Sicko (Special Edition)
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Movie Reviews of Sicko (Special Edition)
Movie Review: A well-executed, fairly effective film
Summary: 5 Stars
While I thought that Fahrenheit 911 was impressive in more than one way, after further meditation I came to believe that it was too faulty in its presentation, vague and probably excessively focused on getting John Kerry elected. It too easily played into the hands of his half-wit right wing critics. The present film in contrast, is simple, moving and honest. Unless they are hopelessly indoctrinated, which maybe more than a few of them are, many Americans have had too much real life experience to swallow the corporate funded think tank propaganda about our health system repeated by talk radio hosts, Dr. Sanjay Gupta and other compromised people.
As Moore observes, while people who don't have health insurance in this country are in bad shape--he quotes the National Institute of Health figure of 18000 deaths a year from lack of access to health insurance--more subtly pernicious is what happens to people who are technically supposed to be fully covered. He presents horror stories from real Americans. There is the middle aged Colorado couple--a newspaper editor and a unionized machinist--who after going through a couple of heart attacks and a cancer, were bankrupted under the weight of their co-pays and deductibles. This couple was forced to move into the storage room at their daughter's house while a son visited them and seemed to blame them for their plight instead of their HMO. There is the toddler girl who was initially rejected for a cochlear transplant in both her ears until her father threatened to have Moore give the case publicity. There is the Missouri woman whose husband was rejected for a bone marrow transplant on the ground that it would be an "experimental" treatment and who eventually died from kidney cancer. There is the woman who died from a brain tumor after being repeatedly told that nothing was threatening her. There was the little black girl who died from a fever at a Kaiser Permanente hospital in South Central LA because the hospital kept stalling about approving her mother's fully covered insurance. He interviews two HMO case reviewers and a call center employee describing how they were rewarded for authorizing treatment for as few people as possible so that costs would be kept low and the profits of their company's executives maximized. Moore shows the tape of a Nixon-Halderman conversation from 1971 where Nixon says that it's just fine by him in responding to Halderman's comments that government promotion of HMO system would lead to the promotion of the paramount principle of little treatment as possible for maximization of profit.
Moore presents sound bites from critics of socialized medicine beginning with AMA propaganda from the early 60's....Moore interviews citizens, including a few doctors, of Canada, Britain and France, and Americans living in Britain and France and comes away with a picture that whatever the flaws in those health systems, they are superior to our own. He quotes an AMA study which stated that even the poorest Britons had better health than many Americans. One can repeat slogans about the horrors of bureaucracy and stories about long waits but one can't escape from the fact that we have the costliest, most bureaucratic system in the Western World and get the worst results.
Then he goes to Cuba with the former newspaper editor mentioned above and several 911 rescue workers still suffering from serious physical and psychological troubles as a result of their experiences in the WTC rubble. I spent 20 days in Cuba in January 2004, shortly before Bush slapped a complete ban on legal travel to the country. Life is pretty difficult for a good portion of the population. And yes as the gifted statesman Fred Thompson has argued against this movie, people are tortured in Cuban prisons which of course is irrelevant to the relative merits of their health care system. When one considers that the U.S and Cuba are roughly equal in terms of infant mortality and when one considers that Cuba is a third world country with scant resources compared to the United States, the richest country the world has ever seen, Cuba's achievements are all the more remarkable. Since the collapse of their markets in the Soviet bloc and with access to the U.S. market denied, they have had to pay very high costs for equipment like heart monitors from other countries (like Japan). Of course, U.S. statesmen don't place crushing embargos on countries that don't flout corporate globalization like Uzbekistan and Equatorial Guinea that offer little genuine health care and torture their prisoners much worse than Fidel's goons. Not to mention the horrors that go on in our own prisons.
