Michael Moore and Blogger's Confessions (Usher Style)

Michael Moore's new movie "Sicko" about the American healthcare industry premieres in Europe in the fall. If you're traveling to the US this summer, you could to catch it as early as June 29.

Here's another story about Moore you might not have heard.

Now...

"These are my confessions
Just when I thought I said all I could say
My resume shows I got to get /
one more thing out of the way


Even though this blog may occasionally make me as a blogger sound green, social justice oriented etc., that's really not the whole picture. My history includes a stint in a New York investment banking team that did deals with managed care organizations, the same firms and CEOs that Moore attacks in "Sicko." Honestly, I have to be the one of the only Net Impact members in the universe that gets totally worked up while reading about Darfur or watching a movie about Edith Piaf who's also worked for a company providing military avionics and another that pitches managed care mergers. Talk about a split personality. There are no other major skeletons in the closet, though.

Okay, fine. There were those board memberships at Talisman Energy, Halliburton, and TJ Group.

In a sense, the reason these issues get me so fired up is having been there and seen some of this stuff up close. Many guys did not leave the office on 9/11 even despite bomb alerts at Grand Central because "defense companies are going to be on fire, man." (...? - Honey, look at me. I have ovaries. And a womb. And I'm wearing a skirt. I know that's rare here unless you're a secretary, but do I look like a man?)

Senior managers talked passionately about raw material prices, life insurance trends and yield curves without mentioning the dead in the city. There was callousness on a level I'd never seen before. It changed my life. As far as managed care goes, even not having seen more than a trailer for "Sicko", it's pretty clear to me Moore is doing the right thing and chosen to raise awareness about an urgent issue. Mr Moore may get a lot of criticism, but looking at it from both sides of the fence, I absolutely know which side I'm on and strongly believe Mr Moore is on the side of the people for whom the healthcare industry exists in the first place: patients, not shareholders.

This was one of the deals done by the group that employed me. (It's old news now in fast-changing managed care. Trigon was bought by WellPoint.) Now, I could say I had no idea what I was getting into (that would be true), I could claim I was assigned to that group (sort of not true, I had befriended a colleague who I still keep in touch with), I could say that I had no choice (yeah, right), but I guess I can't. For a time, I wanted to see Wall Street. Also, I'm from Finland. Most Finns have no idea what American healthcare insurers do or how the system works. "Keeping administrative costs down and keeping health plans competitive" sounded good to me. Besides, my employer's health insurer wasn't hurting me in any way, so there were no negative personal experiences whatsoever. In fact, the bank even paid for everyone's Lasik surgery, worth (if memory serves correctly) about $12,000 each. (When the market melted, they stopped this practice though.) Anyway, at the time the bank had probably the best combination of healthcare plans any company anywhere could ever have. I, for one, am still thankful. Thanks to the bank's private health plan, I have 20/20 vision again.

The job was no picnic, though, but that's a subject of a whole different confession (Usher didn't do Pt. 3, I just might.) I left New York and soon after befriended a New York ER doctor on my travels. We kept in touch. He told stories about people whose only healthcare providers were the emergency medicine doctors and nurses. It was interesting to start reading up on things. We talked about medical malpractice insurance (I had participated in a pitch for a nearly bankrupt med-mal business) and how a lot of doctors could no longer afford to practise because their insurance costs against potential lawsuits were prohibitively high - in the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. There were over 40 million uninsured Americans. Doctors were being squeezed and bullied by insurers and outrageous litigation. Patients were being denied payments by insurance companies. It was quite incredible; as a Scandinavian, you easily take universal healthcare for granted. I began to realize that for the little while that I had spent as part of the American workforce, I had been part of an exclusive group of elite workers and as such, I had received elite benefits. Had I continued, I never would've seen anything different (of course assuming I would've kept ploughing ahead on that same road.) I would've thought everything was just fine.

And then it hit me: why did the financiers orchestrating healthcare mergers never talk about doctors, nurses or patients? Not once. It was as if we operated in a wholly separate universe.

The only answer that seemed in any way credible was that it really didn't matter to us. Nobody even pretended to care. Managed care corporate finance was a business where deals were done one step removed from the CEO who talks to lower level executives who talk to the claims experts who talk to doctors and patients and maximize corporate profit by denying treatments and reimbursements.

Now, there are certainly many things I want to do in life - besides getting a dog. For much of it, money is necessary. Heck, I wouldn't mind vacationing on Mustique one day. But if I don't, I don't really care. And my bottom line is that I sure as hell am not willing to get there by profiting from humanitarians or other people's suffering.

