Michael Moore’s new movie, just like his earlier movies, is both exasperating and exhilarating. It gets a lot of individual things wrong, sometimes very wrong: logic, an organized and complete presentation of facts, the construction of an argument as opposed to throwing out a naïve polemic full of sentimental anecdotes and non sequiturs. And yet…and yet. Moore manages to get the big things remarkably right: Sicko is often uproariously funny, and it will also likely leave you in tears. It poses a simple question and demands an answer: Why is the U.S. the only Western democracy without universal healthcare? Why are we willing to let our fellow citizens suffer?
The film seems designed to make free-market partisans apoplectic while inspiring everyone else to chant alongside the righteous. Personally I’d prefer a documentary along the lines of PBS’s excellent Frontline series, which could lead you through the history of healthcare and the arguments for and against a single-payer system, and leave you feeling like a well-informed citizen ready to make a decision. But good as it is, Frontline won’t galvanize people, get them buzzed, the way Michael Moore can. He’s about to make a very big splash with this movie. He’ll succeed in getting people talking about an important issue, one which already promises to be a big part of next year’s presidential race.
Behind the opening credits we get a few stories about the uninsured, told quickly and with bemused, ironic twists. “But this movie is not about these people,” says Moore, as he proceeds to turn his attention to people who do have health insurance, yet were turned down for treatment, often with tragic results. He then offers a whole series of these anecdotes designed to appall you and make you cry. My heart actually sank a bit during the first half hour. While some of these stories are effective, they are overlong and rather clumsily told, and Moore’s voice takes on a wheedling “Isn’t this saaaad?” tone that made me want to fight back.
This section is followed by a brief and very incomplete history of health care in the United States. Moore scores cheap points by painting Nixon as the architect of Evil Managed Care. (This may remind you of the pointless conspiracy mongering about the Bushes and Saudi Arabia in Fahrenheit 9/11.) He’s a bit more successful in describing the efforts of the doctors’ and pharmaceutical lobbies to demonize “socialized medicine,” from the 1950s right through HillaryCare in 1993.
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Article comments
1 - daryl d
I was going to do my own review of this film, but it would be redundant now since other people have. This film was very moving, to say the least. Michael Moore may be a propaganda artist, but he is sure good and convincing.
2 - handyguy
As long as people see Moore's movie as a conversation starter rather than the last word. There are lots of good people thinking and talking about healthcare in this country, and a few of them are even running for president. But the more I think about the silly Cuba section of Sicko, the more I think it almost ruins the movie...it's so contrived and fakey.
3 - Dynamo of Eternia
I haven't seen this yet. I am interested, but my opinions are rather so-so on his previous works.
I mean, I still don't understand why he got an Oscar for 'Bowling for Columbine'. The movie has some interesting parts and makes a few interesting points.
But it pretty much loses me when he more or less tries to blame gun violence in America on Charelton Heston and Dick Clark. That part of the movie alone should have stripped it of any Oscar consideration, IMO.
Hopefully this movie will be better.
4 - Alec
RE: Moore makes his point, smashingly well â€" these countries care, and we don’t. After this, when we get more of the sad anecdotes of people falling through cracks of the greed-based American system ...
I am very curious to see this film, but your comments above get to the heart of the problem for me with Moore's central thesis. "Caring" does not guarantee an effective or efficient health care system. Moore can downplay the problems of various nationalization schemes, but these things count when you are asking voters to approve massive tax increases so that we can all "care" for one another.
Also, equating "greed" with "profit" confuses moral issues with purely economic ones. A quick example: the outrageous fees that plastic surgeons charge to give vain celebrities and socialites an illusion of ageless beauty also allows these doctors to donate their skills to perform corrective surgery on poor US and foreign-born children. I strongly suspect that under a national health plan, cosmetic surgery would be seen as a frill, and it would be discouraged. As a result, surgeons would not have a strong incentive to maintain or increase their skills in this area.
The apparent paradox is that profits allow for long-term cost savings and for innovation. In most "progressive" discussions about health care that I have read or listened to, the idea of money being set aside for research and development, for experimental procedures, for innovation, is never discussed, and the emphasis is always on maximizing spending for current "needs" as defined by health care "activists" with no discernable knowledge or expertise.
5 - handyguy
Alec makes valid points, and my use of the shorthand term "greed-based" was possibly a mistake in that context.
However, there is profit-oriented and then there is morally deficient. Probably the most effective example in the film involves a doctor who served as a medical director for Humana. She and her colleagues received bonuses for denying care to patients, for turning down claims, including at least one instance of surgery that would have saved a life. Her tearful Congressional testimony is quite upsetting.
I believe as you do that capitalism offers the most effective set of incentives for progress and quality of care, but surely we don't want to insist on capitalism 100% of the time if it means sacrificing our humanity.
6 - alessandro Nicolo
I like Alec's last paragraph.
Having a Universal health care system may be compassionate but it becomes less compassionate as time moves forward. It falls to mismanagement, union greed and a red-taped bureaucracy. So, on the flip side it's no better. I've been through the Canadians system. While we are lucky to have it (though it's not free. The cost is actually a monstrosity and is need of massive repair) there are some aspects of it that remind you of the third world.
Canada needs to move towards a more European model that combines private and public. What Moore will not tell you is that he takes the best of ours and the worst of yours and VOILA.
You still need intellectual honesty and Moore is not the guy to kickstart a meaningful debate. I've been to Cuba. Sure, they have great trained doctors. Only they have no medicine or equipment.
Cubans are not stupid. They just aren't allowed to voice their opinions and Moore only serves to keep Cubans in servitiude with his pseudo-polemics. Using Cuba as a pawn to espouse the views of a millionaire is a typical socialist tool.
My point is what good is a debate if the root of its tenets are flawed? Moore is good at editing and finger pointing but what are his workable solutions? As far as I am concerned he is part of the problem.