Editorial Product Review:Description:Following on the heels of his Palm d'Or winning Fahrenheit 9/11 and his Oscar winning film Bowling for Columbine, acclaimed filmmaker Michael Moore's new documentary sets out to investigate the American healthcare system. Sticking to his tried-and-true one-man approach, Moore sheds light on the complicated medical affairs of individuals and local communities.
Amazon.com:SiCKO is more like a controlled howl of protest than a documentary. Toning down the rhetoric of past efforts--no CEOs, congressmen, or celebrities were accosted in the making of this film--Michael Moore's latest provocation is just as heartfelt, if not more heartbreaking. As he clarifies from the outset, his subject isn't the 45 million Americans without insurance, but those whose coverage has failed to meet their needs. He starts by speaking with patients who've been denied life-saving procedures, like chemotherapy, for the most spurious of reasons. Then he travels to Canada, England, and France to see if socialized medicine is as inefficient as U.S. politicians like to claim--especially those who receive funding from pharmaceutical companies. Moore finds quality care available to all, regardless as to income. He concludes with a stunt that made headlines when he assembles a group of 9/11 rescue workers suffering from a variety of afflictions. When Moore is informed that detainees at Guantánamo Bay--technically American soil--qualify for universal coverage, he and his companions travel to Cuba to get in on that action. It's a typically grandstanding move on Moore's part. And it proves remarkably effective when these altruistic individuals, who've either been denied treatment or forced to pay outrageous costs for their medication, experience a dramatically different system. Nine years in the making,
SiCKO makes a persuasive case that it's time for America to catch up with the rest of the world.
--Kathleen C. Fennessy
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Buyer Reviews
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A missed opportunity to promote American health care reform
The American health care system is, by common consent, dysfunctional. It presents an easy target for any campaigner to scandalize us with its sometimes corrupt, arbitrary and venal practices. However, to be persuasive, the arguments need to be accountable, honest and evidence-based.
Michael Moore's production is gimmicky and superficial. Moreover, it is shamelessly manipulative, treating us to heart-jerking scenes of tearful, hopeless cases bankrupted by medical bills or grieving over someone who died from treatment refused. He then tours other countries health systems viewing them without exception through rose-tinted spectacles. As grateful, sobbing American patients scoop up cheap medicines in Cuba, he comes to the conclusion that "socialized medicine" not only can work, it is to be welcomed.
But the truth is that no country has a fully socialized system and those that are closest to it (like the UK) are also approaching melt-down. Every advanced country in the world is wrestling with the intractable problem of finite resources colliding with infinite demand.
American insurance companies need to reduce the number of policy-holders falling sick, and of ex-patients having relapses. They therefore have a powerful incentive (not present in socialized systems) to undertake sickness prevention programs.
The big diseases that health systems have to deal with are eminently preventable, in fact they are self inflicted: cancers, heart disease, osteoporosis, diabetes and so on. I, as a nutritional anthropologist and a Brit, find myself frequently commissioned by the American health system to give courses to doctors and their patients, something that never happens in my own National Health Service - or "National Sickness Service" as some wags call it.
Michael Moore certainly gives many good reasons for not falling into the clutches of the American healthcare system: the politicians in the pay of Big Pharma and the Insurance Companies, the arbitrary nature of health cover, the total absence of cover for many citizens. But the bigger message is that it is no fun for anyone to fall sick wherever they are in the world - and it is possible, in large part, to avoid it! Deadly Harvest: The Intimate Relationship Between our Health and our Food One only has to contemplate an obese Michael Moore shambling around before the camera to wonder how long before he too will succumb.
There is an intelligent, thoughtful and well researched documentary to be done on health systems (by all means holding up the American system as one to be avoided) - but this is not it.
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Powerful argument for heath care reform
This is, to use an overused term, a must-see documentary. Moore powerfully shows how bad the U.S. health care system is at this time. He shows how different (and) better things are in European countries with "socialized" medicine. If Sicko doesn't convince you that we need health care reform nothing will. Having said this, I disagree with Moore's sanguine view of Cuba's health care system. The World Health Organization actually rates Cuba's system as worse than ours. Notwithstanding this criticism, I highly recommend Sicko.
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Excellent
Many people find Michael Moore annoying and dislike his political point of view but this documentary is more about the people than anything else. Fact, millions don't have health coverage in one of the most riches countries in the world. Fact, people are dying while few get richer and richer and FACT, the goverment so far has done nothing to improve the situation thousands have to face every day with a lack of health insurance. Choosing between keeping your house or getting that urgent medical treatment is something that should never happen. This documentary is really touching because of the human stories. Although I honestly doubt prisoners in Guantanamo get the first class treatment depicted here. Good health and the best medical treatments are not a luxury only for the rich but a need and a right all americans should have. Well done Mr. Moore.
