even close to it, can tell you lots of horror stories beyond the high cost of R&D for drugs.

I’m not a big fan of Moore’s work personally, but I do admire his using the enormous amount of time and money it takes to make a film for the good of otherwise ignored causes.

Excuse me? Google would stand with a supporter of a communist dictator who lied about how great Cuba’s health care system is? When two people in my family got cancer neither of them went to murderer’s paradise. Not many people seem to be lined up in Miami to float down to Cuba. While thousands try to come here from that island hell-hole all the time. They know something Moore doesn’t or doesn’t want to admit about Cuba and Castro.

Oh, BTW, the cacophonous, c*cksucking, corpulent communist Moore owned stock in both health care companies and Halliburton. Go to Amazon to buy “Do As I Say [Not As I Do]: Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy”

Yeah, Google would stand with him.

The last time I checked your blog was about companies trying to make money. Perhaps the government should jack up your taxes (as you undoubtedly, although inexplicably make more than me) and use it to fund non-advertising supported, public blogs on technology.

Does that seem fair? If you’re a socialist, then let’s have an admission rather than continued hypocrisy.

The issue of health care reform (although America provides better and more health care for more people than any other country) should not be left to demagogues like Moore or to supporters of demagogues like Moore (that means you).

@EH: Moore does not attempt to get the “other side”. Mr. Moore’s movies are designed to be opinionated, politically caustic and factually incorrect. The ‘facts’ in every movie of his have been absolutely and undeniably shredded.

Moore supporters believe in his intent and cause thus overlooking the outright lies. To say that the healthcare industry is only for profit and fleeces patients is absurd. The chemists and researchers that spend their entire careers looking for cures are not bad guys. That research takes billions of dollars and decades of long nights and self-sacrifice.

Without corporations spending billions of dollars and decades of time on this we would still be dying from the most basic of illnesses. That is indisputable.

The idea that industry doesn’t cooperate with Moore means they deserve whatever slanderous crap he serves is silly. Mr. Moore has shown that any interview or sound bite will get clipped into a version that suits his purpose. The industry has wisely decided to ignore him and let him fade off as a leftist propagandist.

What happened to Do No Evil?

Hey Daniel - I’m a libertarian. I’d like nothing more than the complete dismantling of our existing health care system and let capitalism take its course. So my bet is I’m far to the right of you on this issue. I also think Moore is a jerk.

If you read the post, I said this was a misstep by Google. When you’ve lived in the bay area for a while, you learn not to step on certain toes. They just did.

“And if they did take a stand, it would be with Moore.”

Eh? Glad to find that out I guess, but no idea what indicates that’s true.

He publicly states his support for the communist health care model, as in Cuba, North Korea, and Canada. As in you CAN NOT buy health care privately, period. If it’s going to be bad, it’s bad for everyone (except party officals and rich people who can travel abroad for care). Waiting lists, dying waiting for treatment, it’s all just a stroke of the pen away.

Anyway, I’d love to see any evidence that Google, even as much as they irritate me, support this style of healthcare.

” And if they did take a stand, it would be with Moore”

Oh really? So Google is full of mushy-headed elitist who only listen to one side of the story?

I guess that disagreeing with Michael Moore (or any other extreme Leftists) is now considered a “faux pas”.

Thanks for the tip. I’ll make sure I don’t say anything that Michael Moore, Google or TechCrunch doesn’t agree with.

As for post 7, Michael, you’re totally right, they are in the wrong geographical region to comment either way on the issue. There’s like zero upside for doing it (except that people like me would kind of like it).

Anyway, I see your point. Man, how carefully corporations have to step around there to keep out of these kinds of things.

“When you’ve lived in the bay area for a while, you learn not to step on certain toes.”

WTF?? Why? Is the place run by a bunch of Nazi fascists who don’t let people disagree with them?

Geesh.

In the Bay Area you can’t:

- Eat non-organic food
- Eat red-meat
- Criticize anything that bloggers say
- Be in anyway non-left-wing

The lesson here (and I mentioned it briefly in the original comment thread about this issue) isn’t to tighten up on all the bloggers at Google.

The management lesson *is* that highly motivated, aggressive salespeople are among the first to go off-script from the corporate culture and core messages if they think it’ll help ‘em close a deal.

That’s not awful — it’s just the view of the world through the sales rep’s lens, which tends to be tactical and focused on nothing beyond making this month’s numbers.

Keeping the sales team on message is hard work, as Google just demonstrated. It’s not impossible, but it’s not exactly a passive activity, either.

I say we just have a fire sale and start everything over. No rich, no poor.

I don’t live there, but don’t such left wingers as Ward Connerly and T.J. Rodgers. Clearly their careers.

And why else would there be so many companies code named Rearden XXX?

Boulder (where I live) is very lefty, but it’s also the home of Soldier of Fortune.

If her post were promoting Moore’s little piece of propaganda, you can be sure that no one at Google would have a problem with it. After all, in the last election cycle Google executives and employees contributed 92 times more money to Democrats than they did to Republicans.

“Faux pas” = criticizing Democrats.

“WTF?? Why? Is the place run by a bunch of Nazi fascists who don’t let people disagree with them?”

That would be a “yes.”

@11 “WTF?? Why? Is the place run by a bunch of Nazi fascists who don’t let people disagree with them?”

You’re selling them short describing them like that.

Michael Moore is a modern day muckraker and Lauren Turner markets a corporation. Why would anybody expect differently from these people?

Clearly, political bloggers’ agendas are hidden under a thin skin. God bless the charlatans.

Who are you guys? Do you have any idea about how our Health Care System works? Is France a “communist” (with a “communist” health care system?)??. Give me a break. We are the RICHEST and m MOST POWERFUL COUNTRY IN THE WORLD!, we just CANNOT and MUST NOT have this awful situation. Having the BEST DOCTORS and BEST Hospitals (TRUE), with millions of people unable to use them is SAD and totally UNFAIR.
About the “waiting” in Canada, let me tell you that I know many seniors, here in the Southeast (in the USA, today) waiting months/ even more than a year to have a non-life threatenning Colonoscopy.
Wake UP, nobody here is a “communist”, just normal hard working people who want to share the “health care pie” (just like our reps. in DC)

Im with Arrington.

