'Sicko' Shows Michael Moore's Maturity as a Filmmaker

[The Dog]

you're second statement is a bit drastic IMO, but "attrocious" is a relative term.  the U.S. healthcare system needs improvement. but so does every other healthcare system in the world. there are many positive aspects of the system in america. and i believe this system is fixable, without a major makeover to mirror the systems in France or Canada (or Cuba  ).   

Take the profit out.

Problem solved.

Canada's health care system puts ours to shame.

agreed - it might be all semantics, but 40 million Americans without health care is pretty "atrocious" to me.   

LB - maybe you can explain the "take the profits out" comment.

also, where did you get the 40 million number? i've heard people say 45 million. BUT, i've also heard that that number is grossly overstated and misleading due to the way the categorize the uninsured.

not to mention many people with access and the ability to pay for insurance, choose not to.

i've read 40mm or something similar to that lately.  don't remember the exact source.

[Gordon Gekko]

You would think the country that is touted as the most powerful economic engine in the history of the world would be able to provide a few guarantees for those who made it so.

[freedom78]

unfortunately, i've been to the ER a few times in recent years. always overcrowded, but they do an ok job of prioritizing, and everyone gets brought in within a few hours. in canada, they wait for MONTHS for routine surgery.

I don't think anyone would suggest doing everything we can to copy a system, problems and all.  If anything, because there are other models to look at, we can better gauge any American medical system that is developed. 

i was uninsured for 2 years during my final college years. my cousin works for boeing as a contractor. he makes $55/hour and doesn't purchase health insurance. but he just went in and paid $1,000 for a full body MRI.

CT scans are much more expensive, unfortunately.  And, of course, surgery costs are off the charts.  I think most people could pay a $1000 medical bill, given a couple of months.  It's the other things, such as chronic illnesses and sudden, necessary surgeries that really kill people (economically, that is).

Take the profit out.

Problem solved.

I pretty much agree with that.  I've personally never had any problem with my insurance...but the idea that the company responsible for paying my medical bills can also help their bottom line by refusing to pay and forcing me to take a legal action that would, conceivably, cost more than the medical bills...well, it's a scary prospect, and there's little doubt that insurance companies do this on a daily basis. 

Of course, another implication of my above statement is that money also needs to be taken out of the legal system...completely!  It's hardly justice if some can afford a better quality of justice than others. 

By the way, I've seen a lot of "love it or leave it" rhetoric in other threads, and I want to make it clear that there are more than those who do or do not love America.  Some may love it as it is, and that's fine.  Others love it enough to want to do what they can to try to fix what they see as its flaws.  Desire for change isn't equivalent with a dislike or hatred of America, and I hope this thread doesn't turn into such a shouting match.

[sandman]

i still don't know what anyone means by "take the profits out." whether its the government using tax dollars to pay, or individuals paying, there's still profits being made. do you guys mean take the "INSURERS" out?

CT scans are not necessarily more expensive. that is actually what my cousin had done. he paid about $1,100, and it was only that high because he had it read by an actual neurologist to analyze the brain portion. 

[freedom78]

i still don't know what anyone means by "take the profits out." whether its the government using tax dollars to pay, or individuals paying, there's still profits being made. do you guys mean take the "INSURERS" out?

CT scans are not necessarily more expensive. that is actually what my cousin had done. he paid about $1,100, and it was only that high because he had it read by an actual neurologist to analyze the brain portion. 

I think (and I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth) that we all mean that insurance should be a not-for-profit business, because there's an inherent conflict of interest between a patient's monetary needs and the company's bottom line. 

I have CT scans every year...and NOT a full body scan.  I pay about $1000.  That's after insurance talks the price down to $5000 and pays 80%.  Perhaps it's a different procedure (from mine) that your cousin had...or perhaps he had it done in Guadalajara?  But if someone didn't have insurance, they'd be looking at a bill well in excess of $5000.

[stolat]

A head CT in Australia costs about $400. I only had to pay $20 and the insurance company covered the rest!

[freedom78]

A head CT in Australia costs about $400. I only had to pay $20 and the insurance company covered the rest!

Lucky you!  Of course, Sandman's talking about a full body scan.  I've only had three smaller scans (done at the same time), but they're costly.

On another note, I...um..."came across" a copy of Sicko on my local internets (it's a series of tubes!) and will be viewing it soon.

[stolat]

Australia does have a very good health system compared to elsewhere in the world.

