Excellent analysis of Moore's "Sicko"

[bbrown]

"Sicko": Heavily Doctored by Kurt Loder (http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1563758/story.jhtml)

Michael Moore may see himself as working in the tradition of such crusading muckrakers of the last century as Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell and Upton Sinclair — writers whose dedication to exposing corruption and social injustices played a part in sparking much-needed reforms. In his new movie, "Sicko," Moore focuses on the U.S. health-care industry — a juicy target — and he casts a shocking light on some of the people it's failed.

There's a man who mangled two of his fingers with a power saw and learned that it would cost $12,000 to save one of them, but $60,000 to save the other. He had no health insurance and could only scrape together enough money to salvage the $12,000 finger.

There's a woman whose husband was prescribed new drugs to combat his cancer, but couldn't get their insurance company to pay for them because the drugs were experimental. Her husband died.

Then there's a woman who made an emergency trip to a hospital for treatment and subsequently learned her insurance company wouldn't pay for the ambulance that took her there — because it hadn't been "pre-approved." And there's a middle-aged couple — a man, who suffered three heart attacks, and his wife, who developed cancer — who were bankrupted by the cost of co-payments and other expenses not covered by their insurance, and have now been forced to move into a cramped, dismal room in the home of a resentful son. There's also a 79-year-old man who has to continue working a menial job because Medicare won't cover the cost of all the medications he needs.

Moore does a real service in bringing these stories to light — some of them are horrifying, and then infuriating. One giant health-maintenance organization, Kaiser Permanente, is so persuasively lambasted in the movie that, on the basis of what we're told, we want to burst into the company's executive suites and make a mass citizen's arrest. This is the sort of thing good muckrakers are supposed to do.

Unfortunately, Moore is also a con man of a very brazen sort, and never more so than in this film. His cherry-picked facts, manipulative interviews (with lingering close-ups of distraught people breaking down in tears) and blithe assertions (how does he know 18,000* people will die this year because they have no health insurance?) are so stacked that you can feel his whole argument sliding sideways as the picture unspools. The American health-care system is in urgent need of reform, no question. Some 47 million people are uninsured (although many are only temporarily so, being either in-between jobs or young enough not to feel a pressing need to buy health insurance). There are a number of proposals as to what might be done to correct this situation. Moore has no use for any of them, save one.

As a proud socialist, the director appears to feel that there are few problems in life that can't be solved by government regulation (that would be the same government that's already given us the U.S. Postal Service and the Department of Motor Vehicles). In the case of health care, though, Americans have never been keen on socialized medicine. In 1993, when one of Moore's heroes, Hillary Clinton (he actually blurts out the word "sexy!" in describing her in the movie), tried to create a government-controlled health care system, her failed attempt to do so helped deliver the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives into Republican control for the next dozen years. Moore still looks upon Clinton's plan as a grand idea, one that Americans, being not very bright, unwisely rejected. (He may be having second thoughts about Hillary herself, though: In the movie he heavily emphasizes the fact that, among politicians, she accepts the second-largest amount of political money from the health care industry.)

The problem with American health care, Moore argues, is that people are charged money to avail themselves of it. In other countries, like Canada, France and Britain, health systems are far superior — and they're free. He takes us to these countries to see a few clean, efficient hospitals, where treatment is quick and caring; and to meet a few doctors, who are delighted with their government-regulated salaries; and to listen to patients express their beaming happiness with a socialized health system. It sounds great. As one patient in a British hospital run by the country's National Health Service says, "No one pays. It's all on the NHS. It's not America."

That last statement is even truer than you'd know from watching "Sicko." In the case of Canada — which Moore, like many other political activists, holds up as a utopian ideal of benevolent health-care regulation — a very different picture is conveyed by a short 2005 documentary called "Dead Meat," by Stuart Browning and Blaine Greenberg. These two filmmakers talked to a number of Canadians of a kind that Moore's movie would have you believe don't exist:

A 52-year-old woman in Calgary recalls being in severe need of joint-replacement surgery after the cartilage in her knee wore out. She was put on a wait list and wound up waiting 16 months for the surgery. Her pain was so excruciating, she says, that she was prescribed large doses of Oxycontin, and soon became addicted. After finally getting her operation, she was put on another wait list — this time for drug rehab.

A man tells about his mother waiting two years for life-saving cancer surgery — and then twice having her surgical appointments canceled. She was still waiting when she died.

A man in critical need of neck surgery plays a voicemail message from a doctor he'd contacted: "As of today," she says, "it's a two-year wait-list to see me for an initial consultation." Later, when the man and his wife both needed hip-replacement surgery and grew exasperated after spending two years on a waiting list, they finally mortgaged their home and flew to Belgium to have the operations done there, with no more waiting.

Rick Baker, the owner of a Toronto company called Timely Medical Alternatives, specializes in transporting Canadians who don't want to wait for medical care to Buffalo, New York, two hours away, where they won't have to. Baker's business is apparently thriving.

And Dr. Brian Day, now the president of the Canadian Medical Association, muses about the bizarre distortions created by a law that prohibits Canadians from paying for even urgently-needed medical treatments, or from obtaining private health insurance. "It's legal to buy health insurance for your pets," Day says, "but illegal to buy health insurance for yourself." (Even more pointedly, Day was quoted in the Wall Street Journal this week as saying, "This is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years.")

Actually, this aspect of the Canadian health-care system is changing. In 2005, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled in favor of a man who had filed suit in Quebec over being kept on an interminable waiting list for treatment. In striking down the government health care monopoly in that province, Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin said, "Access to a waiting list is not access to health care." Now a similar suit has been filed in Ontario.

