The insurance industry bought a nice long segment on ABC's 20/20 tonight

[Shagbark Hickory]

The last 10 minutes must have cost them a fortune.
Showed how horrible Canada's single payer system is and all the people coming to America for first rate treatment and to get away from all the rationing.

It was a pathetic sorry excuse for journalism. Completely one-sided and ABC should be ashamed. They have lost all remaining credibility. ABC hates America.

[tabatha]

1. You're kidding.

I hope there is a counter.

[Orrex]

2. I didn't watch it. Was it a John Stossel piece?

A more passionate and uncritical advocate for across-the-board privatization you'll never find.

[LadyoftheRabbits]

3. I watched it.... it was disgusting.

Not even a paltry attempt at letting the other side speak their piece. There was so much crap about how a "for profit" system had led to so many new and great innovations in medicine and I want to shout at these people, "yeah, but to those who can't afford it, it makes no difference!"

[Triana]

4. ABC sux

They are as hateful and ignorant and self-serving as fox and sometimes worse. They're just yet another psychopathic network.

[Just-plain-Kathy]

5. I wonder what ABC has to gain by swaying people away from the single payer system.

I know Disney made a lot of money from a government contract after Hurricane Katrina. They made $236 million by housing evacuees on three of their cruise ships.

To critics, the price is exorbitant. If the ships were at capacity, with 7,116 evacuees, for six months, the price per evacuee would total $1,275 a week, according to calculations by aides to Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.). A seven-day western Caribbean cruise out of Galveston can be had for $599 a person -- and that would include entertainment and the cost of actually making the ship move.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/27/AR2005092701960.html

[beltanefauve]

6. Perhaps the answer lies

in where their advertising revenue comes from. I don't watch TV much, but I'm going to start paying more attention to just how many ads per hour are from big pharma or from insurance companies. Did anyone out there who saw this show also happen to notice the ads?

[Why Syzygy]

7. I watch a program online at CBS....

Most of the commercials are 15 or 30 seconds. Not the pharmco ads.
They need 60 seconds to cure impotence and cholesterol, and they can afford it!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. Not to mention listing all the side effects

There's one anti-depressant in particular that has so many awful side effects that I'd rather be depressed (and I've had full-scale depression, so I'm not saying this lightly).

[Why Syzygy]

9. While I personally

hold no judgments for those who opt to take medications, my favorite film of all time is A Beautiful Mind. I know many people who lead compromised lives due to prescribed mental medications.

Although prescribed medication, Nash wrote later that he only took it either involuntarily or under pressure, but after 1970, he was never committed to the hospital again and refused any medication. According to Nash, the film A Beautiful Mind inaccurately showed him taking new atypical antipsychotics during this period. He attributed the depiction to the screenwriter (whose mother, he notes, was a psychiatrist), who was worried about encouraging people with the disorder to stop taking their medication.<9> Others, however, have questioned whether the fabrication obscured a key question as to whether recovery from problems like Nash's can actually be hindered by such drugs,<10> and Nash has said they are overrated and that the adverse effects are not given enough consideration once someone is considered mentally ill.<11><12><13> According to Nasar, Nash recovered gradually with the passage of time. Encouraged by his then former wife, De Lardé, Nash worked in a communitarian setting where his eccentricities were accepted. De Lardé also said for Nash, "it's just a question of living a quiet life".<14>

<10>^ Whitaker, R. (2002) Mind drugs may hinder recovery. USA Today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forbes_Nash,_Jr.#Schizophrenia
(worth a read)