We should only arrest people who commit crimes against those with crime insurance (all police departments should be dismantled and turned into for-profit corporations) - same goes for fire departments! Fire departments should not put out fires if they will not turn a profit on the fire…and of course people (including kids) with cancer should not get the best available treatment if their parents cannot afford health insurance…it just makes sense.

Record profits in the insurance & pharma industries have nothing to do with the rising costs of health care and the markets always (in every single case) work for the benefit of the consumer.

You know it is an honest and upstanding industry when they refuse to accept cash as payment for service. M. Moore is an idiot.

Is TechCrunch going to go after Kurt Loder and MTV for pointing out that Michael Moore is a liar? And to think that I felt sympathy for you guys last week when you sold out to Microsoft.

“There is no way anyone who’s blogged or worked in PR for more than, say, a week would post something like that on a corporate blog.”

What about Joel Spolsky?

“Maybe a know-nothing in the White House has given you the idea that it’s somehow acceptable now to poke fun of geeks and nerds, in big two-page ad spreads on the inside front cover of a magazine for founders of startups.” (from http://www.joelonsoftware.com)

OK, so technically joelonsoftware.com is his personal blog. But it’s effectively the face of his company (which sells bug-tracking software, hardly a politically divisive tool). It’s also one of the more successful blog-as-marketing campaigns.

Blogs are inherently tools of expression. Expression is a function of humanity. Humanity includes holding polarizing opinions on hot political topics. It also includes empathy with your (potential) clients who are getting trashed in the media by Michael Moore. You see where this is going.

Also — if Google is not supposed to blog in public about polarizing matters that “more than a few people” would disagree with — would I be safe in presuming that they shouldn’t have, say, a blog targeting the LBGT demographic? In many parts of this country, even acknowledging homosexuality is taboo.

I am just curious as to which sacred cows one must worship (or avoid defiling) in order to be a corporate blogger in the Bay Area. I don’t currently blog at my company; your post has certainly deterred me further.

Don’t you think that bloggers should be less mindless and post on more meaningful things such as charity? America is in the toilet and you aren’t do your fair share to make it better. You are a journalist but not an activist. I would hate to be you.

Consider making a difference and make your next blog entry on something worth caring about. How about suggesting to your readers your favorite charity. Maybe some of them will even contribute…

http://duckdown.blogspot.com/

I think it would’ve been more classy if Google just stuck to its guns and said, hey we have a “let a thousand flowers bloom” blog culture, and maybe this Lauren guy’s opinion is decidedly anti-bay area cool, but we’re ok with communists AND fox news enthusiasts. Is there some rule in the Bay Area that only tech geeks and blond female etsy-types can write blogs? Let the sales guy express his decidedly self-serving opinion! Its not like mac people never do that.

I think this is one more sign that Google is turning into just another corporation, where PR opinion is more important than principle.

Yep, if you can’t say something that everyone can’t agree with, don’t say anything at all. That’s what I say…if I weren’t saying anything at all.

Moore makes a movie to make money — and people applaud him. A Google nobody posts about how companies can use Google (i.e. pay for a service) to help them get around negative publicity from a (for-profit) movie and she gets blasted. She’s a salesperson — they are supposed to tell stories about how their product will work.

The hypocrisy is that people still listen to Moore’s slanted, politically motivated rhetoric.

Again, I urge you to read my comment #7 above before attacking me on this.

Kewtr: I would encourage you to learnm more about the systems in the countries you describe before shooting it down; just shooting down a straw man will not make your argument seem well-based and profound. Canada is not a communist country. You can buy health insurance in Canada. That we do have a safety net in place to make sure that the handicapped, the retired, people coming back from military duty, people serving society in low-paying jobs (we do need janitors and garbage disposal folks, those are not necessarily transitional jobs on “your way up”), or the downtrodden (and their children) will not starve or be left to die because at the moment their economic utility is valued at a lower point than mine. So we help them up, make sure that they do not fall in destitution and desperate measures. That isn’t communism. Pragmatic communism is a suspension of private ownership, collectivisation of everything under a unified political system allowing for no dissension beyond the stated truths (you’d love it; I’d hate it). Canada has one of the highest standard of living for everyone (the poor and the rich included), abysmal crime rates (a guy doesn’t need to jack up a store to feed his children, and his children do not need to suffer in continuity with their parents’ poor choices to attain a higher educational status in life), greater savings per capita, a much longer lifespan, and buys all of these services form private and public companies who are rushing through the doors to sell us the best that they have.

This is not only good humanism (everyone goes through cycles in life, if you happen to be sick at a low point that is hardly a sufficient reason to weed you out of society), it is also good business. We spend a lot less on policing, on dealing with the consequences of poor lifestyles, and on protecting individual property against fraud, damage and theft than you do. We also provide a vast market in which medication for rarer diseases can be tried and developed (then used in the U.S. by those who can afford it). This, my friend, is excellent business.

And if I don’t like to deal with the public system for whichever reason (availability not lining up with my available off time, for instance), then I can pay and see a doctor in an hour if I feel like it.

Please, do get informed before spewing out inanities like these.

Oh please, the bay area comment wasn’t intended to suggest that living here means tip-toeing around liberals for fear of retaliation. Feel free to make a stand on either side of an issue, that’s what it’s all about. Just don’t do it as a representative of a multi-billion dollar company with overt commercial overtones mixed into your message…

Say what you will about Moore, but I think ‘Sicko’ is one of his most valid films. I find it hard for anyone to claim that healthcare can’t be improved in this country. I also find it hard to understand why we don’t have universal care. Costs are out of control and tens of thousands suffer because of it. I don’t think the market can correct itself on this issue because the modern healthcare system is so entrenched and there are not really any good alternatives that consumers can turn to that would force competition and bring costs down.