What's the problem with government health systems? Moore's movie doesn't ask that question, although it does unintentionally provide an answer. When governments attempt to regulate the balance between a limited supply of health care and an unlimited demand for it they're inevitably forced to ration treatment. This is certainly the situation in Britain. Writing in the Chicago Tribune this week, Helen Evans, a 20-year veteran of the country's National Health Service and now the director of a London-based group called Nurses for Reform, said that nearly 1 million Britons are currently on waiting lists for medical care — and another 200,000 are waiting to get on waiting lists. Evans also says the NHS cancels about 100,000 operations each year because of shortages of various sorts. Last March, the BBC reported on the results of a Healthcare Commission poll of 128,000 NHS workers: two thirds of them said they "would not be happy" to be patients in their own hospitals. James Christopher, the film critic of the Times of London, thinks he knows why. After marveling at Moore's rosy view of the British health care system in "Sicko," Christopher wrote, "What he hasn't done is lie in a corridor all night at the Royal Free [Hospital] watching his severed toe disintegrate in a plastic cup of melted ice. I have." Last month, the Associated Press reported that Gordon Brown — just installed this week as Britain's new prime minister — had promised to inaugurate "sweeping domestic reforms" to, among other things, "improve health care."

Moore's most ardent enthusiasm is reserved for the French health care system, which he portrays as the crowning glory of a Gallic lifestyle far superior to our own. The French! They work only 35 hours a week, by law. They get at least five weeks' vacation every year. Their health care is free, and they can take an unlimited number of sick days. It is here that Moore shoots himself in the foot. He introduces us to a young man who's reached the end of three months of paid sick leave and is asked by his doctor if he's finally ready to return to work. No, not yet, he says. So the doctor gives him another three months of paid leave — and the young man immediately decamps for the South of France, where we see him lounging on the sunny Riviera, chatting up babes and generally enjoying what would be for most people a very expensive vacation. Moore apparently expects us to witness this dumbfounding spectacle and ask why we can't have such a great health care system, too. I think a more common response would be, how can any country afford such economic insanity?

As it turns out, France can't. In 2004, French Health Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy told a government commission, "Our health system has gone mad. Profound reforms are urgent." Agence France-Presse recently reported that the French health-care system is running a deficit of $2.7 billion. And in the French presidential election in May, voters in surprising numbers rejected the Socialist candidate, Ségolène Royal, who had promised actually to raise some health benefits, and elected instead the center-right politician Nicolas Sarkozy, who, according to Agence France-Presse again, "plans to move fast to overhaul the economy, with the deficit-ridden health care system a primary target." Possibly Sarkozy should first consult with Michael Moore. After all, the tax-stoked French health care system may be expensive, but at least it's "free."

Having driven his bring-on-government-health care argument into a ditch outside of Paris, Moore next pilots it right off a cliff and into the Caribbean on the final stop on his tour: Cuba. Here it must also be said that the director performs a valuable service. He rounds up a group of 9/11 rescue workers — firefighters and selfless volunteers — who risked their lives and ruined their health in the aftermath of the New York terrorist attacks. These people — there's no other way of putting it — have been screwed, mainly by the politicians who were at such photo-op pains to praise them at the time. (This makes Moore's faith in government medical compassion seem all the more inexplicable.) These people's lives have been devastated — wracked by chronic illnesses, some can no longer hold down jobs and none can afford to buy the various expensive medicines they need. Moore does them an admirable service by bringing their plight before a large audience.

However, there's never a moment when we doubt that he's also using these people as props in his film, and as talking points in his agenda. Renting some boats, he leads them all off to Cuba. Upon arrival they stop briefly outside the American military enclave on Guantanamo Bay so that Moore can have himself filmed begging, through a bullhorn, for some of the free, top-notch medical care that's currently being lavished on the detainees there. Having no luck, he then moves on to Cuba proper.

Fidel Castro's island dictatorship, now in its 40th year of being listed as a human-rights violator by Amnesty International, is here depicted as a balmy paradise not unlike the Iraq of Saddam Hussein that Moore showed us in his earlier film, "Fahrenheit 9/11." He and his charges make their way — their pre-arranged way, if it need be said — to a state-of-the-art hospital where they receive a picturesquely warm welcome. In a voiceover, Moore, shown beaming at his little band of visitors, says he told the Cuban doctors to "give them the same care they'd give Cuban citizens." Then he adds, dramatically: "And they did."

If Moore really believes this, he may be a greater fool than even his most feverish detractors claim him to be. Nevertheless, medical care is provided to the visiting Americans, and it is indeed excellent. Cuba is in fact the site of some world-class medical facilities (surprising in a country that, as Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar noted in the Los Angeles Times last month, "imprisoned a doctor in the late 1990s for speaking out against government failure to respond to an epidemic of a mosquito-borne virus"). What Moore doesn't mention is the flourishing Cuban industry of "health tourism" — a system in which foreigners (including self-admitted multimillionaire film directors and, of course, government bigwigs) who are willing to pay cash for anything from brain-surgery to dental work can purchase a level of treatment that's unavailable to the majority of Cubans with no hard currency at their disposal. The Cuban American National Foundation (admittedly a group with no love for the Castro regime) calls this "medical apartheid." And in a 2004 article in Canada's National Post, writer Isabel Vincent quoted a dissident Cuban neurosurgeon, Doctor Hilda Molina, as saying, "Cubans should be treated the same as foreigners. Cubans have less rights in their own country than foreigners who visit here."

As the Caribbean sun sank down on Moore's breathtakingly meretricious movie, I couldn't help recalling that when Fidel Castro became gravely ill last year, he didn't put himself in the hands of a Cuban surgeon. No. Instead, he had a specialist flown in — from Spain.