[D]

I think a big problem is the abuse of insurance in this country.


If u don't have insurance Doctors will treat u and that is that.

If u have insurance or a medical card they wi ll run every single kind of test they can think of whether u need it or not just to milk the insurance or medical card and that is why premiums are so high as well in my opinion.



When I was a kid my mom had medical and dental on us.  I went to the dentist and they found 4 Cavities.

I never got them filled.

I went back a year later without dental insurance and I somehow had 1 cavity......................

Go figure right?

[sandman]

By Tom Charity
Special to CNN

(CNN) -- America's most inspired polemicist -- and most polarizing filmmaker -- Michael Moore returns to the fray with his first movie since "Fahrenheit 9/11" broke box-office records and challenged George W. Bush's White House.

With "Sicko," this time Moore has set his sights on a more amorphous, and possibly an even more powerful target: HMOs and the American health care industry.

A little over a year ago, Moore invited citizens to send in their health-care horror stories. Within the week his Web site was inundated with 25,000 emails. If this is anecdotal evidence, it's on a scale worth talking about.

"Sicko" begins with three cases illustrating the plight of the 46 million Americans without health insurance, but quickly moves on to address wider concerns about the kind of care reserved for the lucky 250 million who do have coverage.

In a nutshell, Moore's argument comes down to this: the insurance companies are making a killing at their customers' expense. And in this industry, that term is all too literal.

Moore adopts a low profile in the film's relatively somber first half, softening his familiar snarky stridency for a hushed sincerity more appropriate to the hospital waiting room. Many of the people here are in desperately dire straits: sick, bereaved, or just plain broke. Other interviewees are whistle-blowers, guilty and angry about their roles in the Machine.

As well they might be. As countless stories have documented, Americans face countless problems with their health care. They may be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions -- or retrospectively denied coverage for pre-existing conditions they never knew about.

HMOs employ teams of investigators to disallow claimants on technical grounds and some offer medical directors financial incentives to deny drugs and treatments that -- by definition -- cut into corporate profits. (This style is a legacy of the Nixon administration, according to a striking scene from "Sicko" that plays a snippet from the White House tapes.)

When Moore does eventually slouch on screen, it's to play the innocent abroad, a wide-eyed chump bowled over by the wonders of socialized medicine as it's practiced in Canada, the UK and France. This will be an eye-opener for many -- including the Canadians, the Brits and the French, probably.

Having "enjoyed" first-hand experience of two of these three health systems -- the British and the Canadian -- I can attest that they're not quite as idyllic as Mr. Moore paints them. Except in comparison with the U.S. system, of course, and that's the point. Moore is a master of overstatement, but his comic shtick hits the target more often than not. It only hurts when we laugh.

If Moore missteps, it's in the one sequence he and the Weinstein Company have made sure everyone has already heard about (with a little help from the U.S. government): the boat lift to Cuba for three ailing 9/11 heroes. It's Stunt Man Mike at his crudest, and not as effective as he intended.

To be sure, it's bitterly ironic that Guantanamo detainees have access to better medical care than the soldiers who guard them, but Moore is easily diverted into a silly commercial for Cuban socialist medicine that plays exactly like the kind of Soviet propaganda films he sends up earlier in the movie.

It's tough to see firefighters who have been let down by their own country receiving proper care in Havana, but what makes it harder is the suspicion that Michael Moore is treating them like hostages in his own propaganda war. You have to wonder how this squares with the results of the World Health Organization report cited in "Sicko," which placed the U.S. at No. 37, one spot above Slovenia -- and, if you look fast enough, two places above Cuba.

But all is fair in love and Moore, and the system is sick, no question. With four times as many health lobbyists as there are congressmen, and with multimillion-dollar campaign donations at stake, the prospect of universal care seems a distant hope. (In that regard, the brief sequence implying that Hilary Clinton has been bought off may be the most significant.)

It's not impossible that this bitterly funny, bitterly sad call to alms could move reform back up the political agenda. For that reason alone, you owe it to yourself to see this movie.

"Sicko" is rated PG-13 and runs 113 minutes.

[freedom78]

One thing right up Moore's alley, but which I haven't heard about being in this movie, are television advertisements for prescription medications.  I don't remember being so inundated with them, say, ten years ago, as we are now.  And it's all about fear and appealing to everyone's desire to control their own lives, as if a doctor isn't a much better judge of whether or not your need a medication. 

