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Derek Malcolm's rating
Michael Moore sugars a bitter pill
By
Derek Malcolm
25 Oct 2007
The iniquities of America's health service, if you can call it such, are an easy target from someone as wrathful and amusing as Michael Moore. His thesis is that healthcare is virtually non-existent for the millions of uninsured poor in the US, and that, even if you are expensively insured, there exist teams of medics engaged solely to examine claims and, if possible, refuse them.
This is unconvincingly denied by the health companies, who try to explain that some claims are indeed fraudulent and need a closer look. But the examples Moore gives suggest otherwise. So far, so good. But then Moore comes to the UK, France and then, with a masterstroke of cunning, to Cuba with a posse of sick people to find them free treatment.
At this point what is clearly a film made for an American audience, and very effectively too, becomes a little specious. It doesn't fib but it gilds the lily with all the skill of a polemicist determined to rub his lecture in. In England, he tries to pay for the treatment of his charges at what he thinks is a cashier desk but which in fact dispenses money to those unable to get home of their own accord. He cannot believe it. How wonderful! In France, he opines that it is small wonder the French are happy when the state looks after them so well.
The French happy? He must be joking. But he seems not to be, nor does he mention that while treatment may be free in British hospitals, you might just die of other diseases than those which got you there. In Cuba, the authorities are delighted to see the Americans coming for treatment. Moore wonders at this largesse without seeming to notice the propaganda aspect, though there is little doubt that Castro's island does well for its citizens medically speaking.
Moore has again made a film which, though basically sound in logic, sugars the pill in a way which seems suspect in its determination to suggest that, as far as healthcare is concerned, America is bad and everywhere else is good.
Sicko may well make us feel that to be ill in America is not a comforting experience unless money is no object or you are lucky in your insurers. But it will also cause us to giggle at his praise of the NHS. While it often deserves more praise than it gets, even Americans might cavil at some of our health service's better publicised disadvantages.
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Reader views (1)
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.
- Rajib Prasain, Nepal, 10/11/2008 06:10
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