[Kitka]

I think it's prudent to even out the 'excellent analysis'... but even better, I'd like YOU to go see it and not rely on others to review it. It's always better to make informed opinions than to rely on others to make them. I can say that I agree with the following review after seeing the movie...

http://filmcritic1963.typepad.com/reviews/2007/06/sicko.html

Michael Moore’s knack for framing political and social issues in a surprisingly entertaining documentary format is a journalistic phenomenon that picks up where ‘60s era activist filmmakers like Barbara Kopple ("Harlan County USA") left off. Davis Guggenheim’s "An Inconvenient Truth" might have been the first movie, documentary or otherwise, to effect noticeable social change, but Moore’s "Fahrenheit 9/11" became the highest grossing doc in history, by far. Unlike in his previous films, Moore himself doesn’t appear until roughly 40-minutes in, by which time he’s set the parameters of his intercontinental comparative medical care window-shopping tour. "SiCKO" isn’t about the 50 million Americans living without health care, of which 18,000 will die needlessly this year, but rather about middle-class Americans living with medical coverage in a system that charges increasing prices for an ever-shortening list of services while poorer countries run circles around us. The point is summed up in a "Star Wars"-style scroll that lists conditions that will make you ineligible for health care under corporate health care pirates like Aetna or Cigna. The juxtaposition of George Lucas’ famous sci-fi motif alongside the anti-humanitarian index provokes the kind of uncomfortable laughter that Moore is famous for extracting in the face of systemic failures.

"SiCKO" bops along with cheesy pop music references, archive film and TV footage and brief history lessons about iconic figures such as Canada’s Tommy Clement Douglas who introduced universal public Medicare in 1961. But Moore’s idealistic motivations resound in his subject’s personal stories, like the American carpenter who severed two fingers in a band-saw accident and had to choose between paying $60,000 to reattach his middle finger or $12,000 to have his ring finger put back together. Then there’s the woman who drives across the border to Canada to get cervical cancer treatment that her HMO doesn’t cover. Perhaps the most tragic story comes from a woman whose baby daughter died because she was refused emergency room care since her health care didn’t cover it.

Switch to a blissful young London couple exiting a hospital where they had their baby at no cost, and with the knowledge that any and all medication will be available free of charge. "What do you mean it’s free?" Their innocent smiles carry an extra glow of satisfaction. Theirs are trusting grins that Americans aren’t allowed to have, and Moore’s dumbfounded reaction brings the inequality home with irony and hopeful humor. Imagine then the shock when Moore discovers that the London hospital’s cashier doesn’t take money, but rather dispenses it to patients for transportation to and from the hospital.

A graph reveals that the USA is ranked by the World Health Organization as 37th among countries for its health care. After the recently publicized story about a woman who perished due to neglect in a Los Angeles hospital emergency room, we may well have slipped below 38th place Slovenia. The timing couldn’t be more explicit when you observe the way France (rated number one for its health care) takes responsibility for the well-being of its citizenry with doctors performing house-calls at no charge to their grateful patients. The French health system will even send caregivers to assist new mothers with such essential tasks as washing their laundry.

Michael Moore, the dramatist, pays off on the promised emotional climax of "SiCKO" when he loads up a boat of sick Americans headed for Guantanamo Bay, where he hopes to cash in on some of the great free medical care being afforded to prisoners inside the notorious penal colony. After a blacked out rendering of their watery passage to Cuba, Moore calls out on a bullhorn to Guantanamo’s gun towers to allow he and three 9/11-rescue workers to enter. It’s a bold bit of transparent grandstanding that nevertheless makes the point that Moore was brave and dumb enough to risk being shot in order to give his movie momentum toward an inevitable visit to a Havana hospital. The 9/11-rescue workers are all in obviously bad health, unable to breathe properly and desperate for medical attention. Their stories of disenfranchisement from the country they bravely supported in its darkest hour is devastating, and when they meet with a group of Cuban firefighters for a ceremony honoring their efforts, you can’t help but get choked up. How is it possible that these human examples of charitable ethics get more respect and better treatment in Cuba than they do in America? It’s a question that has been quashed by the recent revelation that the Bush Administration is investigating the three "heroes" for having gone with Moore to Cuba for medical treatment that they could not get here.

After seeing archive footage of George Bush’s low-approval-rating-rival Richard Nixon cutting deals to provide less health care for more money, you can sense the filmmaker’s seething rage. But Michael Moore is an incurable optimist who believes in the ability of America’s core values to come up to par and exceed other countries in the way our government takes care of its people. You’ve got to hand it to him—Michael Moore is one of a kind.

Rated PG-13, 113 mins. (B+) (Four Stars)


June 22, 2007 in Documentary | Permalink

[bbrown]

I think it's prudent to even out the 'excellent analysis'... but even better, I'd like YOU to go see it and not rely on others to review it. It's always better to make informed opinions than to rely on others to make them. I can say that I agree with the following review after seeing the movie...

Nothing in that review dispels the idea that Michael Moore cherry-picks examples and omits invaluable context in presenting other examples. I will not be seeing "Sicko" because I think it is a waste of my time. I know enough about Michael Moore from his Web site, old TV show, and commentary about him to feel comfortable saying that he is intellectually dishonest. I *know* that he is a propagandist from what I have seen put out by him. I don't need to watch his latest pabulum to confirm it.

Bill

P.S. And that review's paean to Moore's Cuban charade had me sick to my stomach. How any person could see that and not be disgusted by Moore's antics is incomprehensible.

[FunDeeMental]

Nothing in that review dispels the idea that Michael Moore cherry-picks examples and omits invaluable context in presenting other examples. I will not be seeing "Sicko" because I think it is a waste of my time. I know enough about Michael Moore from his Web site, old TV show, and commentary about him to feel comfortable saying that he is intellectually dishonest. I *know* that he is a propagandist from what I have seen put out by him. I don't need to watch his latest pabulum to confirm it.

