"Stump the Yank, or"

Many of us went to UB's Distinguished Speaker series to get Michael Moore's oration on health care.

We got it, but not before over an hour's worth of complaining about the nation.

Jordan Fried, the freshman economics major and self-proclaimed conservative who delivered the question about Moore's idea of propaganda, had this much to say about the event:

"While parts of the speech were entertaining, it was overshadowed by his lack of respect for us as Americans...he's clearly an America-hater."

Is that true? I don't think so, myself. A friend I respect very much observed that the man is criticized for all the wrong reasons.

He makes people mad. He criticizes our accepted practices without offering better alternatives or solutions. And clearly, he eats peanut butter like it's ice cream.

Does any of that change the fact that he documents things we can't see anywhere else? Whether or not he personally fixes the problems that he records for our eyes - is that the measure of his worth as a speaker?

Fried said that the man isn't "distinguished" at all; he stammered and sweated, he showed up dressed like it was casual Friday, he leaned pretty hard on the word "um" and...he used naughty language!

I don't buy it. We invited the fat man to engage the public opinion, and that's exactly what happened. By criticizing Moore, Fried even contributed to it himself.

I paid my price and endured a teeth-grindingly tedious hour's worth of sensationalized, aimless ranting (and seriously - who gets a near-standing ovation just for admitting they haven't visited a college campus in almost three years?) and finally got to hear Moore on Sicko and the state of the country's health care.

"We like to piss on ourselves!" he said.

I winced, thinking of a certain scene from Team America. But he went on to explain that the #1 reason for bankruptcy and home foreclosures (among other things) in this nation is medical bills.

For more information on this, check out what the Bureau of Labor Statistics Web site has to say about the issue:

"As the largest industry in 2004, health care provided 13.5 million jobs -13.1 million jobs for wage and salary workers and about 411,000 jobs for the self-employed."

Great! Health care provided the country with lots of jobs, so who can complain?

Those of us currently without health insurance, that's who. We don't all find it easy to weasel our way into the 13 million jobs working for the big drug companies. Some of us pay hundreds of dollars for simple procedures or medicine that we need to survive or live a reasonably comfortable life.

Those jobs make this nation a lot of money. Here's one good example of why:

Consumer price of Prozac 20 mg, 100 tablets: almost $250.00.

Cost of the active ingredients used to make 100 tablets: eleven cents.

Moore was right. Americans don't have to "wait" for coverage like the Canadians because 50 million of us were removed from the front of the line.

This is sick. This has to stop.

I don't have well over $1000 to spend on the UB medical coverage plan, and I resent that I'm all but forced to spend it if I don't opt for a different plan - many of which cost less than half that.

It might have been frustrating, but I found it worth the wait to hear what Moore had to say and to watch his deleted clips. The information is disheartening, but change rises from oppression.

I might not like you, you might have a double chin, and you might even piss off as many of us as Ann Coulter did two years ago. But Michael Moore, you have a damn good point.