MOVIE REVIEW: Sicko - Michael Moore v. American Healthcare

By Brian Abrams

Michael Moore’s latest assault-on-celluloid certainly pushes buttons – and that’s despite your partisanship.

Sicko puts the screws to the American healthcare system the way Moore’s Roger and Me did to General Motors and as much as Fahrenheit 9/11 did to the current administration, only this time the Oscar-winning documentarian doesn’t ask you to so much pick a political party as he does ask the government to have a fucking heart.

The corrupt institution responsible for, Moore claims, 50 million Americans living and dying without health insurance – a conspiracy which includes the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical manufacturers, and, of course, the lobbyist bunch on Capitol Hill – doesn’t care if your checkbook donates to the Republican or Democratic parties. It just wants a piece, and with giving as little in return as possible.

And Moore, left-winged radical that he is, curbs any sort of hostility toward the ruthless rich who support the right wing. (He throws Hillary Clinton under the bus as much as Dick Cheney.) Moore basically calls to the carpet anyone involved in this money-making scheme, saying they all need to put the breaks on capitalism for a second and take part in a little social responsibility.

That’s the first half of the picture, which smoothly segues into the latter half: strongly suggesting that America adopts a universal healthcare system. Moore takes several trips to Canada as well as a European vacation to the U.K. and France, where he enlightens his audience with how other countries offer free medical treatment, among other services. (Around eight minutes of screen time shows us how well the French live: door-to-door house calls at midnight, $1 a day daycare, nice chatty conversations over sweet red wine, you get the picture.)

The only problem with this second half is, don’t those countries’ systems have their downsides as well? If so, Moore certainly doesn’t show them to us. Instead Sicko convinces us that the programs run in Paris or Ottawa are happy-go-lucky for all.

He especially goes overboard when he sneaks a pack of 9/11 rescue workers (suffering from heinous chronic respiratory illnesses) into Cuba to get treated. The medical center on the island provides one patient with inhalers for approximately three pesos (compared to the American price of $120), the others are given top notch service, and it's all just a little too unbelievable.

Point being, other countries may not have it as perfect as Moore likes to paint it, but our own system has become so caste, we’d be fools not to at least entertain the idea.