an open letter

dear friends, family and strangers,

j and i saw michael moore's new movie, "sicko," last night, and i have a request.

Please See This Movie. (it's enough to make me write in capital letters.)

There are few things in this country that can unite us as much as this film's topic: the abysmal, unreliable quality of our nation's health care system.

this is issue is personal for me.

when i was sick with cancer, i had to muster the energy i didn't have -- not to get better, but to fight to get enough specialist referrals from the health insurance company to cover my care. a couple of years ago, a friend of mine declared bankruptcy because of out-of-pocket medical expenses, even though he had health insurance. and, when a close relative died earlier this year, his wife received a bill for thousands of dollars -- because, while the hospital was covered by their health insurance company (and, in fact, was the only hospital in town that was), the team of doctors inside that hospital who treated him were not.

this issue is is personal for all of us.

in "sicko," a handful of americans with major health problems who were denied care in the states travel with moore to cuba. there, they are treated for free. many of them cry afterwards from relief, but also disbelief -- how can something that is so difficult to obtain in the united states be so easy in cuba?

nothing against cuba, but it's a question worth asking.

we cling to the notion in our country that because This Is The Way It Is, it's also The Way It Should Be. we've collectively bought into the idea that universal health care is somehow asking for too much, being too greedy, inviting too much risk -- that we don't have the right to enjoy a health care system that is both humane and patient-centered, instead of what we have today -- a system controlled by companies that employ people whose sole job is to figure out how to pay you, the patient, as little as possible.

so i'm asking this: in case you haven't seen the movie, please do.

the action step afterwards is easy. just think. thinking is the easiest action step of all. it requires no special talent or ability. it's something each of us was born already equipped to do.

so please, just think.

think about what it would feel like to live in a country where the basic health of its people is considered a national priority. think about what it would be like to live in a country where no child is denied a life-saving operation because someone in an office in another city in another state decided it wasn't "medically necessary."

what kind of country allows so many of its citizens to die of curable disease? what kind of people are we? what kind of person are you?