SiCKO entertains, educates and mobilizes

Filmmaker Michael Moore has grabbed hold of the nightmarish reality of the U.S. for-profit health care system and presents a powerful critique in what is his most effective documentary to date, “SiCKO.”

Moore makes a direct attack on the U.S. health care industry, especially on insurance companies for denying payments, on private hospitals for denying care and on pharmaceuticals for pricing medicines beyond the reach of patients. He also effectively dissects the lying propaganda that these big capitalist sectors have been promoting for decades: their vicious attacks on government-funded and organized health care.

Moore shows, with gut-wrenching examples, how bad it can get even for the 250 million people here who actually have health insurance. He leaves the plight of the 44 million without health insurance to the viewer’s imagination, while noting this additional vast problem. His examples are people anyone could identify with—working-class people of different ethnicities who through their bad luck got sick and through the health care system in the U.S. have either been impoverished, disabled or killed because insurance companies denied payment for needed care.

When you see doctors who review insurance testify that they are rewarded with bonuses for denying the claims, you know something is wrong with this system.

SiCKO contrasts the national health care systems—different versions of government single-payer plans—in Canada, Britain and France with the anarchic, completely profit-driven system in the United States. The U.S. system appears as not only inefficient and expensive but cruel, inhuman and somewhat absurd.

There is no question that Canada, Britain and France are also capitalist countries. The profit motive still drives industry, commerce and banking there. There are exploiters and exploited, privileged and poor. But past struggles over health care—which Moore only hints at through an interview with former British Labor MP Tony Benn—have won concessions from the bosses that make life a lot better.

In these countries people still worry about their health, but they don’t worry about being bankrupted paying for health care.

SiCKO also shows that the lies told about “socialized medicine” for decades by the American Medical Association, the private hospitals, the insurance companies and U.S. pro-capitalist propagandists are baseless.

Then Moore takes an important step further. He takes a look at the health care system in Cuba, that demonized country to the south where the revolutionary transformation begun in 1959 has been aimed at eliminating the profit motive. Here Moore’s central figures are people who were heroes of 9/11—fire fighters and EMT personnel who were exposed to toxic chemicals while working amid the ruins of the World Trade Center.

Though these heroes have been honored in ceremonies, they haven’t been able to get the health care they need in the United States—unless they could pay for it out of their pockets.

So Moore brings them to Cuba, where they are treated with respect, love and the best medical care available in any developing country in the world. The socialist reorganization of society has improved mortality rates for babies and elders alike there, despite the obstacle of a 40-year economic blockade by the imperialist colossus to the north.

Perhaps the most significant thing about SiCKO is that it has become a vehicle for struggle by focusing attention on an issue whose time has arrived. The Troops Out Now Coalition (TONC), which links the struggle against the war with that for social services, has been mass distributing an anti-war leaflet to SiCKO audiences.

The TONC leaflet has the headline: “Healthcare and the war are SiCKO” and points out how the war funding could easily pay for adequate health care in this country. It’s been getting a great response at theaters, organizers report.

On the July 21 weekend, SiCKO opened in another 500 theaters in smaller cities, bringing the number to 1,200 in all. This means additional opportunities to hand out the TONC leaflet and mobilize against the war and for an improved health care system. (See troopsoutnow.org for the leaflet.)

Moore is off target only in how he treats the prisoners at the Guantánamo concentration camp, which he visits on the way to Havana. At Guantánamo he tries to contrast the Pentagon-supplied medical care to the prisoners—who are accused of causing the 9/11 disaster—with the lack of care for the 9/11 heroes. SiCKO’s problem here is that the Guantánamo prisoners are also victims, in their case victims of U.S. physical and psychological torture. The U.S. has proven nothing against them, except perhaps that they believe in Islam.

The rest of SiCKO, however, is a rare and powerful progressive contribution to mass culture that competes successfully with U.S. corporate propaganda in its own arena. SiCKO illustrates the truth and entertains at the same time.