He does a poor job discussing recent health care reform proposals. For instance in his discussion of the Clinton health care plan of 93-94, he mentions that then First Lady Clinton declared herself hot for "universal" coverage. Then he states there was a massive business campaign against the plan and when she became a senator in 2001 she retreated from her radicalism and began to receive generous donations from health care PACs.. However, the Clinton proposals of the 90's were not "universal." The proposal was written with heavy input from the five largest HMO's. It was the smaller HMO's who raised the idiotic alarms about "socialized medicine" and who felt t that the Clintons' idea for a government run board to devise a series of a health plans for consumers to use in the private sector would inevitably be dominated by their bigger competitors. Perhaps it would have provided more stable prices than Bush's Medicare plan or somewhat contained the excesses of the system we face today. However the Clinton plan seems to have produced many worse offshoots such as in Mitt Romney's Massachusetts with its grossly inadequate subsidies to deal with rising private sector health costs.
This film struck a chord with me as I deal with my mother's cancer.
Movie Review: The Movie "Sicko" and the Health Care Debate
Summary: 5 Stars
Michael Moore's movie Sicko, is apparently designed to educate the American public regarding the issues of health care. The movie presents a comparative analysis of the health-care systems in America, Canada, France, England and Cuba. Michael Moore and his film crew actually visited all the countries discussed in the film, interviewed health-care professionals, and patients, and presented the fact in understandable details.
Based on the film, health-care in America is very controversial. It is also a highly contested area in the legal and administrative arenas. The film shows how the health-care industry operates with hidden agenda, which is based on profit making. As a result, the average citizen is denied access to health-care payments for frivolous reasons. Such actions at times resulted in the unfortunate death of individuals being denied insurance coverage, or a family member who desperately needs the coverage to pay for medical bills not being covered.
The film shows various former employees of the health-care industry providing information on what they used to do for their respective employers. The information is depressing. The actions of the insurance companies as portrayed by the former employees are ruthless, based on capitalistic motives, and show a lack of sensitivity for the health and welfare of others who are sick.
One must consider the impact of the film on politicians. It actually computes in monetary terms the value of how much the health-care industry spends annually to buy politicians and get them into its corner. With the winning over of politicians, the health-care industry is then able to obtain votes and influence the passage of legislations in its favor which affects Americans across the spectrum.
The film heightens ones awareness regarding the ongoing battle over healthcare coverage, and in particular, the health care debate and proposals by each candidate regarding where he or she stands on the issues. It shows the benefits to be derived from having a health-care system that is universal, and how it improves the quality of life for citizens of that country.
The following is my poem regarding the health-care system in America, entitled This Land:
This Land-America!
This land we fought and died for
Ancestral legacy buried in its midst;
This land we shed our blood for
Descendants suffering in its midst;
This land we cried and bled for
Future generation will be ticked;
This land we stood and prayed for-
Lord help and keep us on Your list!
General Reactions
Sicko is a present day reality of America's broken health-care system. It is beyond any reasonable comprehension to acknowledge the fact that the wealthiest country in the world is not even rated in the top 25% of countries world-wide for providing health-care to its citizens. This realization is just deplorable! It is an injustice to humanity to know that Americans are dying in the streets on a daily basis because America does not have an efficient and effective health-care system to provide for its citizens.
One could assume that the ruthless practice of the health-care industry is designed to further continue the unjust act of covert genocide on certain segments of the American population. The system impacts African-Americans and other minorities the most. It is a further reflection of how capitalism and monopolistic practices by the upper class continue to act in a repressive manner to alienate those considered inferior by unjust standards.
The timing of the film could not have been better especially being released before an election year. If watched by Americans, this film should provide them with enough information to make an informed decision on where they should cast their votes on the health-care debate. Americans have suffered enough under the current unjust practices of the health-care system. It has stripped their pockets book, bank accounts, home mortgage equity, and other finances to pay for coverage the insurance companies should have been held liable for but refused to pay.
The following is my poem about the health-care system taking care of our people.
Taking Care of Our People
Let's take care of the sick
They are dying in our streets;
Let's take care on the homeless
They are sleeping in the streets;
America has money to spare
Let's spend on the sick their share;
Build homes for the homeless,
Lift up humanity to where-
America is truly the Land Of The Free
And proud to be: The Hand Of The Brave!