And as a comparison, pretty much all of the 1st and 2nd world countries on Earth have universal care, and subsequently outrank us in medical care:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Health.png

http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html

Granted those rankings can be disputed, but it’s hard not to see *some* connection…

I think Michael Arrington got it right in his original comment but then let himself down badly when defending himself.It is so depressing for a non US citizen to read these dreadful “right wing” reactions that sound almost paranoid - appearing to suggest that “anybody that criticises us must be a Commie or an Idiot, Jerk” even. Is this not possible to argue at a more mature level. The spleens being vented resonate with McCarthyism.

#28
Brian, I didn’t make Moore a penny thanks to newsgroups. He doesn’t seem to mind it much.

Of course if you make a documentary that is watched by many, you may end up with a profit. Does that invalidate what’s contained in the documentary?

Also, from what I’ve heard Moore nearly went broke while producing Roger & Me back when he was a no name.

Zaid, Moore never ever lacked the funds to find food, and far more of it than he actually needed so I don’t buy the Roger & Me poverty line of thinking. Show me a picture of Moore looking more like a starving Ethiopian than Rosie O’Donnell, and I’ll gladly recant.

The health care system isn’t perfect, neither is Google, neither is Michael Moore and all 3 are figuring out how to make a buck. Ever it was…

Louis Eric, thank you for your comment. So true. Hey, at least now I have some hope that there are more “real, human (”humane”?)” people out there. I was so disgusted….

JSL -

“appearing to suggest that ‘anybody that criticises us must be a Commie’”

Universal healthcare or nationalized healthcare is socialism and is an aspect of communism. I’m not sure why someone that was a supporter of universal healthcare would be upset by being correctly labelled. Are you suggesting that universal healthcare is a capitalistic idea? It’s not McCarthyism, it’s calling a spade a spade.

WTF?? Canada has “communist” healthcare?? Is that some sort of symbolic contagion attempt - to contaminate one thing by association with a rejected thing? In all my 40 years up here in Canada, I’ve never had a problem with our medical system, nor has anyone known personally to me, rich or poor, friends or family, young or old. As for taxes, I just got a $2500 tax refund this year… That’s because I am self-employed, and that kind of entrepreneurialism is supported in part by the collective provision of things like roads, courts, policing and a healthy and well-educated workforce. Far from being communistic, these are core conditions for a vibrant market.

I know there are libertarians on the board, and I actually have such leanings myself, but history seems to be providing some plausibility to the idea that government are better at providing certain goods than markets are. (I just discovered http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_of_Survival) Anyway, it’s sad to see that you folks could lose your lifelong financial solvency just by tripping off a kerb. It seems inhumane. But maybe that’s just the communist in me speaking…

From the (probably calculated, lawyer-approved) RETRACTION:

“”"advertising is an effective medium for handling challenges that a company or industry might have. You could even argue that it’s especially appropriate for a public policy issue like healthcare. Whether the healthcare industry wants to rebut charges in Mr. Moore’s movie, or whether Mr. Moore wants to challenge the healthcare industry, advertising is a very democratic and effective way to participate in a public dialogue.”"”

This woman is a complete idiot. Full stop.

There is nothing “democratic” about advertising - it is a paid method of spreading a message. Advertising - used to sway opinion in the public instead of real, fundamental changes is the root of the healthcare problem, NOT part of a solution. This woman still does not understand why she is so off the mark.

The idea that people should use advertising to affect public policy and alter the system we use to keep our population healthy is absurd. Advertising is a cost used to sell more products.

Furthermore, the idea that the healthcare industry can advertise it’s way out of the problems is has is exactly the mentality that the movie attacks: Form over function. As long as we think of people’s health as a product to be sold, the points driving the message in “Sicko” will continue unabated.

This mentality is so big-company typical… it is sad seeing it come from Google, a company that mostly avoids this absurd blather.

Grace: Thank you; I do spend a great deal of time traveling in Canada, the US and Europe. One of the things I miss a lot when I’m in the U.S. is being able to go for a thinking stroll at night. I can bike up Mount Royal (a huge park in the middle of Montreal, designed by the same people who designed Central Park in NY), pull my laptop and code on the grass until I fall asleep, and be pretty sure that they’ll still be there when I wake up. That peace of mind is, to me, the acid test of a well-considered society. I can’t live like that in, say, Los Angeles. Here, nobody needs what I have so much (be it for food, to shelter their children, or to escape reality) that they would feel they need to risk their safety to get it. I’m free 24 hours a day, everywhere I go, not in fear for the hours that encompass night time, or of certain areas. I’d rather my money be taxed than my time and freedom. I can always make more money; I can’t buy a single hour at the end of them all.

I’m always amazed when people talk about income retention (the part not paid in taxes). I’m not earning money to earn money. I’m earning money to be able to afford a great quality of life. That’s the end goal: quality of life. If I get a greater quality of life by buying its enablement through an efficient public utility then I’ll do that. Who I buy it from doesn’t ultimately matter.

Canada is not communist. People who use this word use it only to afraid those who are against the cruel way of libertarians and pure capitalism.
Canada is a capitalist country with a social infrastructure (And it’s possible!).
Yes, it’s true that we pay a lot of tax (especially in Quebec), and yes, we have long waiting list in some cases…but at least, If I get fired tomorrow, my family and me will still able to get health care if we are sick!
Read Louis-Eric (#30) to get more details about how things work in Canada.

@35: You’ve got communism and collaboration all mixed up. Pre-Dust Bowl-migration farmers used to help neighbouring farmers all the time; this kid of the neighbour whose crops were only due months later needed help ? They all pitched in. That never made them communists (quite the contrary). But it did make them good neighbours.