But I get bombarded, day and night, with ads telling me I may be sick because I farted, and that's a symptom of a very serious medical condition, and I NEED PILLS!  Of course, I'm not talking about the various "male" medications, as I'm guessing that those issues are fairly easy to diagnose.

[fuckin crazy]

A head CT in Australia costs about $400. I only had to pay $20 and the insurance company covered the rest!

Lucky you indeed. I put off a $1000 proceedure because I didn't have it(or insurance); It cost me $30,000.

[SLCPUNK]

One thing right up Moore's alley, but which I haven't heard about being in this movie, are television advertisements for prescription medications.  I don't remember being so inundated with them, say, ten years ago, as we are now.  And it's all about fear and appealing to everyone's desire to control their own lives, as if a doctor isn't a much better judge of whether or not your need a medication. 

But I get bombarded, day and night, with ads telling me I may be sick because I farted, and that's a symptom of a very serious medical condition, and I NEED PILLS!  Of course, I'm not talking about the various "male" medications, as I'm guessing that those issues are fairly easy to diagnose.

My brother realized this a year or so back during a holiday get together. He had not owned a tv for about 8 years, and was back at our parents on vacation. He could not get over the drug ads, thought it was the weirdest thing he'd seen for sometime.

[sandman]

One thing right up Moore's alley, but which I haven't heard about being in this movie, are television advertisements for prescription medications.? I don't remember being so inundated with them, say, ten years ago, as we are now.? And it's all about fear and appealing to everyone's desire to control their own lives, as if a doctor isn't a much better judge of whether or not your need a medication.?

But I get bombarded, day and night, with ads telling me I may be sick because I farted, and that's a symptom of a very serious medical condition, and I NEED PILLS!? Of course, I'm not talking about the various "male" medications, as I'm guessing that those issues are fairly easy to diagnose.

i agree. except your point about doctor's. i don't trust them - they are in on it as well. the drug companies pay off the doctors (in a variety of ways) to prescribe their drugs.

once the doctors are in their back pocket, all the drug companies have to do next is get the public to go to the doctor's office. and most people trust their doctors, so it's a done deal.

people have mentioned the conflict of interest on behalf of insurance companies, but the conflict here is even more dangerous. the drug companies need us to be sick. prevention and cures put them out of business. and they have alot of power and influence in washington and around the globe.

[SLCPUNK]

Not all doctors are in on the scam . I have a family friend that has contemplated retiring early because he despises the direction the medical field has turned. My Mom's doctor rarely allows pharm reps into his office-hates em. Some, not all doctors.

[SLCPUNK]

NYTimes review.

It has become a journalistic clich? and therefore an inevitable part of the prerelease discussion of ?Sicko? to refer to Michael Moore as a controversial, polarizing figure. While that description is not necessarily wrong, it strikes me as self-fulfilling (since the controversy usually originates in media reports on how controversial Mr. Moore is) and trivial. Any filmmaker, politically outspoken or not, whose work is worth discussing will be argued about. But in Mr. Moore?s case the arguments are more often about him than about the subjects of his movies.

Some of this is undoubtedly his fault, or at least a byproduct of his style. His regular-guy, happy-warrior personality plays a large part in the movies and in their publicity campaigns, and he has no use for neutrality, balance or objectivity. More than that, his polemical, left-populist manner seems calculated to drive guardians of conventional wisdom bananas. That is because conventional wisdom seems to hold, against much available evidence, that liberalism is an elite ideology, and that the authentic vox populi always comes from the right. Mr. Moore, therefore, must be an oxymoron or a hypocrite of some kind.

So the table has been set for a big brouhaha over ?Sicko,? which contends that the American system of private medical insurance is a disaster, and that a state-run system, such as exists nearly everywhere else in the industrialized world, would be better. This argument is illustrated with anecdotes and statistics ? terrible stories about Americans denied medical care or forced into bankruptcy to pay for it; grim actuarial data about life expectancy and infant mortality; damning tallies of dollars donated to political campaigns ? but it is grounded in a basic philosophical assumption about the proper relationship between a government and its citizens.

Mr. Moore has hardly been shy about sharing his political beliefs, but he has never before made a film that stated his bedrock ideological principles so clearly and accessibly. His earlier films have been morality tales, populated by victims and villains, with himself as the dogged go-between, nodding in sympathy with the downtrodden and then marching off to beard the bad guys in their dens of power and privilege. This method can pay off in prankish comedy or emotional intensity ? like any showman, Mr. Moore wants you to laugh and cry ? but it can also feel manipulative and simplistic.