Joseph S. Spence, Sr., is the co-author of two poetry books, A Trilogy of Poetry, Prose and Thoughts for the Mind, Body and Soul, and Trilogy Moments for the Mind, Body and Soul. He invented the Epulaeryu poetry form, which focuses on succulent cuisines and drinks. He is published in various forums, including the World Haiku Association; Milwaukee Area Technical College, Phoenix Magazine; and Taj Mahal Review. Joseph is a Goodwill Ambassador for the state of Arkansas, USA, and is an adjunct faculty at Milwaukee Area Technical College. He has completed over twenty years of service with the U.S. Army.
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Movie Review: Moore's best film yet and on a subject that is truly nonpartisan
Summary: 5 Stars
Poll after poll in recent decades has shown healthcare (or to speak more precisely, the lack of affordable healthcare for all) to be the issue that more Americans feel strongly about than any other. But special interest groups, i.e., the medical insurance providers and the American Medical Associations, as well as hundreds of fake grass roots groups that they have funded, have managed to undermine the good of the nation as a whole.
This truly is a nonpartisan issue. The film makes reference to the National Health Service in Great Britain, which is enormously popular with conservatives and liberals, doctors as well as patients. One of the individuals Moore interviews mentions that Margaret Thatcher, a noted conservative, was a strong defender of the NHS. He could also have mentioned that a key person guiding it through the legislative process was one of the most notable conservatives of the 20th century, Winston Churchill. This is not a liberal-conservative issue, but a people issue. Free, universal healthcare is an amazingly good thing for nations as wholes.
Moore does a great job of highlighting the problems with a for-profit health system. Despite the defenders of free market capitalism, there are several things it simply isn't any good at. One of them is at providing universal programs for the commonweal. In the United States for-profit healthcare has had the effect of empowering and benefiting financial services industries (insurance companies) at the expense of individuals. As a result, Americans find healthcare, which already is not universally available, to be increasingly expensive and unaffordable. And drug prices are spiraling out of control.
As Moore shows in the film, almost all developed countries have better healthcare systems than the United States. Most provide free and universal healthcare. Many politicians, who accept huge campaign donations from various medical special interest groups, raise the specter of socialized medicine and spread myths about the unavailability of basic medical services. Most of SICKO is devoted to taking on these "myths," or, to use a better word, "lies." One of the most commonly told lies is that Canadians are trapped in a terrible health system in which they are often denied treatment for months. Moore interviews a number of Canadians who clearly abhor the American health system and passionately embrace their own. Moore asks one of these people whether he is a socialist, only to be told that he is a member of the Conservative Party.
We are also often told (i.e., lied to) that things are terrible in Great Britain and France. Once again, Moore visits both places and discovers that both the British and the French love their healthcare systems. In all this I felt increasingly ashamed of the situation in the United States, not merely because of the expense and the lack of universality, but the approach. We tend to treat conditions only after they have gotten bad, while the French and British emphasize preventative medicine. In fact, one British doctor explained that he gets a bonus if he is able to get people to stop smoking. In short, the healthcare systems in Canada, Great Britain, and France are exceedingly popular, while I rather hear anyone talk about how they love the American healthcare system.
For the record, I work for a major insurer of hospitals and medical facilities. I work inside the very industry that is causing a lot of the problems.
Hopefully this film will help focus more concern on the need to gut and redo the American healthcare system. Personally, I think the think to do is to make a revised Medicaid universal. It should be revised to eliminate the Bush drug program for seniors (which is hated by the left, the right, and seniors) and put in place a real drug assistance program. Why should the rest of the advanced countries have free, universal, and excellent healthcare while the United States suffer from inferior care?
The only difficulty I had with the movie was the Cuba sequence. Why? Well, Moore had already made his point cogently and convincingly. The trip to Cuba introduces a note of controversy that cloudies the water. True, Cubans have free and excellent healthcare despite the poverty of the nation, but one thing that the film overlooks is that like in most countries there is considerable difference between the healthcare provided in the city and in the country. Most of Cuba is rural and the healthcare there is not as good as what one finds in the city. (Much the same is true in countries like China, where the quality of healthcare in the city is quite good while in the country is substandard.) In other words, I thought the whole Cuba segment weakened the overall film.
Hopefully Americans will get angry and do something about this. Historically we don't wake up and change things until we let things go further than we should. We tend to be a pretty compliant nation, willing to put up with a great deal before we get mad enough to do something about it. Maybe the time is becoming ripe to get rid of the system we have and get something decent instead.