On calling a spade a spade: You got your Venn diagrams all mixed up too. In Set A is the sum of all solutions to social problems that we have come up with. In Set B is the sum of all schools of thoughts that determine which solution is likely to be tried at any given moment. The intersection of B with A doesn’t associate B with A. So some communist countries have public healthcare. These countries also have road-construction programs, subsidized farming and public military spending. is the U.S. therefore communist for building roads, subsidizing sugar producers, and paying armies with the citizens’ money ? Not at all. Choices that make sense make sense no matter who’s in power. Not to try something that works because “bad guys” also benefited from it at one point is depriving yourself of a good thing, period. GM isn’t less of a capitalistic company for proposing to do what the USSR was doing at the very same time: building a public national road network (in competition with private railroad systems, I would add)

She was just participating in ‘conversational marketing’ like you and the Battelle-lead FM crowd were doing recently.

Only you guys can’t understand why people get so worked up when you do it.

Do you see now?

Tom

No harm, no foul

What’s Hot Today.com

@35, Chris

“Universal healthcare or nationalized healthcare is socialism and is an aspect of communism. I’m not sure why someone that was a supporter of universal healthcare would be upset by being correctly labelled.”

That logic is stunningly absurd, but lets try using it in a different way to be sure:

Militarism is an aspect of Totalitarianism and therefore America is a Totalitarian society.

Yep, absurd. Just because something is not white does not make it black - just because someone supports nationalized health care does not make them communist (or even socialist). Get over the labels, open your mind and research the actual issues.

I’d suggest you start with looking at infant mortality rates, and average life expectancy among industrialized nations. The numbers don’t lie.

i thought google has such a great hr vetting system that they only hire brilliant people, right? there must be a bug in algorithm that allowed them to hire such an idiot. Or perhaps their algorithm only picks geeks unencumbered by social skills and common sense?

“As a public company Google is almost certainly putting blog posts through their legal and PR departments before they go live (how this slipped through is a mystery)”

Leaving the healthcare issues aside :), what makes you assume that blog posts from Google or any other public company “almost certainly” go through a review process including PR and legal?

I have worked at a handful of large public tech companies, and in my experience, only a handful of the blogs (usually the ‘official’ main blog and those of high profile execs) get that kind of treatment. I cannot speak specifically for Google, but in my experience at companies as large and much larger teams as small as Google’s tiny healthcare team are generally left to their own devices for their blogs. It is generally up to the blogger to know when to seek out review and when to just post.

It is a reactionary model only–compliance processes would simply never scale and be cost effective; and to a lesser degree it goes back to the direct, transparent communications goals of using team blogs to begin with.

Clearly, Google, as well as the “blogosphere”, does not allow opposing opinions. We can see this in this article, as well as on digg comments that are immediately dugg down.

If nationalized health care actually worked I’d be all for it. But I’ve lived in the UK and in Canada. In the UK I went to private doctors because I didn’t trust the health care system, and it was only for things like the flu, etc. If I had gotten really sick I’d have gone into the “system.” In Canada I didn’t need to see a doctor, but I heard some serious first hand horror stories. One guy, the husband of an employee, lost a kidney because he had to wait six months for an operation.

The problem with any “free” good is the tragedy of the commons, or you have rationing. Neither works well. Money is the only effective way of rationing things. People who disagree with that live in a fantasy world.

Should we let people die in the streets? Absolutely not. But the current system in the U.S. is ok if you have health care. HMOs suck, and hospitals often treat us like problems not people. But the real problem is that people without health care are charged far more for services because they don’t have the negotiating power of the HMOs. That needs to change. Health care, and particularly basic health care, would be far cheaper if the HMOs didn’t have that kind of power.

Of course, I’m not even close to an expert on this, so I could be wrong. But what we need in this country is more capitalism, not less.

@43: That’s a lot clearer than my Venn diagrams !

Hey Don, I see a lot of different viewpoints here actually. This is something people feel very passionate about, so I expect these kinds of reactions.

@louis-eric

anybody that has a hyphenated name is bound to have elitist, socialist tendencies.

Lauren is indeed posting her own personal opinion, and so am I, in the URL link above. Google tends to be fairly quiet in terms of public postings, but (perhaps based on my experience in the open source world) I try to reach out when that makes sense.

Michael: More capitalism, yes; but that doesn’t contradict public health care: capitalism’s defined as “Capitalism is an economic theory which stresses that control of the means of producing economic goods and services in a society should reside in the hands of those who invest the capital for production.” In a public health care system, the citizens pay for and own the hospitals, make sure they are well-managed, and that they deliver what they want at the best possible price. It’s one giant HMO owned by everybody, which returns its profits as savings to the consumers.

@50: Sorry dude, I don’t respond to ad hominems. They’re usually the last argument left when people can’t come up with good ones. There’s ample room for good thinking on all sides of these issues; try harder.

Michael your personal anecdote isn’t all that relelvant (IMHO) because you are one of the people who can support top-tier health coverage in the United States. Of course the top 25% of income earners in the US are going to love the system, it is built entirely for their needs. It’s the other 75% of the population who might be better served by an alternative system.

If I were sufficiently well off (and hadn’t had the first-hand experience growing up in a lower-middle income family) I’d probably prefer the American system as well. Certainly the best technology and talent is there.

Good article on CNN (currently being dugg)
http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH.....index.html

Interesting statistic from the article is that 15% of America’s GDP is spent on health care compared with 10-11% for the other nations. So where is that other 4 or 5 percent going? It goes back into the economy in other ways, supporting the growth of other industries.

Anyways, this is an interesting discussion for Techcrunch …

@L-E Thanks for the compliment but I think your comments have been much more eloquent and convincing (although the Venn diagram probably lost a few people .

She obviously doesnt get it. I’m amazed that this retraction does more damage than the original story. Someone needs to muzzle her NOW.

Advertising == democratic? Sheesh

I’m certain this retraction was *not* vetted by a lawyer. How do I know? Lawyers don’t work on weekends HAHA.