In ?Sicko,? however, he refrains from hunting down the C.E.O.?s of insurance companies, or from hinting at dark conspiracies against the sick. Concentrating on Americans who have insurance (after a witty, troubling acknowledgment of the millions who don?t), Mr. Moore talks to people who have been ensnared, sometimes fatally, in a for-profit bureaucracy and also to people who have made their livings within the system. The testimony is poignant and also infuriating, and none of it is likely to be surprising to anyone, Republican or Democrat, who has tried to see an out-of-plan specialist or dispute a payment.

If you listen to what the leaders of both political parties are saying, it seems unlikely that the diagnosis offered by ?Sicko? will be contested. I haven?t heard many speeches lately boasting about how well our health care system works. In this sense ?Sicko? is the least controversial and most broadly appealing of Mr. Moore?s movies. (It is also, perhaps improbably, the funniest and the most tightly edited.) The argument it inspires will mainly be about the nature of the cure, and it is here that Mr. Moore?s contribution will be most provocative and also, therefore, most useful.

?Sicko? is not a fine-grained analysis of policy alternatives. (You can find some of those in a recently published book called ?Sick,? by Jonathan Cohn, and also in the wonkier precincts of the political blogosphere.) This film presents, instead, a simple compare-and-contrast exercise. Here is our way, and here is another way, variously applied in Canada, France, Britain and yes, Cuba. The salient difference is that, in those countries, where much of the second half of ?Sicko? takes place, the state provides free medical care.

With evident glee (and a bit of theatrical faux-na?vet?) Mr. Moore sets out to challenge some widely held American notions about socialized medicine. He finds that British doctors are happy and well paid, that Canadians don?t have to wait very long in emergency rooms, and that the French are not taxed into penury. ?What?s your biggest expense after the house and the car?? he asks an upper-middle-class French couple. ?Ze feesh,? replies the wife. ?Also vegetables.?

Yes, the utopian picture of France in ?Sicko? may be overstated, but show me the filmmaker ? especially a two-time Cannes prizewinner ? who isn?t a Francophile of one kind or another. Mr. Moore?s funny valentine to a country where the government will send someone to a new mother?s house to do laundry and make carrot soup turns out to be as central to his purpose as his chat with Tony Benn, an old lion of Old Labor in Britain. Mr. Benn reads from a pamphlet announcing the creation of the British National Health Service in 1948, and explains it not as an instance of state paternalism but as a triumph of democracy.

More precisely, of social democracy, a phrase that has long seemed foreign to the American political lexicon. Why this has been so is the subject of much scholarship and speculation, but Mr. Moore is less interested in tracing the history of American exceptionalism than in opposing it. He wants us to be more like everybody else. When he plaintively asks, ?Who are we?,? he is not really wondering why our traditions of neighborliness and generosity have not found political expression in an expansive system of social welfare. He is insisting that such a system should exist, and also, rather ingeniously, daring his critics to explain why it shouldn?t.

[fuckin crazy]

One thing right up Moore's alley, but which I haven't heard about being in this movie, are television advertisements for prescription medications. I don't remember being so inundated with them, say, ten years ago, as we are now. And it's all about fear and appealing to everyone's desire to control their own lives, as if a doctor isn't a much better judge of whether or not your need a medication.

But I get bombarded, day and night, with ads telling me I may be sick because I farted, and that's a symptom of a very serious medical condition, and I NEED PILLS! Of course, I'm not talking about the various "male" medications, as I'm guessing that those issues are fairly easy to diagnose.

My brother realized this a year or so back during a holiday get together. He had not owned a tv for about 8 years, and was back at our parents on vacation. He could not get over the drug ads, thought it was the weirdest thing he'd seen for sometime.

I think I did my dissertation in collaboration with him.

[C0ma]

http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1563758/story.jhtml

The problem with American health care, Moore argues, is that people are charged money to avail themselves of it. In other countries, like Canada, France and Britain, health systems are far superior ? and they're free. He takes us to these countries to see a few clean, efficient hospitals, where treatment is quick and caring; and to meet a few doctors, who are delighted with their government-regulated salaries; and to listen to patients express their beaming happiness with a socialized health system. It sounds great. As one patient in a British hospital run by the country's National Health Service says, "No one pays. It's all on the NHS. It's not America."