Movie Review: The Picture of Health
Summary: 5 Stars
Love him or hate him, Michael Moore knows how to open dialogues and make us think. Out of all his documentaries, "Sicko" is probably his most thought provoking. This can be said from both a liberal and conservative perspective; whatever your political beliefs are, whatever your moral standards, I think everyone in America should be required to see this film. A bold thing to say, I know, but I really do feel that way. Not only does it bring a number of health care-related issues to the surface, it also sheds light on how health care operates in other countries. Canada, the United Kingdom, and France, for example, all rely on a universal system, in which medical services are fully subsidized by the government. In today's day and age, when for-profit American health care shows every sign of collapsing under its own weight, understanding how other western countries look after their sick and injured is very important.
When word spread about Moore's new documentary, a number of major pharmaceutical companies ordered their employees to completely avoid him should an interview be requested. For all intents and purposes, Moore managed to get someone's attention. Such is the way with "Sicko," a film that can effectively get anyone's attention with its mixture of figures, humor, and heartbreak. Can such tactics be considered manipulative? Yes, they can. But so can news reports and magazine articles and newspaper headlines, all of which we rely on for information. Maybe this is subject matter that requires manipulation, if only for the sake of forcing us out of our comfort zones. As I see it, many problems that have been pushed aside finally need to be addressed.
The film's origins date back to early 2006, during which Moore made an on-line reqeust for health care horror stories. He received thousands of e-mails within a week. Some of the more dramatic stories are highlighted at the beginning of the film, such as a man who accidentally sawed off the tips of his left middle and ring fingers. Because he did not have health insurance, he was given two options: have the middle tip reattached for $60,000, or the ring tip for $12,000. The fact that he chose the ring tip isn't the point. For that matter, neither is the fact that he wasn't insured; Moore makes it clear that this film is really about insured Americans who feel that their plans have failed them. Consider a couple forced to move into their daughter's home after a paying a series of medical bills; the husband suffered three heart attacks and the wife was diagnosed with cancer.
With that and other such devastating examples, Moore examines the history of American health care and it's eventual effects. I distinctly remember footage from a 1996 congressional testimony given by guilt stricken Dr. Linda Peeno, formerly a medical reviewer for the health insurer Humana. Nearing tears, she admitted that her job was to save money for the company, not to treat the sick or injured. She then recalls denying medical care for a man in 1987, resulting in his death. Moore also examines connections between lobby groups and political groups. Back in the 1950s, the idea of universal health care was considered Socialist, and therefore un-American. Years later, Hillary Clinton proposed a plan for national health care. It might have happened had she not sold out and accepted campaign money from the pharmaceutical industry.
The more compelling examples of patient mistreatment are presented near the end of the film. Moore interviews three September 11, 2001 volunteers who have since developed medical problems due to Ground Zero's extreme conditions. The government will not provide them with any medical care; they're not firefighters, and therefore, they're not government employees. The prisoners held on Guantanamo Bay, on the other hand, have complete medical coverage. In response to this, Moore escorts the volunteers to Guantanamo Bay via boat, stating that America's heroes should be given the same medical treatment as America's enemies.
But out of all the stories presented, this one is by far the most interesting. Jim Kenefick, designer of an anti-Michael Moore website, was suddenly faced with the possibility of shutting his website down. His wife had become ill, and the cost of her medical bills exceeded the amount he spent on web development. In desperation, he pleaded for help by posting an on-line request for money ("In Need of a Christmas Miracle!" was its title). Moore anonymously sent him a check for $12,000 in what was surely one of the most selfless acts of generosity ever. The medical bills were paid. The website continues to run. I think Mr. Kenefick owes it to himself to see "Sicko"; his First Amendment right to bash Moore is openly defended.
Considering everything I've said, I feel it necessary to explain a few things. My intention in writing this review is not to change anyone's mind about American health care, and while I personally agree with Michael Moore's position, I'm not asking anyone to do the same. I want people to see "Sicko" only because it reintroduces an important issue, and important issues should always be discussed.
Movie Review: Sickening!
