Sicko (Special Edition)
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Movie Reviews of Sicko (Special Edition)
Movie Review: Why are the American People Afraid of the Government?
Summary: 5 Stars
I have seen this decline in our system for years. Being exposed to the medical field for so many years I always knew "wrong doing" was going on but this film finally gave me the details of "why or how". Maybe the insurance system started out as a positive thing at first but like everything else in our government it gets corrupted. If the American people demanded printed out statements just like a business does for its own accounting of where each earned dollar goes, we would be a much stronger country. Do you ever think laws or control of our tax money will go in effect? Heck no, because the exact people who are making the laws are the ones pocketing the money. You think not, then you are a fool. I had a politician in our family and many high ranked, retired military that knows very well what goes on and it made them SICK. As they put it, they call it the "Government Mafia". One time my uncle was asked how much of a cut he wanted for something he was buying for his state. He was clueless what the heck they were talking about. Someone pulling him aside and told him how it works and he can make thousands for himself from the tax payers money. Since he was an honest man and truly believed NO ONE should ever make politics their career. He always ran his business and stayed close to the people when he put his time in as a Senator. He wanted to make a different for a few years then go back to his normal life. After what he learned what really goes on in the government he knew there will never be grand changes. It is getting worse and worse each year. There are many examples of great things we start, small examples are,lotteries or wheel tax on your car plates. Started out real good, went to roads, went to the schools but in a short 5 to 10 years you would be lucky to see 10% going to where it is suppose to and the rest is unaccounted for, all gone in thin air. We have no right to even ask where the other 90% went either. There was a comment in the movie from other countries, "Europe is afraid of the people,yet in America the people are afraid of the Government" How true.
Working in the medical field I see the non working, or non-citizens getting better care and treatment for free. Soon all the good hard working people are just going to move out of here. Lets see how powerful this country will be then. In my state, the free government health insurance has better benefits and cover more than paid insurance. For me, I have not had health insurance for my children and I for years. Why? my job does not offer it (even if it did it would cost me almost more than a monthly car payment would PLUS many are going to 1000.00 deductibles). I make about 1,500 a year too much to get any help. This movie is SO on target! You may want to not believe it, that is your choice or could be from conditioning from the government of the lies they try to make you believe. They are scared, they do not want to loose their thousands of dollar bonuses and kick backs for not putting laws and regulations on ares like pharmaceutical companies. We have many laws so companies can not be a monopoly etc., but you will not see any laws on medical supplies. It has became a second income for our government and a very good one at that. Bad thing is everyone in office wants in on the action so it gets higher and higher to pay everyone off. Other bad thing is they have total control to prove the system will not work. All they have to do is jack up our taxes so HIGH (even though they DO NOT need that much and just waste the money to in proving a point) that we THINK universal medicine was not the right answer. They can manipulate it anyway they want so we will want paid health insurance again. If the government is the one filling their pockets on this great invention called health insurance who do we go to and get it fixed? Feels hopeless, but it is not. As a whole we can do it BUT in America we are too busy working 2 and 3 jobs to make ends met (unlike France) to do anything about it. We need to wake up for the future of our country and our children.
Movie Review: Sadly accurate
Summary: 5 Stars
Sure, like all of Michael Moore's films this movie is more editorial than documentry. It's trying to make a very specific point (the American health care system is seriously broken), and pulls out all the stops to do so. It does so with all the usual wit and humor of Michael Moore, which to my mind is a good thing.
The movie focuses on various middle-class people who generally thought they had decent medical coverage. They usually thought this right up to the point where they needed it and then... pft. They find out they aren't covered for things, or that stuff they weren't aware they had are listed as pre-existing conditions. They aren't eligable for certain treatments. They have large co-pays and deductables. They can't see the doctors they want to do. The doctors can't give them the treatment they want to give them because the patients can't afford it, etc, etc, etc.
Part of the problem with the American health care system, and something that's made plain in the movie, is that it's being run by for-profit insurance companies that have a vested interest in making sure they pay for as little as they possibly can. They want to maximize profits, after all, and I can't blame them for that.
There are flaws in the movie. The health care systems in France, Canada and England are painted with too-rosy pictures and nothing showing their flaws. Cuba's health care is presented as magnificent while their human rights issues are glossed-over or ignored (though one can make the point that this movie isn't focusing on human rights, just health care). Some of the problems that do exist with socalized medicine are not addressed.
That said, when I think of this problem, I think about my sister and her family. She has a husband and they have four kids. She works and he works. If, god forbid, one of their children got, say, leukemia, then likely one of them would have to quit their job to take care of the kid. Probably the one with the crappier health coverage. That means their income decreases dramatically. Stress goes up. Resentment towards the child due to the incredibly high medical costs can't help but form, irrational though that would be. The parents fight over money. Next thing you know, the $[...] medical bills have sent the family into bankruptcy. They lose their home and have to move into a small apartment. But, hey, in the end, since we do have the best medical care money can buy, at least the daughter is ok.