As a side note, part of the cost problem could also be attributed to the litigious nature of the American medical system. At least that’s partially eliminated in a socialized system (yes there are cases and settlements but far fewer and almost always for much more realistic amounts).

But thats a whole other debate….

How can you tolerate such an unfair system. By reading those comments, it seems that some americans are pretty Ok with their health care System. Open your eyes guys, US are strong/good for lot of reasons, but not in this health care domain. How can you deal with people living and dying in the street without medication care and then criticized other systems that obviously work better! Moore at least try to open the debat…even if no system is perfect.

Regarding Lauren’s post, its on an Official Google Blog, so it has to be professional oriented for me…or you just create your blog on Blogger within 3 clicks!

Just a french guy living in the US

Michael, did you just pull a Google and stick your neck into the middle of this debate Well, unless you start promoting the war in Iraq as a brilliant strategy or attacking Al Gore, I don’t think you’ll be crucified by the left leaning tech community.

Markus - I hate the system. Youve got me all wrong. I just don’t think what Canada and the UK have done is better. Force providers to charge everyone the same fee for a service or product, and we’ll go a long way towards making the system better. I’m sure experts would be able to point out many other inefficiencies in the existing system that are making a few people extremely rich at the expense of the country as a whole.

Michael, I think you mix up blind ideology with pragmatism.

I think that thre’s probably a lot of libertarians among techcrunchers, but that doesn’t mean everyone would be willing to see people suffer (and die) because at that very moment of need, they weren’t valued on the same basis as a rich person.

please don’t disappoint me by confirming these really hard-right views that you occasionally slip out

Most state-supported health-systems in the developed world are actually mixed private and government, with the govt. one being a first-point safety-net, with the wealthier or more impatient being able to buy into private premium coverage; Also, many state-sytems essentially are already or moving to simply acting as mutual group-buyers of health-care, their is a greater appreciation of mutual-institutions in europe -one for all/all for one

Yours kindly,

Shakir Razak

Shakir - the problem with caring about people dying because of not having health care is that it leads governments to make very bad decisions in this area. It results in policies that lead to much more suffering than is needed. Can there be a middle ground, where people are not left without care because they can’t pay? Sure, but it will cost something in efficiency over the long run. Canada and the UK’s systems were, I’m sure, based on noble goals. But the fact is that people are hurt by those systems because they are hugely inefficient.

I really don’t know what the right answer is. But the super high end equipment costs money, and we aren’t going to simply go out and say 25% of our GNP is now earmarked for health care so that everyone can have a weekly MRI. Those goods and services will need to be rationed somehow. Money is one way to do it. Waiting months and months to get medical care is another way.

“Shakir - the problem with caring about people dying because of not having health care is that it leads governments to make very bad decisions in this area.”

The problem with people caring is that there’s not a good business model yet, eh?

I’m so sick of people saying other systems don’t or didn’t work so we shouldn’t try to learn from them since ours doesn’t work either and so what’s the point?

“Can there be a middle ground, where people are not left without care because they can’t pay? Sure, but it will cost something in efficiency over the long run.”

Sure don’t want to fuck with efficiency, eh, Mr. Arrington? Is this one of those “meet the new boss, same as the old boss” moments?

It’s certainly why I don’t trust powerful engineers who desire political power.
They’ll linearize the life out of you. Hey, tech bloggers too, eh?

I have got to remember that though someone can be smart, interesting and even appear caring that, when the chips are down, they are not to be trusted.

Michael, I appreciate that so much. I’m always so gullible and trusting around nice people and I’ve got to stop that if I’m going to move into polite society and maintain my sense of reality!

That’s one of the reason, if I ever get rich, those G8 protesters will have some heavy support when it comes to paying those legal fees.

Let’s call it balancing out my social carbon and leave it at that.

“But the super high end equipment costs money, and we aren’t going to simply go out and say 25% of our GNP is now earmarked for health care so that everyone can have a weekly MRI.”

What a sicko comment. The majority of our public health care problems have little to do with high end equipment and that evades the question of the actual needs of the poor, including the working poor, the lower to middle classes and those who are part of the planned unemployment model of our economic system.

I smell the stench of engineers. I’m out.

When I worked at Microsoft, we didn’t run our blog posts through either legal or PR. I’d bet Google doesn’t either.

Michael,

I completely disagree with you assessment of Canadian medical. Come to Canada and ask any Canadian you want whether they would be willing to give up their health card for an HMO card in the US. I guarantee you won’t find one…

I’ve known a lot of people in my life who’ve had serious medical conditions (for example, my Dad had Cancer) and were forced to spend literally months in the hospital and have operations and treatment for their problems. When all was said and done and they were healthy again, they walked out of the hospital without owing anyone a dime. You get the same treatment whether you’re a rich business man or a poor homeless man.

The example you gave about the person losing a Kidney is probably some isolated incident. We definitely have waiting times, but you know who decides who has to wait and who gets treatment? DOCTORS! So, granted, some elective procedures or non-life threatening procedures may not get done immediately, but I’d much rather trust a doctor to make that call than an insurance company.

Money should absolutely not stand in the way between a patient and a proper course of treatment. If you make insurance companies the middle man, then there is something fundamentally wrong…

Michael Thanks,

Almost everyone would agree about the efficiency problem, but if you want absolute availability, then there has to be some lee-way to take up the lag, not completely unlike the multiple fail-safes that the internet hosting providers have.

There is a middle ground, it’s making sure that everyone has access to a healthcare system whoever they are, and those with higher resources or needs can also have that “better” available at a price.

Do you want a system that is only differentiated by cold hard money.

In continental europe, they have an even “better” system, and they don’t believe in the nationalised-only model, that some others do.

I don’t know how old your experiences are in the uk, but your description doesn’t sound too contemporary. though almost every system will want for imrovement.

Other experiments in health-care system-reform seem to show a consistent need for that income devoted to admin, that seems to take upto 30% when cash is involved due to the multiple chasing of contracts and their management.

