Sicko Critique of US Healthcare System

Michael Moore finds some real problems with the US healthcare system. But his proposed solution will create an even worse mess: taxing all US citizens who have any incomes or wealth in order to purchase for every US resident routine medical checkups, bypass surgeries, CAT scans, erectile dysfunction drugs, cancer chemotherapy, skin grafts, etc.

The real problems afflicting the US healthcare system:
1. US citizens typically do not take responsibility for their health, and the current healthcare system encourages this view.
2. The insurance industry covers routine checkups and pharmaceutical treatments, rather than only catastrophic accidents and medical calamities.

Imagine how expensive auto insurance would be it it covered oil changes, tune-ups, and rust spots... and for every driver! Or if homeowners insurance covered repainting, leaky roofs, cracked driveways, broken windows, etc.

So on the one hand Americans typically create for themselves very refractory long-term illnesses (circulatory diseases and cancers account for 80% of US annual deaths; then there's the allergies, acne, and other chronic maladies) by eating terrible food, rarely exercising, and using toxic chemicals in their cleaning and other activities, and then expects to treat all these problems via insurance. Consider the average US worker: he pays $1,000 / year into his insurance, and his job pays about another grand. That's two grand annually, to cover all medical conditions, treated only only with expensive toxic drugs, invasive surgeries, and disease-causing radiation.

Now he wants his $2,000 worth. He gets a cold, and he wants a doctor to give him a "free" exam, and some "free" antibiotics. As his diet produced high blood pressure, rather than switch to a natural diet, treating himself with health-enhancing herbs and vitamins (not covered by insurance!), and exercising, he wants "free" hypertension drugs with an option for "free" bypass surgery.

Neither a free-market nor a socialist (Michaeal Moore) solution can work, though as in all cases the socialist option will fail even worse than the current socialis/capitalist hybrid approach. The only solution must involve two factors:

1. Americans start taking responsibility for their own health.
2. Health insurance covers only serious calamities. People must pay to treat their own acne, high blood pressure, allergies, and colds.

Now the competing capitalist or socialist solutions would address a much smaller list of problems.