Michael Moore is promoting his movie Sicko on the Oprah Winfrey Show today. I found the following quote from Moore on Oprah’s web site:

The law demands and requires that a corporation like a health insurance company maximize the profits for the shareholders, and if they don’t do that, they’re violating the law. … If they are required by law to make a profit, and the only way they can make a profit is by denying claims or cutting people off of their insurance or never taking them on in the first place, then that’s not good for us.

Huh?? Exactly what law is he talking about? Aren’t a lot of HMOs — the real care-deniers of the private sector — explicitly non-profit entities? And don’t government programs like Medicaid (hardly a for-profit concern) also deny access to covered services?

As I’ve said before:

I’m actually looking forward to agreeing with Sicko about how the U.S. health care sector is bloated and inefficient, and how health care providers routinely rip off taxpayers. But I can’t help this feeling that Moore is going to recommend that we turn that mess over to a sector of the economy that is even larger, even less efficient, and an even bigger rip off.