There is a history of beauracrats often running things less effectively, but it really does depend on systems and talent. You can employ people from the private sector, as well as running agencies on an arms-length basis to still be driven to maximise efficiency; though the best way of doing that would simply be to only treat people who are terminal!

Then there’s the related cost of medication itself; the simple fact is that when there’s collective bargaining or a filtration system to weed out what might be approved, but not efficient, cost of drugs is substantially cheaper -and I’m not an anti big-pharma person!

You can’t have absolute efficiency, as the examples of demand-management in the airline industry would suggest that the maths would be done that instead of over-booking there would be death included

The best thing probably is to have both, a system that allows compare and contrast, keeping them all honest.

Yours kindly,

Shakir Razak

http://onthefencefilms.com/video/deadmeat/

According to this documentary, there are actually Canadians that don’t like their system. Or to reference the Kurt Loder article:

Rick Baker, the owner of a Toronto company called Timely Medical Alternatives, specializes in transporting Canadians who don’t want to wait for medical care to Buffalo, New York, two hours away, where they won’t have to. Baker’s business is apparently thriving.

Or this:
A 52-year-old woman in Calgary recalls being in severe need of joint-replacement surgery after the cartilage in her knee wore out. She was put on a wait list and wound up waiting 16 months for the surgery. Her pain was so excruciating, she says, that she was prescribed large doses of Oxycontin, and soon became addicted. After finally getting her operation, she was put on another wait list — this time for drug rehab.

A man tells about his mother waiting two years for life-saving cancer surgery — and then twice having her surgical appointments canceled. She was still waiting when she died.

A man in critical need of neck surgery plays a voicemail message from a doctor he’d contacted: “As of today,” she says, “it’s a two-year wait-list to see me for an initial consultation.” Later, when the man and his wife both needed hip-replacement surgery and grew exasperated after spending two years on a waiting list, they finally mortgaged their home and flew to Belgium to have the operations done there, with no more waiting.

That’s not the shining example of healthcare we’re getting here.

I agree with Michael that the current system is obviously not working, but nationalized healthcare doesn’t look to be the answer.

I live in Canada. My wife was going blind with rapidly advancing cataracts.

It was a 5 month waiting list for eye number 1, and another 5 months for eye #2.

After she fell horribly, I chose to spend 1250 at a private clinic for her first eye so she could see.

Canada rations health care by having horrendous waiting lists.

Michal Moore is a liar.

“If I get fired tomorrow [in Canada], my family and me will still able to get health care if we are sick!”

But not in a timely fashion if its serious. I know, I live in Canada.

You can look at wait times here:

http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hcs-sss.....dex_e.html

And remember, thats the rosy view lie from the government. The real wait times are worse.

If I could legally do it, I would buy private insurance with timely access to health care. But I can’t. Its illegal.

Why is it illegal in Canada … so only politicians get quick service and so the average person won’t find out access could be speedy.

Michael, thanks for the response.

I didn’t read the last paragraph, as well I should have, but the first half of the article had a feeling that it was going in that direction.

Besides that, I thought it was interesting that Duncan (in the original article) would suggest “Google has come out” with such an opinion like that. Google should know to have PR look over their blog posts if commentators like Duncan are going to describe Google as the voice.

Upon reading your opinionated comment on the subject at hand, you just jumped up a couple of points in my book.

Whew! After reading many of the comments on this post, maybe this little story in Wired mag validates itself:

Despite the internet explosion, Americans remain woefully ill-informed:
http://www.wired.com/culture/c.....t_infoporn

The facts are that the USA has one of the worse healthcare systems in the world. We also spend the most (by far) of any country on the military. If we took some of that military spending money and allocated it to our healthcare system, we would be a lot better off!

Michael Moore’s films are not pure documentaries people! They don’t necessarily treat each side equally, may not be 100% accurate (like all things in life) and may not match YOUR POV. However, they are meant stir up discussion, to bring an issue forward and to some degree, they pander to the perceptions and beliefs of Joe sixpack, rightly or wrongly.

Many, many people have horror stories dealing with out healthcare system. You can find lists of them using a search engine. People have lost their homes, gotten divorced, been forced to declare bankruptcy and more because of run-in’s with the USA healthcare industry.

Here’s my big story: A couple of jobs ago when I left a company, I had a agreement to continue my health insurance for 2 months. I took advantage of the insurance until the end of the agreed period. 10 days past the end of the insurance (70 days after leaving the job), I received a notice from Blue Cross saying that they had RETROACTIVELY canceled my insurance after only 30 days. WTF? SAY WHAT?

This because the employer claimed they made a mistake paying for the 2nd month (not true) and demanded their money back from the insurance company. The insurance company of course immediately obliged them even though the company HAD paid the monthly fee AND I had been using the insurance. Blue Cross didn’t contact me at all to discuss what was happening. I received a letter in the mail informing me after the fact of their action.

You probably didn’t think that a company could get its money back AFTER paying their bill AND someone used the services paid for, did you? Well, in the corporate insurance world, this is legal and happens all too frequently. Tough luck. Imagine if the little guys of the world went back to their home/car insurers past the end of the period they had paid for and said I made a mistake paying for that last bill, please refund my money. Good luck…

I then began getting dunning notices from the doctors who had the money they were paid for the services. I had many calls with Blue Cross who refused to budge on the logic of rescinding health insurance that had been paid for and used by the person that was paid for, after the fact. They simply would not bend and I was on the hook for potentially $6-7,000. So I was forced to contact the state insurance oversight agency who after some further back and forth, brokered an agreement for Blue Cross to pay for the services rendered and not make me liable. Otherwise, we would have wound up in court where I would have challenged the legality of retroactive cancellations. Blue Cross clearly didn’t want that to happen because that would restrict their ability to ding consumer little guys.

I have a college education and a lot of life experience, so I know how to work through the systems to fight these kind of battles. It still took me a good amount of time and research though. The average little guy does not generally have the same abilities or know where to look for resources.