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A Massive Indictment of Our Criminal Health-Care System
If you vote "not helpful" on this particular review, please tell me why. That's only fair because it is a subject of such importance to America. If you think Moore exaggerated, then please read my own horror stories below.
No one should oppose National Health Insurance without first seeing Michael Moore's unrelenting line of horror stories about American health care--a mere selection of 25,000 stories.
But I will not repeat Moore's horror stories. I'll give you some of my own. A doctor tried to talk me into a hernia operation. Coincidentally, I saw another doctor a week later. He checked me and said that I didn't have a hernia and that I should never go back to that doctor. Hello, in other words, I was going to pay for that doctor's swimming pool!
In the US the incentive for doctors is to perform more and more operations, not to keep people well (as in other countries).
My nephew went to see a find doctor at a major medical center, but the doctor refused to diagnose or treat my nephew. Actually, he was doing my nephew a favor because if he had tested him or treated him, he would not have been able to get long-term care insurance. He went out and got the insurance, and had to wait a year to go back to see the doctor! The waiting period!
I had to wait 90 days to get coverage with a new job. In the meantime, I was coughing all over my students.
Let us all agree to this American creed: No American should loose their home or life savings simply because they get sick. How can anyone disagree with that?
The American middle class had better wake up. Regardless of whether you have health insurance or not, you are only one or two diseases away from loosing our life savings and homes. National health insurance is the only answer, taking the best from the other countries that have it (and have a longer life expectancies--we rank 42).
Those who oppose national health insurance should do the honorable thing and turn down Medicare as a matter of principle. American cancer survival rates are higher, but note the following:
In response to an email that I sent, the Nation Cancer Institute said that "55.8 percent of all cancer cases are diagnosed in people 65 years and older." So Medicare has a big input in those survival rates. Probably even a greater impact in hip replacements. So the argument that government health insurance results in poor quality care is bogus.
Now quick, would you want to go to the Mayo Clinic, John Hopkins Medical Center, or a major VA hospital? ANSWER: THE VA PERFORMS BETTING IN ALMOST ALL AREAS. My two cousins love it.
Don't believe the lies told about Canada. Sara Robinson, who has duel Canadian-American citizenship, refuted common myths told about Canadian health care in "Ten Myths about the Canadian Health Care System" (see internet).
One of those great myths is that Canada's health-care system is "socialized medicine." False: In socialized medical systems, the doctors work directly for the state. In Canada (and many other countries with universal care), doctors run their own private practices, just like they do in the US. The only difference is that every doctor deals with one insurer, instead of 150.
The percentage of Canadians who'd consider giving up their beloved system consistently languishes in the single digits. A few years ago, a TV show asked Canadians to name the Greatest Canadian in history; and in a broad national consensus, they gave the honor to Tommy Douglas, the Saskatchewan premier who is considered the father of the country's health care system.
It is both true and false that there are longer waits. It all depends where you live. For the vast majority of Canadians, it is not true, but true for a few.
It is false that Canadians don't get to choose theirs own doctor.
Somebody, somewhere, is getting paid a lot of money to make this kind of stuff up. A bogus falsehood.
Canadian drugs are not the same. This is more preposterous bogosity.
They are exactly the same drugs, made by the same pharmaceutical companies, often in the same factories. The Canadian drug distribution system, however, has much tighter oversight; and pharmacies and pharmacists are more closely regulated. If there is a difference in Canadian drugs at all, they're actually likely to be safer.
It is false that publicly-funded programs will inevitably lead to rationed health care, particularly for the elderly. Sara Robinson calls this myth "False and bogglingly so." "The papers would have a field day if there was the barest hint that this might be true."
Basic morality 101: No person should loose their home or life savings because they are sick.
One of my readers is from Germany, and she worked at a private clinic in England. Their customers were wealthy Arabs, who could have come to the USA, but chose England. Why would they choose a so-called "socialist country"? Because England does not have socialized medicine--there are private hospitals, private doctors, and private insurance.
You cannot argue with life spans in countries with universal coverage. Here they are (overall, male and female--females live longer). I am looking only at major countries. There is something wrong when other capitalist countries are better off than our wealthy country.
Major Countries by Lifespan (all have universal health care). These countries except Cuba are ALL ranked in the world's top 10 capitalistic economic competitive list.
Japan: 82.6
Switzerland: 81.7 (at the top of the economic competitive list)
Australia: 81.2
Spain: 80.9 (booming capitalist economy and universal coverage)
Sweden: 80.9 (leader in green energy)
Israel: 80.7 (major private investor in US economy)
France (metropolitan): 80.7 (the doctors make house calls)
Canada: 80.7
Italy: 80.5
New Zealand: 80.2
Norway: 80.2
United Kingdom: 79.4 (they must be doing something right. About tenth in world economic competitiveness)
Germany: 79.4
Ireland: 78.9 (booming private economy with universal coverage)
Cuba: 78.3 (Cuba without the wealth to buy the medical marvels beats the US!)
United States: 78.2