Bill

P.S. And that review's paean to Moore's Cuban charade had me sick to my stomach. How any person could see that and not be disgusted by Moore's antics is incomprehensible.

:clap

[Yellowdogtexan]

Why do facts scare conservatives? The best way to get to the truth is to look at all of the facts and then based you conclusion on the facts.

[FunDeeMental]

Why do facts scare conservatives? The best way to get to the truth is to look at all of the facts and then based you conclusion on the facts.

You're right. The facts are, Michael Moore is a jerk who twists the "truth" to suit his purpose.

:paclap

[cassandra]

You're right. The facts are, Michael Moore is a jerk who twists the "truth" to suit his purpose.

:paclap

:electric EXACTLY!

[Zanoog]

Why do facts scare conservatives? The best way to get to the truth is to look at all of the facts and then based you conclusion on the facts.

Because one man's cure is another man's poison. Right?

I love Michael Moore for stirring up shit and making us uncomfortable - ALL of us.

Complacency is worse than lies or facts.

:frolic

[issac the dragon]

I am tired of the lies pumped out by conservatives about how great American medicine is. It is great if you are the POTUS. Who by the way, gets his health care paid for by us. It is also great if you are rich.

Any middle class American who has had to deal with our medical system can tell the conservatives that it is not working very well for us.

Every day middle class people with insurance have tests denied, proceedures denied, surgeries denied. And many middle class people no longer have insurance. They have no options. They cannot get public assistance.

Even the doctors in this country are fed up with the system. They are fed up with ordering tests for a patient and being told by insurance carriers that that test is not covered. Their patients cannot have the medication they prescribed. Some day the insurance may pay for the proceedure. If their patient is still alive.

[FunDeeMental]

I am tired of the lies pumped out by conservatives about how great American medicine is. It is great if you are the POTUS. Who by the way, gets his health care paid for by us. It is also great if you are rich.

Any middle class American who has had to deal with our medical system can tell the conservatives that it is not working very well for us.

Every day middle class people with insurance have tests denied, proceedures denied, surgeries denied. And many middle class people no longer have insurance. They have no options. They cannot get public assistance.

Even the doctors in this country are fed up with the system. They are fed up with ordering tests for a patient and being told by insurance carriers that that test is not covered. Their patients cannot have the medication they prescribed. Some day the insurance may pay for the proceedure. If their patient is still alive.
I think that everyone agrees that healthcare in this country needs to be re-vamped. But I'm struggling to understand, what's that have to do with Michael Moore? He's a pompous pig that is exploiting the situation in order to line his pockets.

[Zanoog]

I think that everyone agrees that healthcare in this country needs to be re-vamped. But I'm struggling to understand, what's that have to do with Michael Moore? He's a pompous pig that is exploiting the situation in order to line his pockets.

What difference if MM makes a boatload of money? The fact that he has brought attention to a situation with a fine point, makes me happy!! I don't care if he is a pig or even a rich pig.

If my doctor says I need an MRI, and the insurance company says no - am going to put Michael Moore down for bringing these issues to the front of the line? Hell no.

[FunDeeMental]

Sooooooo, are you saying it's ok for him to profit off the "healthcare crisis" but not anyone else?

[Zanoog]

Sooooooo, are you saying it's ok for him to profit off the "healthcare crisis" but not anyone else?

:para I don't think I could state it that way. He's making money off of a documentary of the healthcare crisis. The insurance companies are making the real money off the healthcare crisis, and the drug companies are making money like mad. So much money in fact, that they are constantly advertising their products as if it was a new black and decker - fix everything pill. Ask your doctor for some today!!

You must have some idea, what it costs to advertise these things?

Not only that, but statistics show that Americans take more prescriptions than any other population. We are brainwashed by the ads on TV, that we need that pill, so we go to the doctor and ask for it.

Marketing for sickness. Pretty awful if you ask me.

[Yellowdogtexan]

This is amusing. The health insurance groups are attacking this film in much the same way that Exxon and others attacked Vice President Gore and his views on global warming http://thinkprogress.org/2007/07/21/health-care-drudge/The ad is part of the industry-led smear campaign against Michael Moore’s movie SiCKO. The group is “financed in part by pharmaceutical and hospital companies.” Its Advisory Board includes President Bush’s former HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson. In June, the organization “staged a conference call that drew nearly 20 reporters from around the country,” with the purpose of discussing “what Michael Moore left out of his movie.”

Additionally, the PR firm MultiVu is distributing a “fake news video” smearing SiCKO. The firm receives funding from Health Care America.

These industry-funded organizations attacking Moore argue that the United States has the best health care system in the world. But in reality, the United States is behind in preventing asthma-related deaths, vaccinating children against polio, and providing flu shots to seniors. Americans also, on average, die at a younger age compared to the average age of death of comparable nations. Yet health spending “per capita in the United States is much higher than in other countries — at least 24% higher than in the next highest spending countries, and over 90% higher than in many other countries that we would consider global competitors.”

[cassandra]

Zanoog it is pretty awful to know that so many are looking for the quick fix. Manufacturers only make what there is a demand for.

[kaaryn]

The ONLY thing good about his 'documentary' is that is got people talking. I haven't seen it and don't plan to see it, but I would take everything in it with a grain of salt just like anything else you see the media get all frothy over.

What people forget is how easily things like this are staged. Like that London hospital. Slip the lady at the hospital $20 and tell her to pass it to the dear young couple for their transportation costs. What amazing PR that creates!! Make a deal with Castro to make his country look pretty on film, and he'll crack the whip and make those medical tourism doctors perform for the camera. No problem. "Real life" is what you make it when you're behind a camera.

They make things look pretty realistic on Stargate SG1, too.

[Trueblue]

Sooooooo, are you saying it's ok for him to profit off the "healthcare crisis" but not anyone else?