I did submit this story to Moore but I guess it didn’t have enough sizzle for his movie, so I never heard form his organization. But this is just one of the many stories out there of a corporate industry that steps all over consumers whenever possible. This must be stopped.

Sicko is about all the misguided myths of nationalized health care. They have longer life expectancies that the US. See the movie Mike, then talk about your reactions to the movie. HMO’s suck, no doubt about that. Better to wait for health care than have to choose which finger your want re-attached. see the movie to get the referencel.

It’s not only all this, but I imagine her premise to be demostrably false. I haven’t seen ‘Sicko’ yet, but if it is like Moore’s previous films he does in fact attempt to get the industry’s side of the stroies. That they reject his overtures for balance is not his fault and is entirely the fault of the industry itself.

Eric, Editor
Gary Carvolth Voice of the Common Man
http://www.garycarvolth.com

I think that google should donate all sicko adword revenue to charity.

Chris, #35 & many early posters: Right on the $ And shocking to find so many on a blog with actual…. sanity!
It’s truly amazing how many self-labeled “Liberals” fail to see that the very word was hijacked about 30 years ago by Leftists, Marxists and Communists.
Harry Truman and John Kennedy were LIBERALS… Mike Al-Moore, Danny Glover (moron) & the rest are COMMUNISTS… anti-American Communists that are (of course) multi-millionaires BECAUSE they are Americans. (cough).
*That’s how totalitarianism works. F**k with the language ’till it’s too late to see what’s going on.
The beloved italian Communist, Antonio Gramsci once said “The proletariat in the west is not up for a revolution”. So it is up to the Marxist intellectuals to make the “Slow march through the institutions”. They followed your marching orders to the letter, Tony.
*You Leftists can call us “Right-Wing Nuts” all you want. But we know WE are the REAL “Liberals”.
There was a very real, concrete reason why Vladimir Lenin called western Liberals “Useful Idiots”.
“McCarthyism”? - How about “Reverse-McCarthyism”?
Apologies to the aging, Hippie Left but Big Brother came from the Left…
I would at least have a smidgeon of respect for Moore & Glover types if they had the balls to say “I am a Communist”!
But they can’t and won’t. They just call themselves “Liberals” to avoid having to wear their wishy-washy Marxist world view on their sleeves… and continue to make million$, of course.

@72: You have to love desperate spammers who repost comments FROM THE SAME THREAD.

@56: The reason a lot of people here seem to be okay with the existing system is that a lot of them are wannabe yuppie Web2.0 “entrepreneurs,” overextended into smartphones and Audis, which means they have no choice but to support the status quo that provides the power to which they aspire. It’s like learning to play golf once your salary passes the Social Security withholding limit, do you want to look like a loser? How about a Democrat? Did you know that Democrats hate money almost as much as they do meat?

Read the comments over again. Barely any of them deal with the substance of the issues here, that Moore is more unfair than Dick Cheney and Google is somehow forgetting to extend their “Don’t Be Evil” canard to ad sales. You just shouldn’t introduce ethics where they don’t belong!

Good Article Mike,

I am with you on the middle ground, as we have seen what extremes do to policy and people. The problem here in the U.S. is that the “greed feeding” of drug companies, over billing doctors and other institutions and lifestyles out of Metro Goldwyn Mayer is a descending avalanche of pain harming, of course. the people at the bottom of the pyramid the most.

Balance and less fluctuation in politics, investment and trend analysis in general is better for us in the long run. Now, as the fatted hogs have hacked off so many in their feed fest on the multitude - balance will be hard to come by as everyone will want free, liberal healthcare now that we are broke. Anyone who promises it will get elected.

If I were a doctor I think I would make sure all my houses were paid off, and drug companies need to count on a 10 percent ROI and paying for their own research for a while. Perhaps tit for tat is good for the immediate short term. The balance has to be struck in the middle of these cycles not at the front end where it is nearly impossible and perhaps not even fair.

Just thoughts Mike,

Best , Phil

Last I checked, a blog is written by someone who has an opinion. However right or wrong, a blog (Google’s, TC, or any other) is the place to express that opinion. As much as we would all like to think we have the answers and we are the voice of reason, we are still just one opinion. Even if we’re someone who thinks we’re someone.

The problem here is not the healthcare system, a movie maker, or a few bloggers. The problem is most of us take something we read (written by someone with an opinion) or something we see (produced by someone with an opinion) as truth and not just someone’s opinion.

My opinion is if someone comes up with a healthcare system (or any other sytem for that matter) that is perfect, you will be richer than Michael Arrington, Michael Moore, and Google put together.

there is one thing that has not been brought up in all these posts. the fact that absolutely out of control bullshit lawsuits have driven health care costs out of the ballpark. the liability insurance that doctors have to pay is staggering. why? because some hotshot lawyer wants to look big in the firm and sues some OBGYN for 50 mil for not suggesting that someone get an abortion or some wacked out thing like that. it happens and it’s lame. and john edwards was one of those scum that played that game.

there are states in the us where the docs are leaving left and right because the insurance is so high they can’t afford it. it’s called tort reform. the patient needs to be protected of course but if a doctor makes a mistake -an honest mistake -does the person really deserve tens or hundreds of millions? it’s outrageous.

and for all you people that paint this ridiculous picture where here in the us people are dying on the side of the road because they don’t have health ins- it’s a complete load of crap. the bottom line is if you have some serious crap going on and you show up at a hospital THEY ARE GOING TO TREAT YOU. IT IS AGAINST THE LAW FOR THEM TO TURN AWAY LIFE THREATENING ISSUES.

p.s. michael moore is a brilliant filmmaker but a complete fabricator of impressions and ’suggestive’ storytelling. he is NOT a documentarian and anyone that thinks so is…ahh…dumb. case in point- that scene in the columbine film where he walks into a bank and gets the gun for opening the account -he doesn’t tell you that they require you to apply weeks in advance so they can run background checks and the like. that sums up moore- he gives you the impression of one thing without blatantly lying about it while the facts and truth are somewhere off screen.

kudos to those that see the healthcare problem for what it is and actually want to change it - and *GASP THE HORROR* use other countries with better systems as a starting point.

bad karma to all those invoking the term communist and socialist and attacking moore - those are distractions to the real issue here - the healthcare system in the USA just plain *sucks*. a for-profit insurance company should not be in charge of saving people’s lives anymore so than they should be in charge of the police/fire dept/etc. it doesn’t make sense (but it does make money…).

