The Medical Freedom Channel

Well, I saw it … and all things considered, it wasn’t all that bad. In fact, I can honestly call this Michael Moore’s best-film-that-deserves-to-be-labeled-as-“documentary” …

SiCKO takes on the so-called “healthcare” industry and leaves no prisoners. That part is hardly surprising, since he is known for not pulling punches; what is unusual is, this time Moore chooses to present the story in something resembling a fact-based manner, letting his prankster self (and his physical self for the most part; he’s not at center stage much of the time) take a backseat to a basically honest appraisal of American health insurance game.

Gone are the blatantly distorted time-shifted portrayals (e.g., Charlton Heston, speaking well before the Columbine tragedy, yet presented as though he were wryly pontificating to an NRA assembly the week after the shootings). Instead, we see a fairly straightforward and linear presentation of some real horror-stories of both patients and health insurance workers, one after the other. This is then followed by segments on Canadian, British, French and finally Cuban options, analyzing how those nations care for their sick and lame.

Does he cherry-pick the people he selects to back up his thesis? Of course he does, but this is the nature of doing an honest documentary on any subject, when you have a perspective to present. (The great documentarian Frederick Wiseman did as much in his award-winning films of the 60s, 70s and 80s; at the same time he mainly let the facts make his point. Michael seems to be trying far harder to emulate Wiseman’s path here.)

Moore does take a few liberties with some of the stated statistics: Saying “nearly 50 million Americans have no health insurance” is more dramatic than the 44 million that actually has been claimed (and these figures from a CDC study have been challenged as being overinflated). He also uses a WHO study claiming the U.S. as the 37th worst country for providing healthcare, but neglects to mention the criteria for the study (mostly based on how much the government spends per capita), or that Cuba ranks 38th.

However, since Moore’s main target in this endeavor is not those uninsured, but the five times as many Americans who have health insurance, and thus think they are adequately “covered,” these may be overlooked in a more general critique of the film. The focus on this target excuses many small inconsistencies elsewhere.

He is quite correct, of course, that the present mess is not working, and that it often denies care (and in some cases life) to those who most need the help, often (perhaps in some cases especially?) those who have been most faithful in paying into the insurance system, via employers or from their own pockets – right up to the day when they actually do become ill … and are denied coverage, on some pretense or another!

The several examples of people being denied such “coverage” (for procedures which thanks the third-party system invoke grossly inflated prices, well above what a “market” would do) are enough to make any viewer’s stomach churn. In one case, the only “pre-existing condition” used to deny coverage for an unrelated major ailment … is the fact that the woman in question had not listed on her application form, as a “prior medical condition” … a short-term yeast infection from several years earlier (for which she had sought care and had a complete cleansing and recovery).

Moore also interviews a man whose job for many years was to ferret out such trivia about patients seeking coverage for major maladies or treatment, in order to deny them coverage for which they had dutifully paid all those years in the past. He says he’s very glad to be out of that racket, but may never feel totally cleansed of (or guiltless about) the experience.

Moore correctly shows just how screwed up the present U.S. system is, citing case after case (sometimes from the perspective of teary-eyed insurance employees) where even the most conscientious person has been butt-raped by one of the other of the big insurance firms, in conjunction with the “managed care” scam that has largely created this whole kerfuffle. (He also presents a chilling history lesson, using Nixon’s own White House tapes to show how he and chief aide John Ehrlichman discussed the real function of the Kaiser Permanente scam – cutting health spending for that firm and its cronies – before going out and claiming the new laws as “a boon for America’s healthcare.”)

He pinpoints part of the reason for all of this, noting that [paraphrasing here] “a society of fearful, dependent and defeated people” is much easier to control than one featuring dynamic, optimistic and fearless individuals. If you’re deathly afraid to change jobs, for fear you might get sick between employers; if you’re only willing to risk moving within the conventional corporate world, just to keep your healthcare “benefits” flowing … you will do or say (or vote for) anything the massah tells you to!

However, Moore’s ultimate conclusion – that America needs a single-payer universal healthcare program, like our northern, European and southern neighbors have – is only asserted, not presented with evidence behind it. He surveys the scenes in these other countries (even makes a game out of trying to figure out where the cashier’s window is for patients making payments), and concludes that their model must be doing something very right. He dismisses the contentions about long waiting-times and limited facilities, and points to examples (perhaps rare exceptions to the rule, we really don’t know) of people for whom even the most critical and costly procedures have been performed, at little (often no) cost to the patients.

He concludes about 2/.3 of the way into the film that America should have embraced the HillaryCare model as it was presented in the early 1990s, and in so doing gives a boost to some of the similar plans being forwarded by Democratic contenders for the Pennsylvania Avenue throne, including Hillary herself. (To his credit, he does note how deep in the pockets of Big Pharma and Big Insurance even HRC is, and leaves that conclusion up to the viewer, other than noting how the “Medicare Reform Act” came to be.)

Moore seemingly ignores the fact that the very same people he is expecting to create this new system, – one that responds to the needs of America’s sick, halt, lame, elderly and others in need, at no or minimal cost – are the same ones in Congress he has just targeted as most beholden to the Pharma/Insurance/AMA cartels that system would squeeze. He can find five-cent inhalers in Cuba that cost $120 each here, but he thinks somehow a system built on corporate excess, political kickbacks and denial of services to save a buck can magically be transformed into a patient-responsive, cost-effective, taxpayer-funded government-run program … without blood running in the streets for a very, very long time.

One thing he does take on that’s worth noting is how the nature of a people affects its policies: As he says in analyzing why France’s system (unlimited free healthcare, minimum five weeks’ annual vacation for even part-time workers, unlimited sick-days for everyone, etc.) works the way it does, “their government is afraid of its people.” Whereas in America, he notes, it is the opposite, since we have become a nation in fear of our government.

A sad commentary on a place that was born of a special kind of revolution – one designed not to replace one tyrant with another (as the French did), but to eliminate statist tyranny, and replace it with a form of mostly self-government, with only “just powers … derived from the consent of the governed” in the hands of any collective authority. (It may or may not be noteworthy that Moore makes this statement without specific reference to last year’s strongly individualistic-themed V for Vendetta, which used in its own advertising: “People should not fear their government; the government should fear its people.”)

In short, with SiCKO, Michael Moore has (finally?) made a film that sticks more to presenting the facts and letting viewers make up their own minds, than to twisting and warping just a few half-truths for comic effect or sensationalism, as in many of his previous works. He also spends most of his time dealing with how those who have most bought into the system, and become its most trusting and dutiful drones, are being treated perhaps the worst among all Americans.

His conclusions still seem to point to a 180-degree turn from the same power elite (elected and otherwise) that maintains the statist quo in this arena, but his analyses of what is wrong, and even some of what might be done about it, are pretty much ‘shootin’ centers.’ For this alone, the film is worth seeing, even at the inflated prices now being charged at your local theater.