It's okay to make money, period. Of course Moore can make money by making documentaries. Why not?

This is amusing. The health insurance groups are attacking this film in much the same way that Exxon and others attacked Vice President Gore and his views on global warming http://thinkprogress.org/2007/07/21/health-care-drudge/

Yeah, that would be their style.

The ONLY thing good about his 'documentary' is that is got people talking. I haven't seen it and don't plan to see it, but I would take everything in it with a grain of salt just like anything else you see the media get all frothy over.

What people forget is how easily things like this are staged. Like that London hospital. Slip the lady at the hospital $20 and tell her to pass it to the dear young couple for their transportation costs. What amazing PR that creates!! Make a deal with Castro to make his country look pretty on film, and he'll crack the whip and make those medical tourism doctors perform for the camera. No problem. "Real life" is what you make it when you're behind a camera.

They make things look pretty realistic on Stargate SG1, too.

That's hardly possible. if they really don't give out transportation money in the UK, then somebody would point it out and it would completely discredit him.

Moore doesn't always explain the entire story-but he doesn't just make stuff up.

[Phoenix]

Talk about generating a climate of fear and hate... and making money off the innocents by doing it. :whistle

[Kitka]

Sooooooo, are you saying it's ok for him to profit off the "healthcare crisis" but not anyone else?

Sooooooo, are you saying it's okay for healthcare companies to basically screw everyone over for money but begrudge Michael Moore free enterprise to make a living making films?

I have a better idea - let Michael Moore make money off his films, let healthcare companies make money off of their business, but don't let them fuck us all over to sqeeze every last dime out of us.

That works.

[kaaryn]

This about sums it up...


Who's Really 'Sicko'
In Canada, dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week. Humans can wait two to three years.

BY DAVID GRATZER
Thursday, June 28, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

TORONTO--"I haven't seen 'Sicko,' " says Avril Allen about the new Michael Moore documentary, which advocates socialized medicine for the United States. The film, which has been widely viewed on the Internet, and which will officially open in the U.S. and Canada on Friday, has been getting rave reviews. But Ms. Allen, a lawyer, has no plans to watch it. She's just too busy preparing to file suit against Ontario's provincial government about its health-care system next month.

Her client, Lindsay McCreith, would have had to wait for four months just to get an MRI, and then months more to see a neurologist for his malignant brain tumor. Instead, frustrated and ill, the retired auto-body shop owner traveled to Buffalo, N.Y., for a lifesaving surgery. Now he's suing for the right to opt out of Canada's government-run health care, which he considers dangerous.

Ms. Allen figures the lawsuit has a fighting chance: In 2005, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that "access to wait lists is not access to health care," striking down key Quebec laws that prohibited private medicine and private health insurance.

In the U.S., 83 House Democrats voted for a bill in 1993 calling for single-payer health care. That idea collapsed with HillaryCare and since then has existed on the fringes of the debate--winning praise from academics and pressure groups, but remaining largely out of the political discussion. Mr. Moore's documentary intends to change that, exposing millions to his argument that American health care is sick and socialized medicine is the cure.

It's not simply that Mr. Moore is wrong. His grand tour of public health care systems misses the big story: While he prescribes socialism, market-oriented reforms are percolating in cities from Stockholm to Saskatoon.

Mr. Moore goes to London, Ontario, where he notes that not a single patient has waited in the hospital emergency room more than 45 minutes. "It's a fabulous system," a woman explains. In Britain, he tours a hospital where patients marvel at their free care. A patient's husband explains: "It's not America." Humorously, Mr. Moore finds a cashier dispensing money to patients (for transportation). In France, a doctor explains the success of the health-care system with the old Marxist axiom: "You pay according to your means, and you receive according to your needs."

It's compelling material--I know because, born and raised in Canada, I used to believe in government-run health care. Then I was mugged by reality.

Consider, for instance, Mr. Moore's claim that ERs don't overcrowd in Canada. A Canadian government study recently found that only about half of patients are treated in a timely manner, as defined by local medical and hospital associations. "The research merely confirms anecdotal reports of interminable waits," reported a national newspaper. While people in rural areas seem to fare better, Toronto patients receive care in four hours on average; one in 10 patients waits more than a dozen hours.

This problem hit close to home last year: A relative, living in Winnipeg, nearly died of a strangulated bowel while lying on a stretcher for five hours, writhing in pain. To get the needed ultrasound, he was sent by ambulance to another hospital.

In Britain, the Department of Health recently acknowledged that one in eight patients wait more than a year for surgery. Around the time Mr. Moore was putting the finishing touches on his documentary, a hospital in Sutton Coldfield announced its new money-saving linen policy: Housekeeping will no longer change the bed sheets between patients, just turn them over. France's system failed so spectacularly in the summer heat of 2003 that 13,000 people died, largely of dehydration. Hospitals stopped answering the phones and ambulance attendants told people to fend for themselves.

With such problems, it's not surprising that people are looking for alternatives. Private clinics--some operating in a "gray zone" of the law--are now opening in Canada at a rate of about one per week.

Canadian doctors, once quiet on the issue of private health care, elected Brian Day as president of their national association. Dr. Day is a leading critic of Canadian medicare; he opened a private surgery hospital and then challenged the government to shut it down. "This is a country," Dr. Day said by way of explanation, "in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years."

Market reforms are catching on in Britain, too. For six decades, its socialist Labour Party scoffed at the very idea of private medicine, dismissing it as "Americanization." Today Labour favors privatization, promising to triple the number of private-sector surgical procedures provided within two years. The Labour government aspires to give patients a choice of four providers for surgeries, at least one of them private, and recently considered the contracting out of some primary-care services--perhaps even to American companies.

