Moore finds health-care system is 'Sicko'

Since he made "Roger & Me" in 1989, Michael Moore has become the best known and most successful documentary filmmaker in the world.

Provocative and controversial, Moore comes under fire each time he releases one of his politically charged films. But he also draws thousands of people to theaters to see his movies. That's because the pictures are entertaining, using Moore's biting humor and street theater skills to make their points.

With "Sicko," Moore's new and most fully realized film, his target is the American health-care system.

His basic argument: That insurance companies try to deny as much care as possible to maximize profits, and those companies, along with their fellow travelers in the pharmaceutical industry and the American Medical Association, have purchased the U.S. political system to prevent any kind of health-care reform in which they do not benefit handsomely.
The alternative he proposes: universal national health care.
To make his points, Moore doesn't follow the expected path and detail the horrors of the 50 million Americans who have no health insurance. Instead, he has found heart-rending examples of people who have lost loved ones and all of their hard-earned wealth and possessions because of insurance company denials of treatment.

The latter example is provided by a near-retirement couple forced to move into their grown daughter's basement when insurance copays and prescription drug costs drive them to financial ruin.

The former, sadly, finds a woman sitting in a playground looking at a scrapbook of pictures of her daughter, who, when taken to a hospital with a high fever, was refused treatment there by her HMO. The little girl, the company said, had to be taken to an in-network hospital for treatment. The girl made it to the approved hospital just in time to go into cardiac arrest and pass away.

He marshals testimony from former insurance company employees about how doctors are rewarded for denying service and the efforts that go into trying to find pre-existing conditions, even after treatment has occurred, so the bill can be passed on to the individual and not the company.

And, in one of his trademark satiric sequences, he attaches a dollar figure of campaign contributions to scenes of a who's who of Republican politicians at the signing ceremony for the Medicare prescription drug bill. President Bush, who comes in for more than a few pokes, was the biggest recipient of cash from the health-care lobby. But the real payoff came for the congressman who pushed the bill through - a $2-million-a-year health-care industry job.

But "Sicko" isn't a partisan film. Democrats have been bought off by the insurance/health care industry as well - a point Moore makes by skewering Hillary Clinton, who, as First Lady, tried to push through a national health plan but has now changed her position enough to become No. 2 in the Senate in the receipt of health-care lobby funds.

To show the alternative to the U.S. system and put the lie to the propaganda that national health systems are brutal, socialized medicine with poor care and no individual choice, Moore travels to Canada, England and France where, not surprisingly, he doesn't find much complaint with systems that provide medical care for all citizens for free.

As always, Moore is on camera during these journeys, riding with a French doctor who spends the night making house calls to patient after patient, talking with a former member of the British Parliament who argues that national health care is democracy in action, power actually taken by the people, and sitting around a table, acting incredulous as Americans in Paris list standard government benefits in health and family care.

And he saves his big stunt for last - a moving and effective bit of agitprop involving three 9/11 rescue workers with untreated respiratory problems, Guantanamo Bay and the Cuban health care system. He's been blasted for that. But it makes the point of the film.

Without question, "Sicko" is anecdotal more than comprehensive. And Moore, like anyone making a political argument, uses the facts that fit his points and pays scant attention to those that might contradict him. That, too, raises hackles from the Moore bashers on the right.

But they seem to think that documentary film is like TV-style journalism. It is not now and never has been. Documentary film has always been pointed and political, making arguments and supporting causes. That Moore isn't "fair" isn't a valid argument against him - fairness has nothing to do with documentaries.

What Moore is, is talented, entertaining and thought-provoking.

When a guy who slices off two fingertips in a power saw in the U.S. is given the choice of paying $60,000 to have his middle finger reattached or one-fourth of that amount to put the ring finger back on, and a Canadian who cut off his whole hand has all his digits back in place for free, "Sicko" brings the national health-care debate into a different kind of focus than the standard 'this is socialism' polemics.

source:northwestcountyjournal.stltoday.com