SiCKO by Michael Moore

Download SiCKO here

I’m one of the 50 million people without health insurance in America that this film isn’t about.. SiCKO is the latest docutainment film by the Academy Award-winning film maker Michael Moore, and its focus isn’t so much on the plight of those without health care as it is on the experiences of those with health care who find their insurance companies are more concerned with cutting cost than with saving people’s lives.

In the films Roger & Me, Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, and in the television shows like The Awful Truth and TV Nation Michael Moore perfected a kind of ambush journalism that, while entertaining, provided his opponents with ample fodder for calling his conclusions into question. His use of montage to illustrate the conversations in which he engages are still as punchy and entertaining as in his previous works, but the ambushing of public figures is missing from SiCKO.

With SiCKO, Michael Moore chose what is ultimately a more mature and evolved approach, presenting his views and showcasing the vast differences between the health care industry in the United States and the government funded health care of Canada, Great Britain, France, and Cuba. The footage included of senate hearings or the audio of Richard Nixon approving Edgar Kaiser’s HMO plans is damning enough, and instead the bulk of the film evaluates the experiences of Americans suffering at the hands of the health care industry and contrasting that with the experiences of American ex-patriots and citizens of France, Canada, and the UK with similar health issues who find themselves cared for without the astronomical bills, co-pays, and deductibles.

To put it plainly, this is the most accessible and emotionally moving film Michael Moore has yet created. Sure, there are the expected digs both at the current administration and his personal detractors, and in fact the film closes on this note, highlighting the donation he made to the webmaster of a Michael Moore hate site. But the facts speak for themselves. 18,000 people die each year in this country because they are not allowed health care due to a lack of insurance. And this lack of insurance isn’t simply because they’re not paying for coverage, but is rather a result of an institutional practice which denies or revokes insurance approval in the interests of profitability. Illustrating that these people wouldn’t need to die if they lived in a country like, say, Cuba or France is a verifiable fact, and Moore’s political views cannot change that fact one way or another.

Where Moore excels is in his ability to tie together on-screen a portrait of greedy corporations buying up politicians, spreading rumors, propaganda, and lies about the effects of socialized health care that highlights history and provides a context against which the inefficiency of American health care can be seen as unnecessary and even intentionally criminal. Moore takes cameras with him to other countries, interviewing the citizens, and establishes that the oft-repeated mantra of the dangerous inefficiency of socialized medicine is more a projection of the United States own problems than a fact of life in Canada, the UK, or France. In one particularly interesting interview a former member of the British Parliament, Tony Benn, explains to Mr. Moore that “..if you can find money to kill people, you can find money to help people…” bringing a much needed perspective to this debate.

Ultimately, this film will most likely piss off any American who watches it. Those who are dead-set on hating everything Michael Moore releases will be infuriated by his trademark style of re-arranging of events to fit his position. There are going to be those who will attempt to stop the distribution of the film because of his trip to Cuba, where he succeeds in providing an entourage of people in dire need of health care with access to Cuban doctors. Others will find his pointed statements about Hillary Clinton’s acceptance of funds from the medical lobbyists to be an assault on a beloved Democratic icon. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum though, it would be hard to ignore the truth at the heart of this film, that truth being there is something decidedly fucked up about the health care industry in this country. While this film proposes no solutions, it does most assuredly provide a point of entry into a debate that will not go away until people stop making money at the expense of the health of others.

SiCKO hits theaters on June 29th, provided that the US government doesn’t attempt to stop distribution. But you can download SiCKO here tonight, and spread it to your friends and family long before you’ll be able to see it in theaters… and I highly recommend doing just that, because, love him or hate him, this is Michael Moore’s best work yet.