Other European countries follow this same path. In Sweden, after the latest privatizations, the government will contract out some 80% of Stockholm's primary care and 40% of total health services, including Stockholm's largest hospital. Beginning before the election of the new conservative chancellor, Germany enhanced insurance competition and turned state enterprises over to the private sector (including the majority of public hospitals). Even in Slovakia, a former Marxist country, privatizations are actively debated.

Under the weight of demographic shifts and strained by the limits of command-and-control economics, government-run health systems have turned out to be less than utopian. The stories are the same: dirty hospitals, poor standards and difficulty accessing modern drugs and tests.

Admittedly, the recent market reforms are gradual and controversial. But facts are facts, the reforms are real, and they represent a major trend in health care. What does Mr. Moore's documentary say about that? Nothing.

Dr. Gratzer, a practicing physician licensed in Canada and the U.S. and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, is the author of "The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care" (Encounter, 2006).

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010266





Honestly, you know what I'd like to see? A system where the needy are taken care of, but where those who are able to pay are at least allowed to. If I needed an MRI or a biopsy for example, I could be put on a waiting list for who knows how long. If I were able to go to a private clinic and pay for that test, and I were financially able to pay for it, then not only would I be able to get the test I need in a timely manner, but there would be one less person on that waiting list and everyone else would move up.

But to propose a 'two-tier' system makes me 'un-Canadian'. :shrug

[kaaryn]

FTR - You're right, TB. I did some looking and yes they do reimburse for travel costs in the UK. I thought he was referring to London, Ontario when I posted that.

[issac the dragon]

Uhhhhh, why do people keep referring to Canada? Canada doesn't have a very good health care system. Acknowledged. But it doesn't have the only health care system in the world.

The obvious answer is that you don't want to mention the ones that are far better. There are waits for things in this country too. My daughter cannot get approval for her recommend sugery. Like anyone with several small gallstones, she is going to have a crisis, and have to have emergency surgery. An aside, large stones seldom cause problems. The small one lodge in the duct.

Forcing my daughter to wait until she has a medical emergency is endangering her life, and will probably leave her with an 8 to 10 inch scar. Doing the surgery electively would allow it to be done with instruments that left a 2 inch scar. No one wants a large, ugly scar. My daughter will not be able to prepare herself mentally for the surgery, nor wait until she is in better health, because the medical crisis will make her extremely ill. But that's ok. This is private medicine. She's getting screwed, but it's private enterprise. Yeah.

When she has the invitible crisis, she will go to the ER and get exactly the same care she would have gotten if she was uninsured. So much for making high monthly payments for insurance. Would Canada do worse. Whoops. She wouldn't owe her doctor and the hospital, the lab, anest. etc. 10,000 dollars.

[Trueblue]

FTR - You're right, TB. I did some looking and yes they do reimburse for travel costs in the UK. I thought he was referring to London, Ontario when I posted that.

Oh, I wondered why you doubted it. Thanks for the info.

[Zanoog]

Zanoog it is pretty awful to know that so many are looking for the quick fix. Manufacturers only make what there is a demand for.

And what creates the demand Cassandra - marketing, advertising, doctors on the kick-back programs.

I am always amazed at how quick people are to run to the doctor! The advertising and the news, makes us think we're coming down with everything!!

Well, some people like going to the doctor - I'm not one of them, even when I had insurance. :wink

I sold advertising when it was considered unethical for pharmaceutical companies to advertise. As well as lawyers and doctors - it just wasn't done.

Only 30 years ago - so my dear, I'm sure you are too young to remember what that was like, and you've grown up with the way things are today - so it seems normal.

But it was considered unethical. Can you figure out why?

[Yellowdogtexan]

You're right. The facts are, Michael Moore is a jerk who twists the "truth" to suit his purpose.No it is you who is wrong. This movie was carefully fact check (something that you may want to consider) and found to be accurate. http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/11310.htmlIt’s not often major news outlets fact-check documentaries, but Michael Moore’s not just another documentary filmmaker, and healthcare is not just another public policy. So, I suppose it’s not a big surprise that CNN would give “Sicko” some close scrutiny.

As it turns out, the network gives the movie a clean bill of health.Moore says that the U.S. spends more of its gross domestic product on health care than any other country.

Again, that’s true. The United States spends more than 15 percent of its GDP on health care — no other nation even comes close to that number. France spends about 11 percent, and Canadians spend 10 percent.

Like Moore, we also found that more money does not equal better care. Both the French and Canadian systems rank in the Top 10 of the world’s best health-care systems, according to the World Health Organization. The United States comes in at No. 37. The rankings are based on general health of the population, access, patient satisfaction and how the care’s paid for.Indeed, CNN’s analysis found no substantive flaws or inaccuracies in Moore’s film at all. The most negative part of the critique noted that Moore focused his attention on private insurance companies, and omitted government-funded health-care systems such as Medicare, Medicaid, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Veterans Affairs health-care systems. (The point of the movie was about flaws in the U.S. system — Moore didn’t talk about government programs because they’re effective.)

The stumbling block with CNN’s report came in the conclusion: “As Americans continue to spend $2 trillion a year on health care, everyone agrees on one point: Things need to change, and it will take more than a movie to figure out how to get there.”

Perhaps, but as Matt Yglesias noted, CNN’s own fact-checking piece clearly shows the way by pointing to the same deficiencies in the U.S. system that Moore identified in “Sicko.”[I]t’s not that hard to figure out. France and Canada both have two difference systems of health care delivery both of which are cheaper than the US system and both of which are more effective. What’s more, these aren’t obscure countries. Lots of people have heard of France. Lots of people have heard of Canada. How hard is it for them to just write the words “Michael Moore is right; American health care would be improved if we adopted French methods instead”? Their articles supports the claim 100 percent.I guess that would be a little too much to ask.

