Sicko: A Review

OK, maybe I'm the last American to see Michael Moore's Sicko. That won't stop me from writing a review. Let me start by stipulating that Michael's Moore is an utterly shameless provocateur, demagogue, and rabble-rouser. His humor is broad, his rage is hot and and his tongue sarcastic - in short, he is perfect for taking on America's absurd health care system.

I found it hard to watch. It made me far too angry. The recurrent theme is the vast misfortune of being sick in America. After a few stories of the patients uninsured and, worse, insured but cheated by their insurance companies, he turns to the villains of the story: the HMOs, the insurance companies, their house doctors whose job it is to save insurance companies money by denying patients treatment, and the politicians that they have bought and paid for.

Most of the stories have unhappy endings: a child dead because Kaiser (with whom she was insured) and the hospital the ambulance took her to refused to allow her to be treated, sick and injured patients dumped in skid row, 9/11 workers sick and untreated from their service.

Moore traces a bit of the history of our system, unearthing a few villains along the way - Nixon, Kaiser, and our good buddy Ronald Reagan. He assembles a cast of congressional celebrators of the Medicare drug swindle, conveniently adding price tags - the payoffs they got from the drug and insurance lobbies. Mother loving Congressman Billy Tauzan (that was the subject of his speech) got the big prize - a $2 Million as head of the Pharma lobby. Others - Bush and the usual suspects also did well. Erstwhile reformer Hillary Clinton was one of the biggest takers.

Next we see a tour of some other country's health care systems: Canada, the much maligned British system, and France. All wound up looking pretty good.

A good movie if you can stand the seamy underside of the American politico-insurance complex, and can control any violent impulses that might be induced.