Michael Moore
Sicko

Michael Moore is truly passionate about highlighting with hard-hitting and polemical documentaries how even the most powerful country in the world has its flaws. But are we sure the American dream still exists, I wonder? After the foreign policy of the Bushes (Senior & Junior) and the arms market, now it's the turn of the US healthcare system.

Moore's snapshot of US healthcare: Sick Ko.

In America, either you have insurance, and then you're fine, or you don't, and then you have to pray. This crude phrase sums up the stereotype of the U.S.A. healthcare system. Moore explains in five minutes that it's not exactly like that. The 50 million Americans (including 9 million children) who don't have insurance do indeed have to pray, but it's not that the 250 million insured are living in luxury. To really get good services, you have to put in some extra dollars, not to mention that the cost of medications is only minimally covered. The insurance companies in the industry are soulless sharks that tend to maximize their interests, trying in every way not to cover users and refusing to insure those at risk. Some examples? A 22-year-old girl is not paid because she's too young to have cancer, a boy too thin is not "taken" by any insurance company, the volunteer heroes of September 11th, as they are not state employees, are not covered and left to die. In order not to pay, companies send their henchmen to dig into each user's medical records in order to cancel the contract because the client may have lied about their health status at the time of signing, hiding pre-existing conditions (even minor ones) or because they filled out the insurance application incorrectly. In the US system, according to Moore, doctors are paid more if they make facilities spend less, if they administer only the bare minimum treatments to the sick, or better yet, if they administer none at all. Experimental drugs in desperate cases? Not necessary. Translation: those with significant financial resources enjoy respectable treatment, but those with an average income and a family to support who encounter a serious illness risk going bankrupt even with health insurance. An insured individual, after losing a ring finger and a middle finger on a circular saw, must decide whether to reattach them both for $72,000 or bid farewell to one forever.

Moore believes that the US political class is held hostage by major pharmaceutical and insurance companies in the healthcare sector and is guilty of continuing a scandalous propaganda about the alleged superiority of the American system, which, they say, has the advantage of offering the best services. It's a pity this situation only applies to those with the ample wallet to afford it, and the poor or low-middle-income families are not few on star-spangled soil. This situation has lasted since 1971 (Nixon) and shows no signs of changing.

In search of public healthcare:

For this reason, Moore goes to nearby Canada, France, and England to understand if public healthcare is really as dreadful as national propaganda paints it. Moore discovers then public healthcare, and for him, it is a paradise. He seems like a child at Christmas learning that one can enter a hospital without having apprehensions about the cost of the enforced stay. Almost incredulous and with a dazed look, he continues to say: "but really, when you enter a hospital, they don't immediately ask if you're insured?".

Why can't we replicate a system that works, asks our rotund director?

But really dear Michael, are you so romantic? Of course not! His is a question to which he knows the answer. You can't replicate the system because the interests surrounding the pharmaceutical and healthcare business are such that a recovery of the US political class is unthinkable. For Moore, the only way to try to move something is to weigh in with a harsh and raw denunciation documentary to show American viewers that another more just healthcare exists, and it is not a matter of socialism, because England and France cannot be defined as such, but of common sense because the care of citizens' health should be a primary duty of every state.

Criticism:

Moore's snapshot is extremist. I don't know the USA well, but I know how the public healthcare system works in much of Europe. If the basic principle (free services for all) of public healthcare is absolutely right Mr. Moore cannot think that a good hospital in London and ten interviews represent England, that five happy families in Paris represent France, and so on. In short, let's not fall like in the nonsense of the Italian program "Secondo Voi" that goes and asks 10 people on Via Montenapoleone what they think of Italian politics, then magically managing to draw national conclusions. There are differences in services, and very obvious ones too. The director puts a big black marker over it. Although understandable, as he addresses an American audience to offer them a global view, we are allowed to disagree with his happy and generalizing snapshot, which turns out to be misleading and exaggerated in a positive sense.

The film flows like a swing between the bad, very bad, and the good, very good. In America, a little girl dies because she is not accepted in a hospital not affiliated with the insurance company. Scene change, in England 32-year-old doctors have a $1 million house, an Audi A6, and earn $85,000 a year. And so on... In America, they throw you on the street if you don't have insurance, in France there is a night paramedic service.

I also didn't like that Moore dwelled on the healthcare services enjoyed by Guantanamo prisoners. The sense of prison is not to suffer physically, but to be locked up for a period (which can last until death) without being able to truly live. Moore makes a colossal blunder by saying that these prisoners enjoy themselves (adding cheerful music and making the prison seem like a perpetual vacation) and taking three boats with some unlucky "film protagonists" towards Cuba, heading to the base: a childish prank. The problem is the national healthcare system, certainly not a hundred people in Guantanamo spending US resources. The trip to Cuba takes Moore to the devil's house, Fidel's, and here too he discovers that the healthcare system is decidedly better than the American one and falls into the sappy with the encounter between Cuban firefighters and American heroes, who embrace each other like brothers, etc...

Moore cites life expectancy data, saying how the USA, despite having the best medical technologies, is far behind other countries, as only a few can truly use them. He says the French eat a lot of bread and drink loads of wine (without the slightest stereotype he also talks about us) yet live longer than the Yankees thanks to healthcare. Well dear Michael, in my opinion, you should also consider a little thing. Medicine may work wonders, but if the United States has the highest number of obese people on the planet, a few more heart collapses should be expected, don't you think? This is also a plague of America, and you are a part of it.

In the final part of the film, Moore positions himself as a moralizer towards a guy running a website against him. This person, in economic difficulty due to his wife's illness, is no longer able to bear the costs to maintain his campaign against Moore online. The director anonymously pays a $12,000 check (three peanuts for him): certainly a commendable gesture but it could also have remained anonymous in my modest opinion.

Conclusion:

I've been to hospital so far only for trivial reasons (a couple of sprained ankles, broken fingers, and a few stitches for scattered wounds), but I happened to see people really in bad shape being carried on stretchers. In my opinion, there is no way a person suffering should be worried about having insurance to cover expenses and not be kicked out of a hospital. This is not democratic and it's not a matter of right or left. The state (through taxes) should guarantee the best possible healthcare service to everyone. This is what Moore would want in America: it is undoubtedly right, and I think it's hard to dispute. I do not agree with the simplistic way in which the American director approached the subject, but the topic is hot and worthy of being analyzed. He tackles it head-on as usual, with irreverence and with some gaps.

Rating: 2 and a half stars / three.