Summary: 5 Stars
This isn't a five-star film. It's spotty, sloppy, and self-indulgent, more a diatribe than a documentary. My five-star rating is a vote of solidarity with Michael Moore's position: that American health care as a system is inadequate and unworthy of a modern nation. Moore is a 'muckraker' in the honorable tradition of American journalism, and there's plenty of 'muck' to be raked in America, the only wealthy Western democracy that doesn't support a system of universal health care. Moore's targets are the profit-driven insurance companies - HMOs chiefly - the greedy drug companies, and the special-interest 'bagmen' in Congress, from both parties, who collaborate in keeping American health care expensive and inequitable. America and the American people spend more money, both in aggregate and per capita, on health care than any other nation, yet America lags in most statistics of health care quality, and that's a sickening state of affairs.
However, what's "sickening" about Sicko is that it won't persuade those people who have virulently resisted health care reform in the USA. Those who already recognize the failures of for-profit, insurance-dominated health care will applaud Moore's witty cinematography, but those who deny that the system needs reform will latch onto Moore's personal idiosyncrasies and partialities as evidence that health care reform is a big-government intrusion and a socialist plot against Mom and Apple Pie.
Some Americans enjoy very good health care. I do, when I happen to be in the USA. I have Kaiser Permanente coverage, which has been fully adequate to cover two very expensive procedures for me, but Kaiser Permanente is one of the villains in this film. Yes, Kaiser and other HMOs are guilty of the misdeeds Moore exposes, but his depiction of them is too one-sided, too selective. Anyone who has had good experiences with Kaiser, as I have, will be skeptical of Moore's integrity. That's 'sickening' because Moore is basically correct. Insurance-managed health care is unfair, capricious, supremely inflationary, and above all UNAVAILABLE for millions of people. The Constitution of the USA pledges the federal government to "promote the general welfare" of the People, a commitment to a sense of community that is not fulfilled by a system of health care that excludes the poorest and sickest.
Moore is also too one-sided in his portrayal of the universal health care systems of other countries, particularly of Canada, France, and Cuba. It is true that those countries provide free or nearly free health care to everybody, despite any 'pre-existing conditions' and despite the disqualification of poverty. It's true that citizens of those countries enjoy a sense of security that many Americans lack. It's true that statistics demonstrate better results - lower infant mortality, greater longevity, better overall health - in those countries than in the opulent USA. But it's also true that the national health care systems of Canada and Europe are far from perfect. There are long waits for procedures, MRIs for instance, in Canada. There are complaints, angry complaints about health care in Germany and England -- as there are of course in Massachusetts and Hawaii -- but Michael Moore doesn't report those complaints. His one-sidedness weakens his case.
I've experienced health care needs abroad, by the way, for myself in Spain and Germany, for my family in France and Canada. I've gotten effective, prompt, courteous treatment of urgent medical problems like strep throat in Spain, with no paperwork and no hassle. My family has gotten house calls from doctors in France, as Moore depicts. The right wing insurance-industry propaganda against 'socialized' health care in Europe is just as deceptive and unscrupulous as Moore declares. National Health Care is effective and economical in ways that profit-driven health care can't duplicate. I only wish Michael Moore could have made a more convincing case for it.
Ex-Vice President Dick Cheney famously accused Michael Moore, at the Republican Convention in 2004, of being disingenuous. That might seem like 'the pot calling the kettle black' since Cheney has been proven to be a consummate opportunist of disinformation. But it's also inaccurate. Moore is anything but disingenuous; his positions and his intentions are always blatantly clear. In this film, when he briefly poses as the Devil's Advocate for American health care, he's utterly unconvincing. He can direct, but he can't act. His ingenuousness is painful at times; for instance, he delivers one of his strongest endorsements of socialized medicine -- yes, he IS a socialist! -- with a bust of Karl Marx visible behind him. What's disingenuous about that? Unfortunately, many 'conservative' Americans will react to such deliberate honesty as mere provocation. Moore would do better not to taunt his adversaries, assuming that his goal is to persuade them.
But then, is the goal of Sicko really to persuade or to entertain? In the end, it fails of one and succeeds at the other.