Advocacy Journalism Draft

Advocacy Journalism

The US healthcare system is not really what you were doomed to believe

The glorification of The United States of America being one of the wealthiest and most revered healthcare systems in the whole world is brought to question by the Advocacy Journalist by director-producer, Michael Moore’s Sicko film. His self-styled documentary film, Sicko is infused with opinion and ethical dilemmas that maneuver across socio-political, religious and economic spectrum.  The journey he takes, carefully observes the healthcare and insurance industry in America as a whole.

Upon the completion of watching the movie, one is made to believe that business is more valuable to the affluence of this world more than humanity. His advocacy journalistic approach to this film reveals to the world that most big insurance companies are not willing to cover even the fully insured patients when they face problems between life and death. His production team exposes the most well positioned people in the insurance industry ladder such as; the managing directors, chief executive officers and chairpersons to be at the wrong end of the stick.

At some point in the movie, there is the issue of ethics and it conflicts directly with medial professionalism. For an instance, Dr. Linda Pino is quoted saying: “My name is Linda Pino and I am here today to make a public confession. In the spring of 1987, as a physician, I denied a man the operation that would have saved his life, and thus caused his death. No person or no group has held me accountable for this because in fact what I did was to save the company $500,000 for this. Furthermore this particular act secured my reputation as a good Medical director, and ensured further advancement in the healthcare field.I went from making a few hundred dollars a week as a medical reviewer, to an escalating six figure income as a physician executive. In all my work, I had one primary duty, and that was to use my medical expertise from the financial benefit of the organisation for which worked, and I was told repeatedly that I was not denying care, I was simply denying payment. I know how managed care maims and kill patients, and I am here to tell you about the dirty work of managed care, and I am haunted by the thousands of pieces of paper on which I have written that deadly word…denied.” Sicko (2007)

Unfortunately the situation never changed since this startling revelation. The state should have taken unswerving actions against practitioners who perform these ill-acts in the medical insurance industry. The work of journalism was put to waste because the state did not take this as an advantage of publicizing of such event so that the citizenry become aware of what is happening so as to make wise decisions when it comes to medical insurance. I think that advocacy journalism is very important in building our societies, whether politicians buys into it or not. We as journalists can build better communities we want instead of expecting that to come from politicians because better society can never be handed to you.