I’m really getting tired of having to listen to ignorant americans go on and on about how great america is and how much everyone else sucks, while simultaneously doing nothing to make america great. eventually that hamster wheel will stop spinning, and when it does, we are all going to be royally fucked.

#67
Bruce, if your story represents the worst of Canadian healthcare, I’d still take that over the American system.

What cost you $1250 in Canada under the worst circumstance would cost thousands of dollars in the US for someone with no insurance.

And even for someone who *does* have insurance, the cost due to deductibles is likely to be very close to $1250. You see how your worst case scenerio is close to our best?

The grass is always greener on the other side.

You guys should go to the bbc…they recently had this sam

You’ve got to be kidding? Michael Moore is a lying leftist clown and anyone claiming that his propaganda resembles the truth in any way is also a lying leftist boob, or denser than a bag of hammers. The tactics of Tech Crunch and the author of this article are typical of leftists: if you lie long and loud enough you can eventually convince anyone of anything. They don’t know that profit was the motivation for the blog entry, perhaps she wrote the blog entry because it’s the truth. As if the “blogisphere” on the web isn’t left-wing enough Google is now censoring and forcing a specific opinion on it’s bloggers, pitiful. If the blog entry had claimed “Sicko” was spot on you can bet TechCrunch and Michael Arrington would have been hailing Google as heroic for taking such a bold stand. The average wait time after receiving a referral to a specialist in Great Britian is almost eighteen weeks and that would be a positive when discussing socialized healthcare around the globe. You can bet your bottom dollar that Michael Moore won’t go to another country for his healthcare but I encourage everyone claiming he’s a harbinger of truth to do so.

Daniel Miller - July 1st, 2007 at 12:08 pm

Let me guess: you’re young, white, healthy, don’t have any family members with serious illnesses, and your job offers you what APPEARS to be excellent health coverage. I say “appears” because you’re young and healthy and haven’t actually TRIED to use your health coverage for anything yet.

Am I right?

Get back to us when you’re in your 50’s and have a lump in a scarey place and you’re told that the only treatment for your kind of cancer is not covered by your policy, or your infant has been turned away from the hospital limp and unconscious with a high fever because you’re at the “wrong” hospital for your insurance, or you get knocked unconscious due to a head injury and your ambulance ride isn’t covered because you didn’t get “pre-authorization” to be taken to the hospital (pre-authorized? WHILE you were unconscious?!) Get back to us when you have suffered what MILLIONS of other “fully covered”, insurance-buying Americans have suffered. Get back to us when someone you love is DEAD because of the insurance company and big-pharma profit-making machines in America tell you that your chemo alone will be $3,000 per month…and NOT covered by your policy.

Because right now? You don’t have a single clue.

We’re not “number one” in health coverage or in health outcomes in the world. We’re number 38, with every single Western, industrialized nation on the planet offering BETTER health care and a LONGER life expectancy than Americans enjoy.

Why? I can give you a one-word answer: greed.

Oh, and while you’re doing your research, use me as a case in point. I was a student in France for eight months in 2005. I had excruciating back pain and had to take an ambulance ride, see a doctor in the E.R., have some tests run, and get a prescription filled. The ambulance came immediately, the doctor saw me within :10 minutes of my arrival, I had the test results back within :30 minutes, and the ENTIRE thing (ambulance, doctor, nurses, tests, medicine) cost me roughly $35. That’s right, not $3,500. Not even $350. Just $35, WITH a 30-day prescription for two drugs. That’s a national health care system worth being proud of: quick, efficient, effective, affordable and humane.

keith

July 1st, 2007 at 10:02 pm

…and for all you people that paint this ridiculous picture where here in the us people are dying on the side of the road because they don’t have health ins- it’s a complete load of crap. the bottom line is if you have some serious crap going on and you show up at a hospital THEY ARE GOING TO TREAT YOU. IT IS AGAINST THE LAW FOR THEM TO TURN AWAY LIFE THREATENING ISSUES.

*** snip ***

Another ignorant puppy.

I pay over $400 cash each and every month for my HMO coverage. Last week I was told that I was NOT approved to see an endocrinologist for my diabetes and thyroid tumors. Why? Because it costs too much for them to let me see an endocrinologist. That’s right, they told me to my face that the medical specialist licensed to treat my illness would be unapproved due to FINANCIAL reasons, not HEALTH CARE-related reasons. They did say that I would be allowed to see an RN to monitor and adjust my medications, something that is actually ILLEGAL in America. It is their routine operating procedure to let RN’s make decisions about insulin and other medication dosages at this HMO, so routine that they don’t even try to hide the fact that they are allowing RN’s to practice medicine without a license.

THAT is the reality of your “illegal to refuse treatment” fantasy would.

The can and DO refuse necessary medical treatment every day of the week, all over the country, based STRICTLY on financial rationals. What matters is NOT what the patient actually needs; what matters is profit for the shareholders, bonuses for the managed care administrators, and huge salaries and golden parachutes for the CEOs and Vice Presidents.

Well I live in France, In France the systems work. The UK (where I used to live) they do not work period. If your ill in the UK then you had better have ‘courage’ as the French often say. In the USA I had ended up in hospital for for a night, and I must say the service I received was 100 times better than that in the UK. I must say MA is about right in his opinion (for once) IMO.

The healthy companies are guilty of many many crimes, but the crime can be blamed on the laws of the country specifical