In Sickness and In Health Insurance Denial (Sicko (DVD))

Member Name: collingwood21

Product:	Sicko (DVD)
Date:	26/07/09 (163 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Interesting and entertaining, Great interview with Tony Benn

Disadvantages: Some subjects are arguably exploited, Does not consider disadvantages of socialised healthcare

"Sicko" (2007) - FILM ONLY REVIEW

Writer: Michael Moore
Director: Michael Moore

Running Time: 123 minutes
Certificate: 12A (UK) / PG (Ireland) / PG13 (USA)

It has become something of a cliché to describe Michael Moore as a controversial, polarising character. To some, he is the White Knight of the left whose regular-guy approach to discussing uncomfortable subjects should be applauded, while to others he is a man who has exploited vulnerable interview subjects and creatively edited and interpreted history to present the picture he wants to make his attention-grabbing documentaries a success. An entire industry has grown up attempting to discredit Moore's work and has given his reputation something of a battering over recent years, but while some of the criticism he has received has I think been justified, this has not prevented him producing his highly entertaining 2007 documentary "Sicko" about the American medical industry. In many ways, this has proved to be an excellent response to his critics, and I found it to be the most watchable of his films that I have seen.

"Sicko" is an investigation into the state of the US healthcare system, a system that is unique in the westernised world for providing medical services based around private insurance policies. American medicine is popularly portrayed in many TV shows and films as being slick, hi-tech and cutting edge, with hotel-standard rooms in hospitals to house well-treated, happy patients; we only occasionally hear of those who cannot afford or cannot get health insurance, and of the "free clinics" that are set up by charities to try to bridge this gap in provision. My first big realisation that this system wasn't quite the utopia that was portrayed came only when I saw Morgan Spurlock's eye-opening documentary "30 Days", when he adapted his immersion-style of journalism made famous by "Supersize Me" to experience living on the US minimum wage for a month (see: http://www.channel4.com/more4/documentaries/doc-fe ature.jsp?id=12). The result of this experiment was that they could almost cope with this level of income until Morgan required treatment for an injured hand, which left them with considerable financial problems; the minimum wage jobs they were working did not provide health insurance as part of their terms, and nor could they afford the treatment out of their budget. Unusually, however, "Sicko" states in its opening scenes that it is not going to be about the 50 million Americans who do not have health insurance - instead, he chooses to focus on the problems experienced by the 250 million who do.

Moore started off research for this documentary by posting an advert on the internet asking for stories from people who have had problems with their health insurance provider, and the size of the response surprised even him - within a month of the advert going up, Moore had received over 25,000 stories from people across the US. Take, for example, the man who had an accident with a buzz saw and lost the tops of his two middle fingers on his left hand. As the insurance company refused the $72,000 bill for the reattachment of both fingers, he was forced to choose which one would be restored (old romantic that he was, he chose to make his ring finger whole again). Then there is the case of the young woman who was knocked unconscious in a head-on collision in her car, who woke up in hospital to find she was being lumbered with a hefty bill for her ambulance journey because she hadn't "pre-approved" it with her insurers. If that is not crazy enough for you, there is the 22 year old who was refused life-saving treatment for cervical cancer from her insurers because "22 year olds don't get cervical cancer". She survived, but is now so disillusioned with the system and indebted to the banks who loaned her the money for her treatment that she has set up a fake Canadian address so she can access the free healthcare over the border from her home in Michigan. The stark reality is that insurance companies prefer profits over payouts, and will do anything in their power to avoid honouring claims - of course they will, that is how they make their money. This is not a surprise to anyone, but an insurer refusing to pay out claims takes on a more sinister tone when it is concerning your life-or-death medical treatment than when it is about repairing a dent in your car. As one former insurance employee puts it, "you're not slipping between the cracks. Somebody made that crack and swept you towards it."

Having established very clearly that there are serious flaws in this system, Moore moves on to act 2 of his film: presenting the case for socialised medicine. There is great resistance to such a term in the US, being far too closely associated with the evils of communism for many people's liking and besides, as Nixon was once recorded to have said, having healthcare provided by private enterprise would give shareholders the chance to make some good returns as long as too many people weren't treated. After first visiting Canada to get people waiting in a clinic to tell him how little time they had to wait for treatment, how everything was free and wonderful, and how lucky they were, Moore then heads for this side of the Atlantic to showcase first the NHS and then the French healthcare system. The point at which Moore rolls up at a NHS hospital made me feel a bit uneasy; putting on a theatrical naivety, he wanders the corridors of a remarkably well presented establishment asking bemused staff and patients where they pay for their treatment before talking to a (very photogenic and remarkably unstressed) GP about not only the benefits of the British system, but also how well reimbursed he was for his work (another argument against socialised healthcare often used in the US is that doctors would be poorly paid). Likewise, a trip to a Cuban hospital with a group of Americans (better yet, most of them 9/11 rescue workers) who cannot afford ongoing medical care at home is also undertaken; this is partly to bluntly challenge old prejudices, but also to illustrate the remarkable health statistics of a country who spend less than 5% of the amount spent on health per person in the US but who achieved among other things a lower infant mortality rate than in their richer neighbours.

What Moore produces from this material is two hours of very watchable material that it is almost impossible not to react to; Moore is certainly adept at playing our emotions, and in turns provides material that is shocking, despairing, surprising and fascinating. Whatever your thoughts on the content, it is never anything less than entertaining. In his previous films, Moore has produced morality tales where he has set himself up as the dogged warrior for the downtrodden and hard-done-by, and challenger of the villains in their dens of power as he tries to get responses from the top. Not here, however. Moore does not visit the bosses of the insurance companies in this case, preferring instead to make a devastating case by simply talking to those who have been let down by or who used to work in the system and are now disillusioned by it. But while it is very good at showing what is wrong with the current system, it doesn't do much analysis of the alternatives - this is not an fine grained examination of socialised medicine, more a simple "compare and contrast" exercise where everything is black and white, all wrong on one side and all right on the other.

While the answer to healthcare problems provided by Moore may seem wonderful to all those Americans who have been let down by their insurers, to those of us watching in the UK, the second act of the film seems to have been made with a distinctly rosy tint to it. While it is wonderful to see someone praising the work of the NHS for a change - better still to see an outsider do it - it presents a uniformly positive image without considering the disadvantages of our way of providing medical care. That one nice young GP is remarkably relaxed does not mean many other doctors are not overworked and stressed, and yes there are waiting lists and not-that-nice wards and shortages of resources in some areas due to lack of funds that Moore doesn't even mention. The brilliant interview with Tony Benn, who explains the NHS not as an act of state paternalism but as a triumph of democracy, does help redeem this section of the film, however.

Does Moore cut a few corners? Sure. Does he exploit suffering 9/11 rescue volunteers who have been abandoned by the US authorities when they try to get their respiratory and stress-related problems treated? Probably. Is socialised medicine at universally wonderful as he portrays? Well no, not really. But despite the occasional lapses into lunacy and questionable elements of this documentary, the weight of evidence Moore produces for his argument is compelling and worth watching, and I guarantee that any British viewers will never feel hard done by when paying an NHS prescription charge ever again.

Recommended.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/sicko/index.html

Summary: A compelling argument about the flaws in US healthcare