[Incognito]

I enjoy Michael Moore's movies and I will be seeing Sicko, in the privacy of my own home, where I can back up parts I"d like to watch again :)

yes, Michael Moore's movies can be slanted...but they are accurate. As in every situation, there are good and there are bad...so it doesn't surprise me at all that for all the good comments made in the movie by REAL people, that people found bad comments NOT in the movie...also made by real people. Just because there are bad comments, does not make SICKO more discredited. Does that make sense?

[April15]

The movie is supposed to be a documentary on poor health care practices. It does that.
If it was a movie to expose good health care practices it failed!

Brought to you by your KISS movie critic.

[Kitka]

I enjoy Michael Moore's movies and I will be seeing Sicko, in the privacy of my own home, where I can back up parts I"d like to watch again :)

yes, Michael Moore's movies can be slanted...but they are accurate. As in every situation, there are good and there are bad...so it doesn't surprise me at all that for all the good comments made in the movie by REAL people, that people found bad comments NOT in the movie...also made by real people. Just because there are bad comments, does not make SICKO more discredited. Does that make sense?

Absolutely. Michael Moore doesn't pretend to show both sides of the story. I wouldn't either - if I think the other side's argument sucks why would I showcase it?

I also find that most of the criticism done of his movies are by people who have never seen them. Which is why I don't take them seriously.

[Yellowdogtexan]

This author makes the simple point that I made earlier on this thread. If you care about the truth and want to understand the issues, then you should go see this movie and learn the facts. http://www.healinghealth.com/blog/archives/106If you have not seen “Sicko,” the new Michael Moore movie, then you will most likely harbor a prediction of its value from your opinion of his previous films. I invite you to set aside any opinion and just look at the topic from the standpoint of your own experience as a patient, your skills as a professionals, and the maize of events that must occur for patients and the healthcare community to meet each other. I was moved by the movie and, if only to consider the issues presented, it is worth many discussions both at work and at home. My suggestion that you might take a chance on seeing it, spending both money and time, is based on how urgent the issues are and how marginalized patients have become in the discussion. As far as I know and other than current sexy hospital series, not since the movie “The Doctor” confronted medicine, has another movie taken on the inside of healthcare.

Feudalism has returned to civilization through the portal of employer based health insurance. Employees are indentured to employers for their insurance; then, the next layer, employers are burdened and obligated to the insurance companies to provide coverage; insurance companies are put in the position of seducing companies into contracts that they are hoping not to have to act on. In fact, they are selling a product that they do not want utilized. The ultimate conflict of interest.

You and I don’t have to debate the broken system. If you did not agree, you would not be reading this. However, the solution will only come forth through the door of values and priorities. Once we as a culture, nation, and community decide that we are all damaged by the current system, that the health of the community holds our own security within in, then solutions will evolve. Money? There is enough in the system if just taken the CEO bonuses, the redundancy between companies, and the added costs to providers for the paper work. That alone would cover most of the uninsured.

Medicare is the most successful universal healthcare system developed in the US. Why we don’t expand this, add the taxes, reduce the costs, and eliminate the slavery caused by the current system?

Michael Moore took on the healthcare system from the point of the insured, the working, the good Americans who contribute to their communities and take care of their kids.If you want to be part of the solution, then you need to look at the facts and understand the issues

[bbrown]

Why do facts scare conservatives? The best way to get to the truth is to look at all of the facts and then based you conclusion on the facts.

Facts? You believe "Sicko" is a "fact"? It is, at best, a selective re-creation of some disjointed facts. It is an edited piece of propaganda designed to advance an agenda.

And I'm sorry, but if anyone here asserts that Moore is devoid of an agenda then I'm going to bust out my first use of :rofl2 ever.

Bill

[Incognito]

It's funny because of the same people dissing Moore are the exact same people who believe everything Anne Coulter says to be truth. :shrug

[bbrown]

Moore doesn't always explain the entire story-but he doesn't just make stuff up.

Perhaps you should doubt him since you don't even know him and he's a stranger to you. He's done it before (http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110003233):

Forbes reports (http://members.forbes.com/forbes/2002/1209/059.html) that an early scene in "Bowling" in which Mr. Moore tries to demonstrate how easy it is to obtain guns in America was staged. He goes to a small bank in Traverse City, Mich., that offers various inducements to open an account and claims "I put $1,000 in a long-term account, they did the background check, and, within an hour, I walked out with my new Weatherby," a rifle.

But Jan Jacobson, the bank employee who worked with Mr. Moore on his account, says that only happened because Mr. Moore's film company had worked for a month to stage the scene. "What happened at the bank was a prearranged thing," she says. The gun was brought from a gun dealer in another city, where it would normally have to be picked up. "Typically, you're looking at a week to 10 days waiting period," she says. Ms. Jacobson feels used: "He just portrayed us as backward hicks."

After Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore was ready to sue anyone who bad-mouthed his movie, so there's no reason to suspect that that didn't have a chilling effect.

Bill

[bbrown]

No it is you who is wrong. This movie was carefully fact check (something that you may want to consider) and found to be accurate.

Let's see, so the facts that he decided to put in weren't lies. Wow, how great is that. Did anyone fact check all the context and facts that he omitted that might contradict the ones that got in?

France may have great health care (and they only work 32 hours a week by law), but they pay a price. Their economy is a disaster, entrepreneurship is virtually non-existent, and taxation is horrendous. They have one of the highest unemployment rates in the EU and the highest taxation rate in the G8. To wit, the highest income tax rate is 54% and it starts at $40,000 and anything over $20,000 has a level of 40%. (source (http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/economies/Europe/France-POLITICS-GOVERNMENT-AND-TAXATION.html))

Sounds great! Let's bring that goodness stateside!

Bill

[bbrown]

It's funny because of the same people dissing Moore are the exact same people who believe everything Anne Coulter says to be truth. :shrug

Painting with a pretty broad brush, aren't we? I loathe Ann Coulter.