Until the relapse. Or until the working parent gets injured. Or until one of the other kids gets sick. Etc. All those things are horrible enough, but the is the only "real" country where you have to choose between money and medicine and that's just bad. How does our contry benefit from people being made bankrupt by medical bills?
The DVD release contains about 80 minutes of footage not seen in the theatrical version. Of note particularly is the segment on Norway. You know, I can't help but think that perhaps if we had minimum security prisons like the ones they show in the movie, instead of the crappy minimum security ones we have here, our crime right might nose down a bit. There could be something to this whole "treat people like people" thing, and focusing on rehabilitation rather than punishment.
But I digress.
The message I come away with from this movie is the following: socialized medicine/universal health care is not perfect. Far from it. But it is better than what we have now, and there's no reason we can't do it better than the other countries that have it do. After all, not too horribly long ago we fought the Germans, Italians and the Japanese all at basically the same time. We've gone to the Moon. We have TiVo. Any country that can do all these things can and should have a better health care system than what we have now.
See this movie. Even if you don't like Michael Moore, see it (he's not on screen much anyhow). See it, and then do something about it.
Movie Review: Instead of starting to bash Michael Moore, let's first sit and think for ourselves.
Summary: 5 Stars
This Michael Moore film covers the below topics.
(1) American Health care system critized to be a profitable enterprise setup by politicians for the benifit of politicians,Health insurance companies, doctors and pharmaceutical companies. It paints the picture of this nexus between all of the above and defrauding the American people.
(2) The support for social medicine or universal health care sponsored by government.
(3) The portrayal of health care systems of Canada, UK,France and Cuba in good light while that of USA in a very poor light.
(4) Paints the picture of the corporate greed of the medical insurance companies as against the better medical and health care system of the above mentioned countries.
(5) We see interviews by patients or loved one of patients who died because those patients could not receive swift emergency medical care in time due to the hospitals not accepting the patients due to their ineligibility of their health insurance
plan to receive such a service, the denial of medication, or specialist doctor consultatation referral, or denial of specific operations that could have helped save lives. We see of the insider whistle blowers of medical inusrance companies who talk about how it works inside. Claims agents get a better bonus based on how successful they were in turning down claims, the highest bonus being paid to he/she who denies the most claims and hence saving the company the most of the money
(5) Takes a dig at US health care portraying Guantanemo Bay - medical facitlities to be the only place under US soil where universal health care is available.
(6) Interview with french locals who talk about 5 weeks paid leave, maternity assistance by government, free hospitalisation and medical treatment and the stark contrast to that over here in USA riddled with this copay, deductions, hefty premiums
and then denials of claims for genuine cases.
(7) Norway where prisoners have spas and the maximum sentence is 21 years.
(8) advocates support for socialised medicine, and de-privatisation of the health care industry and putting it into the hands of the government. Advocates support for bill HR 676.
Michael Moore asks a sincere question: why should the world's most powerful nation and one of the world's strongest economies have such a lousy and inferior health care system which has scant regard for it's citizen's welfare and greater regard for the profitable insurance companies. If nothing else this docuemntary makes us thing, so instead of starting to bash Michael Moore (CNN has bashed him enough, the big battle on TV with Sanjay Gupta), let's just sit and think for ourselves, try to research it out in our small way and then let's come to conclusions. You can't deny the fact that Michael has atleast triggered people to start thinking on this topic with as much attention and passion as is required. Because it is us who are affected by this issue. It concerns us and requires our research and thought.
Also to be balanced it is to be said that to understand the implications of whether this socialised medicine will work in a country like USA (with the population of USA which is different from the smaller populations of European countries), how it will affect taxes ? , how good will the treatment be ? How much will be the waiting time ? Is a longer waiting time not justified if a larger number of people get the care ? Then again will the longer wait times mean someone not getting the quick aid he might get in the current system ? All these are not easy questions. These are questions which are better understood by economists, financial planners, doctors, philosophers etc because it is a complex environment with many variables. But we as a normal average joe person with whatever acumen is at our disposal have to take a stand one way or another.
regards, Vikram
Movie Review: Are we all talking about the same thing here?
Summary: 5 Stars
Ok, so maybe you think that a free universal healthcare system is a flawed idea. Maybe you disagree with the solution offered by the movie. Maybe being sick in France, the UK and Cuba isn't as described in the film. Maybe all these things the movie shows are simply lies. Fine, you may have a point.
But did they make up the people who actually died due to the ridiculously flawed current health system? Because if they didn't, and those people actually died because hospitals and doctors capable of healing them wouldn't do so because they weren't insured or didn't have enough coverage, then no matter what the correct answer to fix the issue is, the remaining absolute truth is "THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG!" Very wrong...
Have we become so selfish and self-centered that, unless something like this happens to us or someone really close to us, we feel the subject isn't worthy of our attention? We sit comfortably in our current healthy state, judging the movie because Michael Moore is this and that, or things aren't quite as pretty at the other places as he made them seem, and we simply ignore the fact that real people are dying? That volunteers who left the comfort of their homes to help the huge mess that was 9/11, as we sat safely in our homes whining about how afwul the whole ordeal was, are now suffering from health issues brought by their participation in helping people they didn't even know and now no one is helping them?
