↑IFC Center (Movie theater at West Village)
Each student has to do 20-30 minutes presentation about something related to the United States. I talked about the American health care organization, HMO. I found the movie theater which was still playing Michel Moore's latest documentary movie about HMO ”Sicko” and I could see it even at the beginning of October. The movie had been playing at most theaters in the United States since June until August. I made a presentation based on this movie. I had just heard before that the medical costs in the US are very high. I didn't know the US doesn't have universal health care like Japan and other developing countries. 50 million people are living without health insurance and 250 million people have it. 18,000 Americans die every year simply because they are not insured. Also, I knew from this movie how the American HMO system constantly betrays the insured 250 million American people. HMOs are kind of private insurance companies, so they maximise profits and minimise expenses. They are always trying to refuse to pay insurance coverage for whatever reason. Then, many Americans go bankrupt or die for not being able to pay the medical costs. If you are not insured, the average medical cost is USD7,000. Ambulances cost over USD600. An operation for appendicitis costs USD20,000. After my presentation, we had a discussion time. One student who has been living for 6 years in the US told us that she doesn't have health insurance and she had to pay USD7,000 for her operation for heart disease. Hearing this, I discovered how high American medical costs are and it's very difficult to pay them without insurance coverage. The other day, in the Manhattan subway, I saw a person who was writing a denial letter for insurance coverage on the form with the letter head of CIGNA, which is one of the biggest HMOs. It seemed the movie was a real story.
