Yesterday night, I saw Sicko, the latest film by Michael Moore, which takes aim at the U.S. healthcare industry. I'm very glad I did, because it raises a wide variety of important issues that we as enlightened documentary filmgoing Americans should take note of as those responsible for changing things in our fine (but flawed) country.
While fearmongers and conservative pundits will inevitably be spouting off about issues like gay marriage and abortion as the 2008 election nears, trying to use these hot-button issues to ensure that the poor conservative masses vote the conservative big business guy into the Oval Office to run amok as he pleases, Michael Moore is sending out a clarion clear reminder in his latest documentary Sicko that our nation's priorities may be out of whack.
Sure, gay marriage is important to me, just as much as abortion is a very important issue to others, but these issues seem like bourgeois quibbles next to the elephant in the U.S.'s collective room: healthcare. Can anyone enjoy relative comfort in a nation that doesn't take good care of its citizens? When the sad fact is that Canada, Great Britain, France, and -- most surprisingly -- Cuba have socialized healthcare systems that work far better than our own privatized HMO-based ones, it's clear that something is wrong. Shouldn't the case be, Michael Moore asks, that as a country grows more and more economically successful it treats its poorest better and better than other less successful nations? Seems logical enough to me.
What I liked most about Sicko is that, in comparison with the other two Michael Moore movies I've seen, Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11, this seemed like the most bipartisan of them all. While Moore took shots at Richard Nixon for his approval of this privatized healthcare system, he also turned his criticisms toward liberal poster girl Hillary Clinton herself, who, though an early supporter of healthcare reform under Bill Clinton, soon took a much more mum approach, eventually receiving plenty of cash from the healthcare industry itself to keep quiet. It remains to be seen whether she'll live up to her early promise in the area of healthcare reform (she still makes a rousing speech on the subject), but Moore does a good job shaking up his audience's trust in individuals to spearhead the issue of healthcare.
Moore takes sidetrips to show us a handful of medical horror stories and also makes a lively (and far lighter) segue to make a point about the Guantanamo Bay prisoners and their medical treatment. For sure, Moore's movie, while sobering, also offers a dose of lighter moments to keep its viewers from reaching a point of utter dispair (there's hope yet, he reminds us).
The trouble with U.S. healthcare, Moore eventually concludes, is that in many other nations, the government lives in fear of its people, constantly worried that its public will stage an uprising and overturn the powers that be. In the U.S., it's we the people who fear the government, a big bureaucratic jumble that we no longer feel able to stand up against in times of chaos and mass suffering. Have we as Americans become too comfortable, I wonder, to put our feet back down on the pavement and stand up for what we believe? I'm not even sure what I'm willing to get angry about anymore, and I care about a variety of important social issues.
I've believed as such about gay issues for a quite a while now, and Michael Moore has raised some pertinent issues in Sicko that lead me to believe that there need to be a plethora of revolutions in our country before we're up to snuff with other industrialized Western nations.
It's a movie that reminds us that human rights should be fundamental to all people. Now excuse me while I ravage my bastion of freedom fries. What?! Quite staring and check out Michael Moore's Sicko.
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