Of course, we haven't seen the movie Stateside yet. (Well, the California Nurses Association, an advocate of government-monopoly health care, is hosting a screening in Sacramento tomorrow, with Mr. Moore present, but my invitation was lost in the mail, I guess.)  However, the trailer and another clip are at YouTube, as well as a couple of interviews - one with Oprah.

I'm not going to dwell on the fact that Mr. Moore appears to have found the saddest, most tragic, cases to highlight his message.  We already know that from his previous movies - but he has the basic facts wrong.  He argues that the "profit motive" is the evil behind American health care, neglecting to mention that (in the privately insured market), almost half of us have policies from non-profit insurers.  For hospitals, about 85% are non-profit.  Furthermore, countries with "universal" health care have for-profit enterprises.  For example, Britain has for-profit hospitals that operate outside the NHS.  There is also BUPA, a non-profit insurer that covers Brits who want better insurance than they get from the National Health Service.  Other developed countries with so-called "universal" health care also have a mix of government-owned, for-profit, and non-profit hospitals and health plans.  Even a country like Canada, where for-profit ambulatory surgery centers exist only in a sort of gray market, the government-funded hospitals buy their machines (if and when they get around to it) from for-profit multinational corporations like GE or Siemens.

Oh, and of course there are the pharmaceutical companies!  I guess Mr. Moore figures these guys cannot be turned into non-profits (and he is likely correct). So, nine minutes and 12 seconds into his 9'44" segment on Oprah, Mr. Moore throws in (to wild applause) that the drug makers need to be regulated!

What kind of a dream-world does he live in, to think that Big Pharma is unregulated? It is the most minutely regulated enterprise in the world - which explains a lot of the problems we have!

I'm sure I'll have more too say after seeing the whole thing......