I wanted to watch this movie because I already thought health insurance companies are a mob. And, like the mafia, they kill people. They just do it differently. How can those people sleep at night? And how can the government allow this to happen? This is disgusting!
I hate dramas and I don't watch movies intended to make people cry, but I held a knot in my throat throughout most of the movie. These are people, just like you or me, whose lives were either taken or seriously damaged because they weren't able to afford medical treatments they needed. We are not talking about breast augmentation surgeries, or nose jobs, we are talking cancer patients!
I am fortunate enough to be a very healthy person and to have a full-time job that covers me under their insurance. But even the healthiest person can fall sick or have an accident. Then what? It's like a flood insurance commercial they play on TV, where these people are sitting in the living room as the house gets filled with water, pretending there is nothing wrong. Maybe you and I should open our eyes and try to do something about it now, while we are strong and don't need to deal with health issues and how to get help handling them. Because maybe, if we ever need it, we will not be strong enough to fight. Maybe, by the time we are so surprised and shocked because we realize we are not as special as we thought and someone is actually denying the only thing that can save our lives, which is available, just sitting there, we will regret not acting earlier on.
The worst part is that all this takes place just because we, humans, have this nasty little tendency to be so incredibly greedy. We need to learn to respect. Respect the planet, respect the other animals, respect ourselves. Things like this make me ashamed of being human...
I give this movie 5 starts not because it's a gorgeous movie, or because I thought it was incredibly well done; but because any movie that makes people look at such issues deserves to be seen and heard. Even if you don't like Michael Moore or disagree with his thoughts and views, see it, listen to it, then do your own research and tell the world how you think the problem can be fixed, or what your thoughts and point of view are. But please, please don't act like there is nothing wrong taking place. Can you afford to be that blind?
Movie Review: Seen it twice already, will see it a third
Summary: 5 Stars
Many people are saying that this is Moore's "best" movie. I wouldn't disagree. He has indeed come of age as a documentarian here, and it certainly lacks the polemical polarity of his previous film.
I entered the theater knowing, after having seen only a few interview snippets prior to the release, that the film was going to focus on health care. I actually was expecting at least half the movie to focus on the percentage of citizens who have no insurance. But the focus of the film is not on those who are uninsured, but rather, those of us who already THINK we're fully covered because we have insurance.
Heath Maintenance Organizations (HMO's) are institutions which focus on maximizing profit and minimizing care. Anytime medical care is given to a patient, this is referred to as a "medical loss" in the Orwellian doublethink of HMO's. This crooked system began in the 1970s, when Edgar Kaiser proposed his Permanente plan to Richard Nixon. This conversation is on tape and it is damning. Kaiser proposes a new health care system for America. You hear Nixon say, "You know I'm not too keen on this damn government programs." You hear Kaiser saying, "This plan is a private, profit-based plan. It emphasizes less medical care, more money saved." Then you hear Nixon clearly saying "I like it." The next day, Nixon went on national TV and proposed Kaiser's Permanente plan, emphasizing that he wanted Americans to have the best health care coverage in the world. :<
My blood boiled when Moore highlighted the HMOs' decisions to deny care to the people Moore exampled, namely, the black guy with cancer ("Tracy") and the black woman whose daughter was struck with a high fever and went into cardiac arrest. In both cases, the lives could have easily been saved had care been administered in a timely fashion, as would have been the case in just about any other country. HMOs' modus operandi is to find ANY technical or bureaucratic excuse to deny care.
For me personally, there are two major myths about universal health care that this film destroys: (1) Any nationalized health service is bottom-of-the-rung and (2) Doctors don't make much money and lead a relatively low standard of living. Moore's forays to England, Canada and France provide ample evidence that on the whole, citizens in those countries, though they surely bicker and complain about their own system from time to time (human condition), feel fortunate to have nationalized health care and are relieved that they are not caught up in the U.S. system. If you watch American corporate propaganda like Bill O'Reilly, you can get brainwashed into believing that the U.S. health care system is the best in the world. In actuality, the U.S. is No. 37, just beating out Slovenia. :) Of course, it's true that Cuba is 39, two slots below the U.S., but on that list, France is No. 1, and the UK is No. 18. Well, given that only two slots separate the U.S. and Cuba, and given all the corporate propaganda we hear about Cuba's system being absolutely terrible... does that not say something about ourselves?
As a British-born American, who still has British and hence EU citizenship, I wonder if I'm being stupid for not packing my bags now. To make it short, I am a violinist in several minor-league orchestras, like the Dayton and West Virginia Symphonies. Those are considered part-time orchestras, they don't offer any kind of benefits, not enough money to live on, and of course you only get paid when you actually work. If I moved to Germany tomorrow, and started playing with comparable orchestras over there, I wouldn't have to worry about health care, and I'd get six weeks of paid vacation a year!
Anyway, Mr. Moore, great job once again!