Michael Moore's SiCKO

I recently went to see the informative and thought-provoking movie "Sicko", the newest documentary by one of my favorite filmmakers, Michael Moore. In the film, Mr. Moore examines the discrepancies of the availability of medical care in the United States.

I think we are all aware that the forty-seven million people in our country with no medical insurance have very little, if any access to health care, simply because they can't afford it. This is a national disgrace. But what Mr. Moore brings out in the film that may be even more disturbing, is that the average person, although he or she may have health insurance, is not immune from this problem. He documents case after case where people who faithfully paid their HMO premiums month after month, year after year, suddenly become ill with a condition that is very expensive to treat, such as certain types of cancer, only to find that these same insurance companies, exclude the condition they have developed and refuse to pay. They have hidden in policies all kinds of clauses for exclusion, sometimes pre-existing conditions with no relation to the particular illness the insured may have at the time he is filing the claim.

Sicko shows the genesis of the HMO system in the United States in a tape of then-President Richard Nixon with one of his top advisers explaining to him what a windfall this "managed care" would be to the insurance industry. Just think....a doctor has to get approval from a for-profit insurance company before the physician can give treatment! There is suddenly a "gatekeeper" whose job it is to try to limit the costs to the insurance company of payment for treatment, whose advancements and salary are often predicated by how many denials he can give for medical care!

The United States is the only country in the top twenty-five industrialized countries in the world that does not have universal health care. Mr. Moore documents what it is like to seek medical care in such countries as France, which has the best medical care in the world, Great Britain, Canada, and yes, even Cuba, and contrasts these systems sharply with what we have in the United States. The citizens do not live in fear of being denied medical treatment. Someone is sick, therefore it is their right to be able to get medical care.. The United States is rated number thirty-seven in the world in health figures based on mortality rates, just behind Estonia! I have heard critics say proudly that Mr. Moore should not have used Cuba as an example of a good health care system, since it is ranked thirty-nine. Well, I don't think that our ranking two notches above a struggling third-world country like Cuba is anything to be so proud of.

The most heart-wrenching scene in the entire film for me was a security tape from Los Angeles, outside of an overflowing homeless shelter, showing a taxi dropping off an obviously very sick, disoriented older woman, still in her hospital gown, with a IV still in her arm, to wander the streets until the shelter or someone with some compassion would try to help her. Mr. Moore documents how this is a common practice in overcrowded, under funded, mostly inner-city hospitals -just put them in a cab and drop these poor folks off somewhere, since they are getting no funding to care for them! A people are judged by how they treat their weakest and most vulnerable and I don't think that this is the way we want our country and our people to be judged

Just as each American is entitled to good schools for their children, protection from police and emergency services, and some sort of a safety net through Social Security to have a somewhat secure retirement, all provided by the government, so, too should Americans be provided with access to medical care like the rest of the industrialized world. Our citizens deserve no less. Mr. Moore pleads his case for universal health care in the United States with documentation, poignancy, and even a touch of humor to make for an informative and very provocative film.