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The important thing to note about "Sicko" is that it is not about those who do not health insurance in this country. Michael's movie begins brilliantly with the stories of those who had no health insurance and who were forced to pay obscenely high fees for surgical operations. It's a brilliant beginning because it distinguishes itself from what the rest of the movie is really about: those of us who do have health insurance and how we still end up paying obscenely high fees for medical treatment. The problem in this country with health care is that it is seen more as a business than anything else. The bottom line is profit at the expense of anything that can take away from it. Moore makes his case strong and clear as he interviews many people who have come to him with their horror stories of the health care industry, and there were literally thousands of them. Most horrific out of those stories are the many ways that people get rejected for insurance. The CEOs seem to be on a mission to keep anyone away who could be a possible threat to their profit margin. The movie's second act deals with Michael Moore going to different countries to see how their health care industries compare. The difference between them and America are frighteningly tremendous. Canada and England seem to have it over everyone else in that they do not bill their patients when they come in or leave because they are under a government run health care system that provides them with universal health care. There is a cashier at one hospital, but instead of billing patients, he pays them for cab fare if they were financially inconvienced in their method of getting over to the hospital. My only issue with the second act of the film is that Michael Moore never really gets into any negatives that these countries deal with in regards to health insurance. I refuse to believe that everything is as rosy as it is presented here. My understanding is that Canadians and the English don't completely love their health care systems to the same degree. Then again, what scares me if Michael Moore did include some of the negatives of these countries and put them together with the positives, USA would still look pretty bad in comparison. I think with Michael Moore's films, he does manipulate you a lot, but for good reason. He wants you to be mad at those who keep us from having universal health care because it would affect their profit margin. He wants you to be angry at politicians on either side of the political spectrum for being bought up by the health care industry. He aims to wake you up to the problems surrounding us and to do something about them. He may not be telling you everything, but that hardly makes him a liar. The last half of the movie deals with some of the heroes of 9/11 and their medical woes they inherited from working in the toxic environment that was left for them after the destruction of the twin towers. Because these were vounteers and were not employed by city fire departments and police stations, they were not given the same medical consideration as those who were. Michael takes them to Cuba which is reputed to have one of the very best health care systems in the world. This of course got Michael into trouble with our US government which provided him some free publicity that he may or may not have been seeking. The difference between the prices for medication in Cuba and the US as presented in this movie are ridiculously tremendous. You feel both the heartache and the relief of these people as they come to discover a way of doing things that actually benefits the people as opposed to those who get million dollar payouts. Whereas our country rewards those who limit health care services to keep them from losing money, other countries reward those who actually help their patients. Why the hell aren't we doing that? You feel for the families who go through illnesses they never asked for, and having to pay exorbatant amounts for their health care and having to go into bankruptcy in the process. The fact that they are forced to sell their home and move in with their children feels so unfair. Despite it's ever present manipulative tendencies, there's no denying that "Sicko" is a highhly effective and utterly devastating documentary that you will have strong reaction to. You may come out of this movie thinking that Michael himself is very anti american. I don't think he is and never have. In his own way, he is a patriotic american who cares enough about this country to point out it's weaknesses for everyone to see so that we can face them rather than avoid them. We need people like Michael Moore, those who ruffle the feathers of the conservative firebrands who want you to believe that everything is alright. We need someone to shake things up from time to time, and Michael Moore continues doing that even when you think his career will be over. email this review to a friend
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