That last statement is even truer than you'd know from watching "Sicko." In the case of Canada ? which Moore, like many other political activists, holds up as a utopian ideal of benevolent health-care regulation ? a very different picture is conveyed by a short 2005 documentary called "Dead Meat," by Stuart Browning and Blaine Greenberg. These two filmmakers talked to a number of Canadians of a kind that Moore's movie would have you believe don't exist:

A 52-year-old woman in Calgary recalls being in severe need of joint-replacement surgery after the cartilage in her knee wore out. She was put on a wait list and wound up waiting 16 months for the surgery. Her pain was so excruciating, she says, that she was prescribed large doses of Oxycontin, and soon became addicted. After finally getting her operation, she was put on another wait list ? this time for drug rehab.

A man tells about his mother waiting two years for life-saving cancer surgery ? and then twice having her surgical appointments canceled. She was still waiting when she died.

A man in critical need of neck surgery plays a voicemail message from a doctor he'd contacted: "As of today," she says, "it's a two-year wait-list to see me for an initial consultation." Later, when the man and his wife both needed hip-replacement surgery and grew exasperated after spending two years on a waiting list, they finally mortgaged their home and flew to Belgium to have the operations done there, with no more waiting.

Rick Baker, the owner of a Toronto company called Timely Medical Alternatives, specializes in transporting Canadians who don't want to wait for medical care to Buffalo, New York, two hours away, where they won't have to. Baker's business is apparently thriving.

And Dr. Brian Day, now the president of the Canadian Medical Association, muses about the bizarre distortions created by a law that prohibits Canadians from paying for even urgently-needed medical treatments, or from obtaining private health insurance. "It's legal to buy health insurance for your pets," Day says, "but illegal to buy health insurance for yourself." (Even more pointedly, Day was quoted in the Wall Street Journal this week as saying, "This is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years.")

Actually, this aspect of the Canadian health-care system is changing. In 2005, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled in favor of a man who had filed suit in Quebec over being kept on an interminable waiting list for treatment. In striking down the government health care monopoly in that province, Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin said, "Access to a waiting list is not access to health care." Now a similar suit has been filed in Ontario.

What's the problem with government health systems? Moore's movie doesn't ask that question, although it does unintentionally provide an answer. When governments attempt to regulate the balance between a limited supply of health care and an unlimited demand for it they're inevitably forced to ration treatment. This is certainly the situation in Britain. Writing in the Chicago Tribune this week, Helen Evans, a 20-year veteran of the country's National Health Service and now the director of a London-based group called Nurses for Reform, said that nearly 1 million Britons are currently on waiting lists for medical care ? and another 200,000 are waiting to get on waiting lists. Evans also says the NHS cancels about 100,000 operations each year because of shortages of various sorts. Last March, the BBC reported on the results of a Healthcare Commission poll of 128,000 NHS workers: two thirds of them said they "would not be happy" to be patients in their own hospitals. James Christopher, the film critic of the Times of London, thinks he knows why. After marveling at Moore's rosy view of the British health care system in "Sicko," Christopher wrote, "What he hasn't done is lie in a corridor all night at the Royal Free [Hospital] watching his severed toe disintegrate in a plastic cup of melted ice. I have." Last month, the Associated Press reported that Gordon Brown ? just installed this week as Britain's new prime minister ? had promised to inaugurate "sweeping domestic reforms" to, among other things, "improve health care."

[fuckin crazy]

I saw MTV, and I did not even read it. Kind of like the same thing with Yahoo.

Maybe if I get bored with 'Ossey and Harriett' I'll give it a go.

[freedom78]

RE: Dead Meat

I haven't seen this film...Hell, I haven't even heard of it.  But I don't think that the idea is to replicate, problems and all, the system of other countries.  Maybe that's Moore's idea (again, haven't yet seen it)...but it certainly isn't mine!  Every system will have problems.  I'm sure the 40+ million uninsured wouldn't mind being on a waiting list, though. 

Also, if I recall (and this IS based on recollection, so someone can please correct me if I'm incorrect) Britain allows for every procedure under its system...including unnecessary cosmetic procedures.  If this is the case, I think it's a problem that could cause some of the logjam, and shouldn't be included in any national health service.

I DO agree that completely free healthcare is going to create a problem of people wanting to get every little thing checked out...thus creating another logjam. 

But it's far too easy to say something isn't perfect, and to ignore that that imperfect system may still be an improvement. 

Sounds to me like there are just too few doctors in some places.