Originally Posted By: Stormy
I really was not picking on DOW - I actually have never paid attention to what he does for a living.


Hi Stormy:

My name is Dow McKeever (not all-caps DOW, BTW)

I grew up in one of the richest communities in the country (Greenwich, Connecticut) my father was a stockbroker, and thought the name was funny

Now we live in a modest house in NY State

my wife Marsha teaches at NYU, a private university, where she teaches film and television editing and sound

We work in the film and television community, on both entertainment shows (such as "30 Rock") and documentaries for low pay that we choose to work on because they are important to us

our most recent film was called "No Tomorrow" which takes a look at the topic of capital punishment, the costs of putting someone to death, and the moral and legal complications, so we examine subjects other than health care as well.

We turned down more lucrative TV work to do the sound for "Critical Condition" a show produced for public televison (PBS) which I've mentioned several times so far, to almost no response on this thread

the film follows four people who were caught in the dark place between their health care insurance, and our country's social services, or lack of them

"Critical Condition" trailer

"Critical Condition" Amazon link

I would expect that if you were to watch the film itself, you'd find ways to criticize it as coloring the debate

the way that we had music playing under the scene in which Joe, a doorman who was fired from his job, because he had diabetes, and could no longer perform his duties, in which we decided to play music in the scene when his family visit him in his hospital room, and he soon dies after that. There are also earlier sequences in the film which show how without health care benefits, he couldn't afford the diabetes medicine that his doctors wanted him to take

the film has been called the "real world" "Sicko" (Michael Moore's film). It has no narration, no commentary, but some statistics are occasionally shown. It simply gives a glimpse of four people through several years of their lives, with the filmakers following them through that time, as they struggle through the myriad complexities of dealing with their illnesses. All of them had jobs before they got ill. Two of the four have now passed away, so it's a very hard film to watch, unlike "Sicko" which has a lot more entertainment value, like the famous sequence in which several people smuggle their sick friend to Cuba, and treatment is given readily, without cost, which was unobtainable in the U.S.

So my question is who are you?

We know you work in a field related to health care, but you don't give the details, for whatever reason, and you live in a wealthy community. An accountant? A lobbyist? You say you are a "finance geek" and that's about all we know.

And somehow you expect us to trust your statistics and decidedly parsed facts, while telling us to be distrustful of Wiki, and other sources of information. Yes I checked your links regarding the "proof" that the majority of Americans don't want health care, trying to put aside the "You're kidding....right?" comment, which said volumes about your attitude. My impression was that they were cherry-picked, right-wing biased, and that you are quite good at what you do. I was tempted to go to the same pages that you cited, and demonstrate that I could pick a different poll result, different ones that you used, and make the opposite case, that Americans DO indeed want and are ready to make different choices.

But alas, that's the problem with statistics, 103% of them are misleading...


Dow