"Sicko": a movie review
Last Saturday Steve and I we went to see Michael Moore's movie "Sicko". I'm sure other reviewers have said what I'm about to say, but I'll add a "me too". "Sicko" is at its best when it shows how the health care system in the US is perverted by insurance companies, that hold all the power. It is based on a perverse system of incentives, because insurance companies make money by denying care to patients. The money they are obligated to pay is their loss, the money they find a way to avoid paying are savings. There's no incentive for them to provide more care to more patients. At least if you believe Michael Moore. I found that not difficult to believe, though.
Less so Moore's portrayal of the nationalized health care systems of Canada, UK, France, and Cuba.
Obviously, a view of Cuba as a health care heaven would strain anyone's credibility, but mine especially, because growing up in the former communist block I've experienced a socialist health care system first hand. People believed that in order to get a decent care at a hospital you had to either personally know someone in the hospital management, or the doctor attending to you, and / or you had to bribe all the medical personnel that was going to take care of you. Otherwise you couldn't expect adequate care. There was even a joke that went, what's the most expensive thing in the world? free medical care! There were also shortages of everything, including medicines and medical equipment, and whatever equipment hospitals had was far below the Western standards. I do believe that Michael Moore's proteges he took to Cuba for medical procedures got excellent care because the Cuban government, if it follows the playbook of communist governments, must have jumped at an opportunity to turn this into propaganda. I'm also not very impressed with what Moore said about Cuba sending an extraordinary number of doctors to thirld world sites in need of humanitarian relief. That's one of those gestures totalitarian regimes use to demonstrate their "superiority": look, we are rich enough to afford to help those in need!... while depriving their own citizens of the same services.
I can say less about the nationalized health care systems of Canada, UK or France -- and in fact Steve, who grew up in Scotland, says that despite being sick a lot as a child, his experiences with UK's NHS weren't bad -- but... knowing that Michael Moore is by far not an objective filmmaker, I can't take his reporting at the face value. Not surprisingly, Moore's rose-colored glasses filtered out nightmare stories like the one I read on msnbc.com a few years ago. An American tourist in Paris went to a hospital with a horrible pain in his stomach, and was diagnosed with a ruptured duodenum. The stomach acid was leaking out into the surrounding organs. He required urgent surgery. However, it was August, when French go on vacation, and there was only one surgeon in the hospital, and he was tied up doing other emergency surgeries. At first the American guy was given morphine for pain, but it wore off, and nobody renewed his dose. He was left alone to lie there for 12 hours with excruciating pain, his condition deteriorating, certain he was going to die.
And Moore does not stop at painting a rosy view of nationalized health care, but extends his admiration to those countries' socio-economical systems in general, e.g. France's 35-hour work week, 5 weeks of mandatory vacation time, long paid maternity leave, etc. Never mind that the unemployment in those countries is much higher than in the US, and their populations are afraid that their overburdened welfare systems are poised to collapse. But let's not go into that right now.
That said, I believe that the idea of a national health care system has merit -- not just to individuals but to companies as well, since not having to pay for employees' health insurance would free up large parts of their operating budget; this has been argued in some media outlets whose objectivity I trust much better than Moore's, such as New York Times; and it seems that the US population is more receptive to this idea now than it used to be. I don't think it's a bad idea. But as much as Moore makes a passionate case for it, I don't know if he serves his cause so well, given that a big part of what he says has to be taken with a grain -- nah, a huge wallop -- of salt.
Overall it is a good movie to spend a Saturday night at. While there are some heartbreaking moments in the movie, there's also plenty of funny one-liners, like where Moore asks a French woman "so the government comes to your home and does your laundry?" or at Guantanamo: "I have three 9/11 heroes with me. They only want to get the same care Al-Qaeda is getting, no better!"
Less so Moore's portrayal of the nationalized health care systems of Canada, UK, France, and Cuba.
Obviously, a view of Cuba as a health care heaven would strain anyone's credibility, but mine especially, because growing up in the former communist block I've experienced a socialist health care system first hand. People believed that in order to get a decent care at a hospital you had to either personally know someone in the hospital management, or the doctor attending to you, and / or you had to bribe all the medical personnel that was going to take care of you. Otherwise you couldn't expect adequate care. There was even a joke that went, what's the most expensive thing in the world? free medical care! There were also shortages of everything, including medicines and medical equipment, and whatever equipment hospitals had was far below the Western standards. I do believe that Michael Moore's proteges he took to Cuba for medical procedures got excellent care because the Cuban government, if it follows the playbook of communist governments, must have jumped at an opportunity to turn this into propaganda. I'm also not very impressed with what Moore said about Cuba sending an extraordinary number of doctors to thirld world sites in need of humanitarian relief. That's one of those gestures totalitarian regimes use to demonstrate their "superiority": look, we are rich enough to afford to help those in need!... while depriving their own citizens of the same services.
I can say less about the nationalized health care systems of Canada, UK or France -- and in fact Steve, who grew up in Scotland, says that despite being sick a lot as a child, his experiences with UK's NHS weren't bad -- but... knowing that Michael Moore is by far not an objective filmmaker, I can't take his reporting at the face value. Not surprisingly, Moore's rose-colored glasses filtered out nightmare stories like the one I read on msnbc.com a few years ago. An American tourist in Paris went to a hospital with a horrible pain in his stomach, and was diagnosed with a ruptured duodenum. The stomach acid was leaking out into the surrounding organs. He required urgent surgery. However, it was August, when French go on vacation, and there was only one surgeon in the hospital, and he was tied up doing other emergency surgeries. At first the American guy was given morphine for pain, but it wore off, and nobody renewed his dose. He was left alone to lie there for 12 hours with excruciating pain, his condition deteriorating, certain he was going to die.
And Moore does not stop at painting a rosy view of nationalized health care, but extends his admiration to those countries' socio-economical systems in general, e.g. France's 35-hour work week, 5 weeks of mandatory vacation time, long paid maternity leave, etc. Never mind that the unemployment in those countries is much higher than in the US, and their populations are afraid that their overburdened welfare systems are poised to collapse. But let's not go into that right now.
That said, I believe that the idea of a national health care system has merit -- not just to individuals but to companies as well, since not having to pay for employees' health insurance would free up large parts of their operating budget; this has been argued in some media outlets whose objectivity I trust much better than Moore's, such as New York Times; and it seems that the US population is more receptive to this idea now than it used to be. I don't think it's a bad idea. But as much as Moore makes a passionate case for it, I don't know if he serves his cause so well, given that a big part of what he says has to be taken with a grain -- nah, a huge wallop -- of salt.
Overall it is a good movie to spend a Saturday night at. While there are some heartbreaking moments in the movie, there's also plenty of funny one-liners, like where Moore asks a French woman "so the government comes to your home and does your laundry?" or at Guantanamo: "I have three 9/11 heroes with me. They only want to get the same care Al-Qaeda is getting, no better!"