--- title: Ze Frank Tries to Understand Health Care Reform | TIME description: In this TIME video essay, Ze Frank tries to understand and explain the health care debate. Turns out it's complicated. canonical: https://time.com/video/jDI3sR3S/ og:title: Ze Frank Tries to Understand Health Care Reform og:description: In this TIME video essay, Ze Frank tries to understand and explain the health care debate. Turns out it's complicated. og:url: https://time.com/video/jDI3sR3S/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/jDI3sR3S/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Ze Frank Tries to Understand Health Care Reform twitter:description: In this TIME video essay, Ze Frank tries to understand and explain the health care debate. Turns out it's complicated. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/jDI3sR3S/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Ze Frank Tries to Understand Health Care Reform > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Ze Frank Tries to Understand Health Care Reform [Watch (HLS stream): Ze Frank Tries to Understand Health Care Reform](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/jDI3sR3S.m3u8) (3:12)  _Published 2009-09-01. In this TIME video essay, Ze Frank tries to understand and explain the health care debate. Turns out it's complicated._ --- Jul 27, 2023 1:13 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Ze Frank on Diplomacy \(and Winking\)](/video/ruGDd8Od/) ### Ze Frank on Diplomacy (and Winking) [Ze Frank: That Makes Me Think Of...](/video/CubScmCS/) ### Ze Frank: That Makes Me Think Of... [Ze Frank: That Makes Me Think of...](/video/CW0t33r9/) ### Ze Frank: That Makes Me Think of... --- ## Transcript So I failed. I wanted to do a segment on the Health Care Debate so a few days ago, I Googled Health Care Debate and the first thing I learned is that it's complicated. Pretty soon I was Googling things like, a simple guide to the Health Care Debate or the truth about the Health Care Debate. The second thing I learned is that this is not a Health Care Debate. This is a full- blown health care argument. People are angry, and when people argue when they are angry, they start saying things that don't make sense-- you always do never anything to make me feel like I'm worth everything ever. And to be honest with you, I started getting angry because it felt like every time I tried to find a piece of information on this health care argument, someone was trying to lie to me. Did you know that the pharmaceutical companies are lobbying congress to have the average body temperature dropped to 97 degrees? That way everyone will always have a fever, and they'll sell more aspirin. No, I didn't know that, but did you know that in the current bill in order to save money they're gonna require senior citizens to manually operate their own hospital equipment. Do you think your grandma can defibrillate herself? And the machines are gonna be coin- operated and they're only gonna accept those hard- to- find dollar coins, which by the way, we're gonna have pictures of illegal immigrants on them. And if you ran out of coins, you die. That's awful. Did you know that in Canada in order to get health care you have to find treatment coupons that are randomly placed in the cereal boxes? Darn it. I got Viagra again, what'd you get? A vasectomy. You wanna trade? I don't wanna be a Canadian. And the other frustrating thing is that you get this wide variety of alternatives which focus on one aspect of the problem, but pretend to be a solution for everything. You know how you solve it? You have the cigarette companies, bring back the Marlboro Miles program or smokers clip off the box stamps of cigarettes packs. And instead of trading it for camping gear and things like that, they can trade it in for chemotherapy or heart transplants. Yeah, that might work, but how about requiring every single person in the United States to go to medical school. That way, everyone would be a doctor and they could treat themselves. You see this pie graph? See what the problem is? It's pie. Americans eat too much pie. We're fat. We need broccoli charts and wheat grass. And then you come across the argument that we should just step back and allow health care to run like a business. Now, free market competition, I'm a big fan. But when I hear that, I can't help but think of those mafia movies where a guy says sorry, it's nothing personal it's just business, and then he breaks somebody's arm. It's business- like, but it's not an ordinary business. People on one side of the transaction are scared, confused, and emotionally and physically vulnerable. It's not the kind of scenario that I want guided by the same market forces as a used car lock for example. If you have a bad day and your car breaks down, someone can say at least you had your health. But if you get sick, it's not much comfort to hear at least you had your car. That's because health is fundamental. It's the platform on which societies are built. It's important and it's personal. What I'd hope for from our politicians is the same thing that I'd hope for in a good doctor, someone who has my best interest at heart instead of someone who's trying to scare me. But like I said I failed. I wanted this segment to be that information, but it turned out to be more like a commiseration. It's a complicated issue and it's hard to know who to trust. And luckily they are websites like the nonpartisan FactCheck. org and they can help you navigate the crazy. Along the way, we'll have to answer some pretty difficult questions like how much were we're willing to pay and how much we're all in this together. 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