Of course, my former colleagues might laugh at this. I will never forget going to work one mid-week morning from the church. Now, I'm not religious, but sometime in my second year I started volunteering at a Park Avenue church homeless breakfast on my way to work. I didn't tell anyone at the office, I just went. So I got to work that one morning, and my colleagues were just hanging out, laughing. One joked to another, "Buddy, go feed the homeless or something."

I'd like to say this was the turning point that made me resign and change course. Not really. I left the city I love most in the world, but I still went back into finance for a while, unsure of what I wanted to do. Instead of Che Guevara badges and hemp clothing, I still wore heels and the damn pantyhose. I did a bunch of other things. But then I started working at a hospital.

And come to think of it, Che was a med student :) ...

Can't wait to see this movie.

Trailer:

Clip from the film:

Interview:

Entertainment Industry 101: From Humps and Lumps to Greater Meaning

It's too bad we can't draw flowcharts on Blogger, but try to picture this.

Universal Studios, like Universal Music, was until recently a subsidiary of Vivendi. We recall Vivendi/Universal Music/A&M were behind the masterful My Humps.

To service some debt a few years ago, Vivendi had to sell a majority stake of Universal Studios to GE. (You with me?) All three are looking for new blockbusters.

Now GE+Vivendi/Universal Studios have picked up a new movie called "The Peaceful Warrior." The trailer is below. The storyline is: a chance encounter with a stranger changes the life of a college gymnast ("Movies aid search for "greater meaning"" from Yahoo! news.)

It is nice if a particularly moving filming gets people thinking, and it's good entertainment, too. The business model here, though, is spelled out below by one of the companies' representatives: creating a market in transformational films.

There are a few question marks. General Electric, the owner of the company that distributes Peaceful Warrior used to produce nuclear weapons. Vivendi reaped gains from My Humps.

Additionally, although General Electric is no longer involved in producing nuclear weapons, the company owns GE-Aviation / Smiths Aerospace ("We Bring Technology To Life", a twist on GE's motto "We Bring Good Things To Life.") Although it's not clear how much of Smiths Aerospace's business comes from the defense market, much of their avionics no doubt go to the military. I once worked for a similar firm (oh, yes, I did and it's a looooooong story) and it was mostly manned by ex-military selling to the military.

Any one of us could read the Bible online, or perhaps the Dhammapada, available for free. But it wouldn't generate revenue. Quoting Reuters,

"Despite the marketing challenge, Fogelson sees further opportunity in the growing audience for such transformational films. "I think there is absolutely a viable and powerful business model in making and distributing films for this audience," he said. "I think it starts with knowing there is a large enough and very passionate audience that can be found and spoken to and served. Whether it can expand beyond that I think is entirely a function of what kind of product is created.""

Dr Bowers' Lectures; "The Smartest Guys in the Room"

Helen Bowers, a finance professor from the University of Delaware, is teaching a five-day short course on corporate governance at Hanken this week. We started yesterday, and actually ended by watching The Corporation, which the CSR course and Net Impact showed in Casa back in January. Corporate governance, Dr Bowers said, is about how to solve a lot of the issues that cause CSR problems. Her lecture schedule is on the sidebar right here.

On Thursday (rm 305 at 16:15) there'll be a showing of The Smartest Guys in the Room, a 2005 movie about one of the biggest business scandals in American history -- the collapse of Enron. If you're interested, you know how to get there!

Wal-Mart Class Action Suit

According to Helsingin Sanomat, Wal-Mart faces a class action suit for gender discrimination. An American court accepted on Tuesday a historical suit involving millions of women who have worked for Wal-Mart after 1998. The suit alleges that Wal-Mart paid women lower wages and limited women's opportunities to advance into managerial positions.

In the clip, the CEO of Wal-Mart talks about sustainability issues at Wal-Mart. The interviewer is Charlie Rose, who doesn't exactly take a stand but leaves it up to the viewer to make up their own mind. More Charlie Rose interviews here; some of us know him as one of the most well regarded US talkshow hosts (he works for PBS, the Public Broadcasting Service.) GoogleVideo offers hour-long interviews with Al Gore, Noam Chomsky, artist Shirin Neshat (whose photos were up at EMMA in Espoo last fall!) and others on issues like climate change, alternative energy and human rights.



Here "High Cost of Low Price" producer-director Robert Greenwald and a Wal-Mart representative talk about the firm's labor practices.

WAL-MART: The High Cost of Low Price - Movie Night

Time for another movie event. Tomorrow (Wed) night in Casa at 18.00. A documentary about American superstore Wal-Mart will be shown.