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I saw it today and laughed and cried with everyone else. At the end everyone clapped. The audience was a mature matinee crowd for the most part, but there was a real sense of "solidarite."
Moore did much more than make a movie about the abysmal state of health care distribution in our country. He showed us how American conceit, arrogance and ignorance blinds us from seeing that we are far behind other countries in many respects, not just with regard to healthcare. Face it. We all love the U.S. But, the Canadians, the Cubans, the British and the French have solved the problem of how to make sure all of their citizens get at least basic health care and other necessary services without bankrupting themselves and their entire families far better than we have.
As a nation, we boast that we are rich. We claim to be a righteous country, and some even insist we are a "Christian" country, yet we allow our own citizens to suffer and die. Why? Because we are bound by a rigid belief in a theory that is not working: pure market economics. They call it the survival of the fittest. It is really the survival of the wealthiest.
The truth is that when we can no longer prevent people from dying from curable conditions because they can't afford medical care, we are in serious trouble, economically and morally.
Why can't we have the healthcare that people in other countries take for granted? Because we spend such a huge portion of our national wealth on war toys, that's why. Tony Benn said it best: if you can afford to fight a war you can afford healthcare for all. We are spending everything we have on weapons, and contractors to wage our war. Let's stop throwing away our money on war and start spending it on better lives for all Americans.
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