“Sicko.”
It is a strong emotional experience, especially from the opening
sequence. There we see a man sewing a wound in his knee because he
cannot afford to pay a doctor or a hospital for the same work. That
scene tells us we are in for a rough ride. Moore’s premise is simple,
direct and far from new. Health care in the United States is an
abomination. As many as fifty million Americans are uninsured and that
many more have weak or poor insurance. It is our national shame. I
hope the film serves to change the minds of people who disagree or,
worse, who turn their minds from reality. I am not sure the film will
do what Michale Moore wants it to do.
I believe in Moore’s premise. Too many people use hospitals for
primary care by going to emergency rooms because they cannot afford a
doctor and they have no insurance. This further strains an already
strained system.
Michael Moore, as we know, is a polemicist. He discovered a long time
ago in the films he makes that it is acceptable to entertain -- in his
case read to “sometimes be funny” – as well as to inform. In “Sicko,”
Moore spends more time on the facts as he sees them and less time
being funny. He spends his time in anguish over America’s failures in
health care and in awe of health care in other countries. In the film,
he takes us on a trip that he hopes will open our eyes to the faults
of American health care. The film has a gee-whiz feel to it as Michael
Moore tours America and then the world in search of answers about
universal health care. The underlying message is that if others can do
it, and, in most cases, in countries not nearly as rich as the United
States, why can’t we.
None of the people Moore confronts in “Sicko” serves the role of
hapless foil others did in “Roger and Me,” “Fahrenheit 911,” and
“Bowling for Columbine.” This film is more serious in a way his
previous films were not. Perhaps people are learning to stay away from
Moore, his persistence and style. Because the people in the film are
victims of America’s deeply flawed health system, they are willing
participants in Moore’s diatribe about how America treats those who
cannot afford proper health care.
Moore is sometimes loose with his facts. It is easier to make a strong
point when one bends facts. It is not that his facts are wrong. They
are often incomplete. We can take issue with what he sees as nearly
perfect medical care in Canada, Great Britain, France and Cuba.
Medical care in these countries is not perfect. In some instances, it
is better than it is here. But accuracy is not always a part of a
polemicist’s makeup. They make their opinions known as strongly as
possible. The cause is all that matters. They want to convert you to
what they think, why they think and, finally, how they think.
In France, Moore never really tells us about the high personal taxes
people pay that enables them to have the special health care he says
they have. I found it disconcerting to see and hear what looked like
affluent Americans sitting with Moore in a restaurant in France
discussing why the health care is very good for them in that country
and bad for them in the United States. I would have preferred seeing
him talk to the poor in France to hear what kind of health care they
get. That way the audience could appreciate the differences or the
similarities between the poor in the two countries.
Unlike some of his other films, Moore is somewhat understated in his
approach in this movie. He calls his film “non-partisan” because he
believes that universal health care should be everyone’s concern.
There is no argument there. Moore contends we should not limit our
ideas about health to one’s party affiliation. Disease, injury, and
death strike indiscriminately. Microbes do not ask what party you
belong to before they attack. He says he decided not to condemn the
right or the left, but his movie shows how ordinary citizens suffer
because, as he clearly shows, those in power do not cares to help
unless they get a payday. His attack is against the insurance
companies and their brothers in arms, the controlling health care
providers known to all as the dreaded HMOs, who have a stake in profit
ahead of compassion.
Mostly he is not funny, and that is admirable. He is serious with this
important subject and he uses ridicule as he does in his other films.
Toward the end of the film, Michael Moore shows American lawmakers
standing in the well of the Senate extolling the virtues of the health
care America’s prisoners in the war on terror are getting at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Moore thinks that if the prisoners can get such
good health care, then our citizens should get the same treatment.
With three boatloads of sick Americans who are, under his auspices,
seeking better health care, or I should say, some or any health care
that makes sense, he travels across the Atlantic and heads to Cuba.
Here he reverts to the Michael Moore we know– brash, crude, defiant,
challenging, and very smart.
Moore and his ill confederates motor across the water to the edge of
the prison complex. Moore hails the guards, tells them what he wants,
shows a modicum of frustration when he gets no response, and then
decides to head for Cuba, Havana to be precise, because they are,
well, in the neighborhood. What a trip! Moore and his compatriots make
it to repressive Cuba where it is usually difficult to enter. Next we
see Moore and his followers, good people all, in Havana, patrolling
the halls of a hospital, getting treated by accommodating medical
staff, visiting a pharmacy and getting drugs for pennies. We hear no
mention of the known difficulties Cuban medicine has in getting
supplies, in having the latest equipment, in the shortage of doctors
and nurses, etc. Again, as with the case of France, it would have been
more instructive to see how the average Cuban is treated compared to
the remarkable health care Moore’s contingent of ill people were able
to get.
My qualifications aside, see this film. If it does not bring you to
break down the barriers created by Washington, the insurance
companies, and the medical profession, perhaps it will awaken in you
the desire to take some other action, however small. The more than
fifty million people in America without health insurance and the
countless millions more who have policies that are not worth the paper
they are written on or the premiums paid to keep them active deserve
better. It is time to change this blot on our society.
........................................................................................................................
At NBC News for 35 years, Ron Steinman was bureau chief
in Saigon, Hong Kong and London, was a senior producer on Today and wrote
and produced for Sunday Today. At ABC News Productions, he produced
and wrote documentaries for A&E, TLC, Discovery, Lifetime and the
History Channel. He has a Peabody, a National Headliner award, a
National Press Club award, a International Documentary Festival Gold
Camera Award, two American Women in Radio & Television awards and
has been nominated for five Emmy's. He is a partner in
Douglas/Steinman Productions, whose latest documentary, "Luboml: My
Heart Remembers," aired on PBS' WLIW/21 and the History Channel in
Israel, April 29, 2003. He is the author of, "The Soldiers 'Story",
"Women in Vietnam," and most recently, "Inside Television's First
War: A Saigon Journal," University of Missouri Press, 2002.
“Sicko.”
It is a strong emotional experience, especially from the opening
sequence. There we see a man sewing a wound in his knee because he
cannot afford to pay a doctor or a hospital for the same work. That
scene tells us we are in for a rough ride. Moore’s premise is simple,
direct and far from new. Health care in the United States is an
abomination. As many as fifty million Americans are uninsured and that
many more have weak or poor insurance. It is our national shame. I
hope the film serves to change the minds of people who disagree or,
worse, who turn their minds from reality. I am not sure the film will
do what Michale Moore wants it to do. 