"Moore's 'Sicko' Rings Close to Home for This Reporter"

[LongTomH]

Michael Moore's latest film had a special impact for an independent reporter covering the Iraq war, while wearing a hernia belt. Seems the hospitals won't perform surgery for a man without an insurance card, unless he coughs up a few grand, on the spot, no 'convenient payment plans.'

When I watched this documentary for the first time, I was forced to think about my own recent situation in Afghanistan, where I covered the war for two months last winter with a hernia belt holding me together.

I just read a passage about a Las Vegas Vietnam Vet named Mike; "a man with a razor blade scar and a sharp sense of humor," who was found dead in a ditch along the railroad tracks, dead from a gastrointestinal hemorrhage.

Author Matthew O’Brien of "Beneath the Neon" concludes that paragraph with, "I guess he never had hernia surgery. No insurance, no hospital bed."