Thank you Dr Hochfeld for making a clear, factual, logical, rational and massively overpowering case for root to branch systemic reforms of our health care system.

I believe that, in an America in which the ideas and ideals that are put forth in this film were actually implemented, we would (within ten years) see a far healthier population with longer, more satisfying and more productive life spans...for less than HALF of the money we are now spending/wasting.

The existing system causes as much disease and suffering as it cures. The status quo is a perversity driven by a maleficent blend of fear and greed.

My sense is that the perpetrators of the status quo (who most directly profit financially and politically) are examples of the "banality of evil". I doubt that many of them are consciously trying to inflict waste, suffering, pain and premature death on people.... but that is the net result of the broken system we have now. Each individual in the corrupt chain of perverse interests has their own rationales for playing their own role...but the cumulative effect of their collective decisions is that we get inferior care for both the insured and the uninsured and at great costs that are increasing at unsustainable rates!

The only way to really make the existing system "work" would be to simply write off the poor and uninsured as worthless people and to let them die in the streets for want of money or "coverage". Fortunately we don't do that. So yes, "anyone" can get health care in America. BUT it's at the point where their suffering becomes sufficiently acute that is so unbearable that they land in an emergency room...and they get acute care that may save/extend their lives at tremendously high costs, when the same problem might have been prevented for pennies on the dollar if the person had access to a family physician in the years prior to the acute episode.

Then when the person gets out of the ER or after a stay in ICU or CCU (after surgery and whatever other extremely expensive interventions may be required) they end up back on the street being too poor to buy their drugs or to get appropriate follow-up care since virtually no doctors will provide office visits to indigent/uninsured people. Some people beg, borrow and steal whatever they can to get care....and many become bankrupt.

The more one knows about the existing system the more obvious it becomes that it is so messed up that there is zero chance that it will ever fix itself. Why? Because a relatively small number of people are getting extremely rich off of it....and those individuals (and the institutions/corporations they are part of) know how to lubricate the gears of the political machines with all manner of cash.

The ONLY chance of anything decent happening is for the movement for common sense and common decency to become so large that the politicians will understand that they will ALL be voted out of office unless they begin to manifest common sense and common human decency!

That manifestation is called Single Payer Health care! By itself it would be an improvement, but no panacea. The problem is systemic, as the film beautifully illustrates, and all of the perverse incentives/factors need to be addressed in a wholistic manner.

The opponents will spend billions of dollars to suppress and to distort and to co-opt the message of this film. It will not be an easy task making the changes that need to be made.

Simply telling the truth should be enough. When one is dealing with what is, in effect, a massively corrupt industry (striving to keep on being free to milk another million, or billion or trillion dollars out of the American people) the truth needs to be told in the form of political organizing and the formation of massive networks of citizen activists who know and understand this stuff so deeply that no amount of industry propaganda and fear mongering will deter them/us!!!

Frankly, what it will take to fix health care in the USA is connected to what it will take to fix the way we finance our political campaigns and the way we "regulate" our financial "services" industries and a dozen other areas that need reform. It's all connected.

What's needed is a people's movement for common sense and common human decency that transcends the old left v right political dichotomy which has become, in effect, (if not in intent) a "divide and conquer" strategy that keeps the elites behind the status quo very rich and very powerful.

We still have enough of a democracy left to pull this off. President Obama used to be an avid single payer advocate, but he's lost faith in his old ideals and has bought into the lie that the insurance companies have put forth that Single Payer is politically "impossible" so he's now touting half assed compromise measures that will pump more money into the coffers of an already fouled up system.

Let's show Barack Obama that he is mistaken and that there are many many many MILLIONS of Americans willing and able to fight for common sense and common human decency!!!