"Sicko" - Michael Moore's New Movie

Just great! Social commentary that is direct, and on-target, but not the least bit heavy or didactic. Just saying what we all know is the truth about the HMOs that run (and ruin) our lives, and in a funny, amusing way.

Funny quotes (from imdb):

George W. Bush: We got an issue in America. Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB/GYNs aren't able to practice their love, with women all across the country.

And this one too:

Tony Benn: Keeping people hopeless and pessimistic - see I think there are two ways in which people are controlled - first of all frighten people and secondly demoralize them.

Tony Benn: An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern.

And many more not given on imdb. Michael Moore asks a Frenchwoman about the most costly things in her life. Instead of kvetching about medical bills, like an American woman might, she instead complains about the prices of fish and vegetables.

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Based on what I wrote above, Friend John writes:

I saw on your blog that you saw Sicko. We went to see it yesterday also. I must say I wasn't as impressed with it as I was with Moore's previous films. There just seemed to be a lot of weak points that detracted from the theme. It seemed to me that it was a film about feelings more than facts and I imagine that the right wing will hone in on that.

First, the parts that impressed me. Moore's look at the national health care systems in Canada, the UK and France seemed fair, and it made a very compelling case for such systems. Also, his trip to Cuba, while clearly an entertainment stunt, was effective in adding some drama to the film.

My biggest problem with Sicko is that it missed the proverbial elephant in the room which is the American tort system and the antagonistic doctor/patient relationship which has developed as a result. Physicians--even those who have never been sued--are often paying in excess of $100K per year in malpractice insurance and they are constantly having to document every detail of everything they do and say to defend themselves from frivolous lawsuits. While I personally favor a national health care system I also believe, as I have said many times before, that tort reform is absolutely critical to any move in that direction.

Secondly, while I'm sure Cuba has a decent health care system, I wonder if Moore made it look a bit more rosy than it really is. Havana has a good hospital but what happens to people in smaller towns throughout the country? Do they get the same level of health care? It seems likely to me that Cuban authorities saw Moore's presence as a good opportunity to score propaganda points against the US. That may not really be correct but it's something to bear in mind.

Also--and this may sound very cynical--I wonder how sick the people he took to Cuba really are? Some appeared to definitely have some health issues. And one firefighter clearly was having some emotional problems but we both know that there are plenty of people out there who decide that society owes them and they want to be declared disabled so they do not have to earn a living. I've seem it a number of times, including with a dentist who paid massive disability insurance for a few years and then found a psychiatrist who decided that the stress of working on teeth made him unable to work. Such things happen and, while people in such situations may need counseling, society does not owe them anything more than that.

In general, I find for-profit health care in the US overpriced, inefficient and frequently ineffective. Moore's film is good in the sense that it may begin or at least add to an important national dialogue on health care in the US, but I wish it had been produced by a less biased figure such as Tom Brokaw or Walter Cronkite.

I respond as follows:

Hi John:

It’s true that the tort system wasn’t mentioned, except in the most glancing way (Bush’s malapropism). Michael Moore is excellent at propaganda, which depends above all on simplicity, and not confusing matters too much with busy facts (like the tort system). But it also hinges on getting the biggest facts approximately correct, or the propaganda rings false.

I tend to think that the tort system is not as big a driver of health costs as people assume. If the HMOs had wanted to put their energies into changing these laws, they could have done so, and Congress would have responded. Instead, they have focused on exclusion of the unfit, and charging excessive rates. It’s a matter of priorities….

I have no doubt that Cuba saw Moore’s film as an easy way to score political points. They were right to see the opportunity this way. They shoot; they score!

My complaints about previous movies by Michael Moore is his willingness to entertain, and follow into blind alleys, strange ideas that are actually not central to his main points, thereby shooting himself in the feet, so to speak. One example is from ‘Bowling for Columbine’, when he entertains the idea that just by growing up in a suburb of Denver where strategic arms are produced makes one susceptible to fantasies of mass murder. It’s a strange idea and probably doesn’t have much merit, but he pursues it nonetheless.

In this movie, he largely avoids blind alleys. His visit to Guantanamo struck me as more of a stunt, same as his tour of Capitol Hill in an ice cream truck in Fahrenheit 911, but it allows him to open the door to look at the Cuban health care system, so there’s no dead end there.

It would be nice to have a documentary on the U.S. health care system produced by a less-polarizing figure than Michael Moore – a Brokaw or a Cronkite – but our entire experience of the mass media in the last fifteen years is that these non-polarizing figures either no longer exist, or are sidelined on PBS (Bill Moyers) or forced off the air entirely (Dan Rather). It’s all propaganda, all right-wing propaganda, 24/7 on all the cable channels these days. FOX is the worst, but CNN isn’t much different, really. That’s the new reality. We grew up in a blessed time, when the Fairness Doctrine gave second opinions a chance. Those days are dead. Michael Moore is the best we’re going to get.