Moore’s health care prescription
Michael Moore
According to the film:
- Much of the blame for health maintenance organizations falls on the shoulders of former President Richard Nixon, who, in a taped conversation in 1971 with aide John Ehrlichman, is pleased to hear that HMOs (to quote Ehrlichman) would make “all the incentives … toward less medical care because the less care they give
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them, the more money they make.”
- Moore says that former Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, was bought off by drug companies by donations to the tune of $78,250. Former Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn.: $123,957. Rep. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.: $194,700. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.: $433,324. Sen. Max Baucus, R-Mont: $145,372. But “the biggest check was saved for last,” Moore says: President George W. Bush, who Moore says took in $891,208.
- Former Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., also endures scrutiny from Moore, who mocks Tauzin for such tear-jerking statements as “There’s no one in this House who loves their mother more than I love my mother.” Moore points out that Tauzin, a chief proponent of the 2003 Medicare Prescription Drug Act, later left Congress to become chief executive officer of PhRMA.
- When Moore talks about Sen. Hillary Clinton’s, D-N.Y., 1993 universal health care plan, he calls her “sassy, smart, sexy.” But he later pans her for becoming “the second-largest recipient in the Senate of health care industry contributions.”
Other cameos: Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, Bill O’Reilly, Steve Forbes, George H.W. Bush, John Ashcroft, George Pataki, Donald Rumsfeld,Dick Cheney, Phil Gramm, John Kasich, Bob Novak, Pat Buchanan, Haley Barbour, Dick Armey, Sen. Sherrod Brown, Rep. Ed Markey, former Rep. Charlie Norwood and, of course, the Capitol Hill Club.
