I’ve been waiting to see this film since I read that it was being made. Just like everyone else, we have our fair share of health care horror stories. The Dauphin has a chronic illness. The only thing standing between us and financial ruin is the fact that the industry he works in typically offers outstanding health insurance as a benefit. Also, my mother died as the result of a drug study, so I’m pretty passionate on the subject of drug companies and the fact that it’s now, and has always been, profits over patients.
First of all, I believe this to be the best work of Michael Moore’s career. Instead of the sledgehammer he’s used in the past, he’s walking softly and carrying a heavy stick. This movie sneaks up on you. “SiCKO” is much more powerful in its own way than both “Bowling For Columbine” and “Fahrenheit 9/11″. Its message is much more subtle. Not only was the filmmaker attempting to get all of us to understand the huge financial and personal cost of the health care crisis in the United States, he was trying to show that we must work together to find our way out of it. Our society is just as sick as the health care CEO’s that are taking multi-million dollar salaries while condemning subscribers to sub-standard care in the name of bonuses and stock options.
I will be curious to know what others here thought of the movie; I told DH on the drive home that anyone who thinks about what they’ve just seen will find themselves coming to some fairly tough conclusions. Our elected representatives on both sides of the aisle have shamelessly and repeatedly bellied up to the health insurance money trough, and now that bill’s come due. If we are serious about universal health care in the United States — and at this point, we have no other choice — they will have to go. Every last one of them.
Every last one of us knows someone who has been drastically affected by health care costs, or is someone who does not have health insurance. Of course, there are multiple stories of those who lost everything because they were uninsured, their insurance company denied their claim (wait, ladies, till you see the woman who was denied coverage of a VERY expensive surgery because she had a routine female health complaint,) or because they just could not get treatment for whatever illness they had.
One of the most telling statements of the film came from a former member of Parliament. He made the statement that Britain decided they had no other choice than to institute their national health care coverage because, as he said, (paraphrased,) “If we had the money to kill people, we had the money to pay for health care.”
The footage in Cuba will break the hearts of the most hardened. Imagine a first responder at the World Trade Center on September 11th, now desperately ill and can’t get adequate treatment in the USA because she can’t afford it, being told that not only would she be getting the care she needs, it won’t cost her a cent. The inhaler she needed in the US is $100. It’s five cents in Cuba. We claim these folks are our heroes, but we can’t take care of them when they are sick as a result of their work? After all, Rudolph Giuliani, Christie Todd Whitman and the rest of our government lied about the air quality in New York City for months!
One of the questions Michael Moore asked: How can we, as a society, condemn others to live this way?
You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll come out of the theater mad as hell. Again, this movie is accessible. If it doesn’t start the dialogue (and force a lot of people to take action,) we have nobody to blame but ourselves.
The revolution starts now.
-S