Bill

[bbrown]

I also find that most of the criticism done of his movies are by people who have never seen them. Which is why I don't take them seriously.

Want to know what pisses me off? People who watch one of his movies (or An Inconvenient Truth) and think they know all about the crisis and system that he skewers. They'll combine that hour and a half of really deep, serious thinking with a ill-remembered set of anecdotes and blather on endlessly as armchair fascist.

Michael Moore movie : knowledge :: Spice Girls : music

Bill

[Zanoog]

Want to know what pisses me off? People who DON'T watch one of his movies (or An Inconvenient Truth) and think they know all about the crisis and system that he skewers.

and has an aversion to smilies :wink :mw :roar

[bbrown]

Oh, touche, you got me on that one. All I do to get informed about a subject is read, not spend an hour and a half getting educated at the foot of a television. How could I pretend to know anything if I don't see it interpreted by Michael Moore? How would I get The Awful Truth?

If you want to say (and you have) that I shouldn't comment about particular Michael Moore movies without seeing them, that's a fair comment. I can agree with you about that. But I cannot agree that I don't have the full story without seeing his propaganda.

Bill

[Yellowdogtexan]

Want to know what pisses me off? People who DON'T watch one of his movies (or An Inconvenient Truth) and think they know all about the crisis and system that he skewers.

and has an aversion to smilies :wink :mw :roarSome people prefer their ignorance to the facts. This poster admits that the facts used by Michael Moore are correct and have been fact checked but his mind is closed to the truth and facts. He does not want facts to get in the way of his wrong beliefs.

[Yellowdogtexan]

After Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore was ready to sue anyone who bad-mouthed his movie, so there's no reason to suspect that that didn't have a chilling effect.

BillThe only lawsuit that I remember after F 9/11 was the silly lawsuit by the vetran who claimed that he was painted in a false light in this film. That case was brought against Michael Moore and the right wing nut cases made a big deal about the filing of the lawsuit but never discussed when the case was dismissed for lacking any merit.

[Yellowdogtexan]

Facts? You believe "Sicko" is a "fact"? It is, at best, a selective re-creation of some disjointed facts. It is an edited piece of propaganda designed to advance an agenda.Do not worry. The health care industry is putting out its own propaganda and they have drudge doing the job for them. http://thinkprogress.org/2007/07/21/health-care-drudge/Currently atop the Drudge Report is a gigantic ad by “Health Care America,” which states, “In America you wait in line to see a movie. In government-run healthcare systems, you wait to see a doctor”...

The ad is part of the industry-led smear campaign against Michael Moore’s movie SiCKO. The group is “financed in part by pharmaceutical and hospital companies.” Its Advisory Board includes President Bush’s former HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson. In June, the organization “staged a conference call that drew nearly 20 reporters from around the country,” with the purpose of discussing “what Michael Moore left out of his movie.”

Additionally, the PR firm MultiVu is distributing a “fake news video” smearing SiCKO. The firm receives funding from Health Care America. Intelligent people get the facts from credible sources such as a documentary that has been fact checked by a number of sources as compared to some who get their facts from the hospital companies and drug companies via drudge. Which category do you fit in?

[issac the dragon]

The purchase of a rifle in a Moore movie may have been staged, but if Moore had come to Wa. it would have been better. It is legal to pruchase any rifle in Wa. without even a background check. I walked out of the store with mine in 5 min. Only handguns require any check.

You think it is so terrible in France, but every time the government tries to change it, the French riot. They like their country the way it is. Therefore, it is NOYB.

In England, if you make over 100,000 a year, they simply confiscate the overage. The tax is 100%. I don't know if that is pounds or dollars. The English are rather quaint. They think making more than that much is greedy. And greed is immoral. Again, NOYB.

[Trueblue]

Perhaps you should doubt him since you don't even know him and he's a stranger to you. He's done it before (http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110003233):

Great point. I do doubt him. But I also know that he's subject to public scrutiny, and his claims hold up pretty well.

After Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore was ready to sue anyone who bad-mouthed his movie, so there's no reason to suspect that that didn't have a chilling effect.

Bill

:rofl That is pretty lame, Bill. If someone could prove him wrong, then Moore wouldn't win. But the whole world was too chicken to take on Moore?

Everybody has an agenda. Including you. :)

[bbrown]

You think it is so terrible in France, but every time the government tries to change it, the French riot. They like their country the way it is. Therefore, it is NOYB.

In England, if you make over 100,000 a year, they simply confiscate the overage. The tax is 100%. I don't know if that is pounds or dollars. The English are rather quaint. They think making more than that much is greedy. And greed is immoral. Again, NOYB.

If those who love those countries' deplorable conditions want to import it here and force me into that situation, then it is very much my business. What the French or English do to their country is none of my concern.

(Incidentally, rioting is not indicative of liking "their country the way it is." It is indicative of some people resisting changes and expressing their opinions through violence and intimidation. It's the worst kind of political discourse, if you can even look at it that way. It's also typically not representative of the nation as a whole such that you cannot make such sweeping statements.)

Bill

[Trueblue]

I haven't heard anything to suggest that the conditions in either England or France are deplorable. They do have a different outlook, and aren't allergic to the concept of public policy.

When I worked at DHS [the welfare office], I met a woman who had been treated for breast cancer. This was in the 80s.

She was once a factory worker, supporting herself and her child. She went to the doctor with a breast lump, and was told to get a mammogram. She had no insurance, so she didn't. By the time she got a mammogram, she needed to have a radical mastectomy. That ended her ability to work in a factory.

She had to go on welfare and food stamps and hoped to get strong enough to do babysitting in her home.

For our society, that was being penny-wise and pound foolish.