Michael Moore recently endorsed Barack Obama but on Larry King’s CNN show last night, he said, like Clinton’s healthcare plan, Obama’s doesn’t go far enough:
You have to remove profit as a motive, just as you — it’s one of those basic services. We wouldn’t have a police department that had to show a profit every year — or a fire department that had to show a profit every year. We shouldn’t do that with our health care system, either.
– Michael Moore
KING: In January, you posted a website letters that had good things about Obama’s win in Iowa. But you also wrote this: “Barack, you can talk all you want about let’s put the partisanship aside, let’s all get along, but the other side has no intention of being anything but the bullies they are. Get your game face on now and if you can, tell me why you are now the second largest recipients of health industry payola after Hillary.”
Are you saying he — that’s what he’s getting, the industry…
MOORE: Yes. And I believe, actually, in that time since I wrote that in January, it’s flipped and he’s now number one, at least with — she’s…
KING: In funds from the healthcare…
MOORE: She has one — she’s number one, I think, with the pharmaceutical companies and he’s number one with health insurance. Or vice versa, I can’t remember what. But they’re one and two in terms of…
KING: Do you think if you take, you must be beholden to them?
That’s what Ralph Nader used to say.
MOORE: Well, you…
KING: If I take too much, then I’m beholden to you.
MOORE: Well, yes. I think that’s — I think that — I think anybody understands that that’s the way the game is played… [That’s] why neither Senator Obama or Senator Clinton’s healthcare plans will bring real universal coverage to this country, because they both allow the insurance companies to still control what’s going on. You have to remove the private profit-making health insurance companies, because as long as they have to make a profit, that means they can’t take care of everybody in the same way or they won’t make the money they need to make.
You have to remove profit as a motive, just as you — it’s one of those basic services. We wouldn’t have a police department that had to show a profit every year — or a fire department that had to show a profit every year. We shouldn’t do that with our health care system, either. And no other Western country does that.
KING: You mean health is a right?
MOORE: Well, absolutely. Yes, it’s a human right. And it is everywhere else, except, unfortunately, here.
