We remain the only first world country in the world without universal health care. That is the jumping off point for Sicko, the latest documentary from Michael Moore, but it is by no means the point of the film. Moore uses the health care system as a way of reminding us that we are all human beings and we are all in this together. If we don't come to grips with that fact we could be headed down a road that we can never come back from. It's a frightening and sad statement, but one with an underlying spark of hope. Regardless of how you feel about Michael Moore as a person, there's no denying that he is onto something pretty important this time around.Moore works best when he is rallying against an idea or an institution rather than a person. Roger & Me used General Electric CEO Roger Smith as a symbol of corruption, a technique repeated with Charlton Heston in Bowling for Columbine. Switching gears, he attacked the President more than he attacked an idea in Fahrenheit 9/11, and the film suffered greatly for it. Thankfully there are no villains here, just ideas. Indeed, this is Moore's most restrained film by far. He is on no witch hunts, and aside from a trip to Guantanamo Bay, the film is devoid of any stunts. It is simply a look at something that is deeply flawed in America: our health care system.
The film offers numerous anecdotes from real hospital patients as proof of how distressing things have become. There's the man whose insurance wouldn't cover reattaching both his fingers he lost in an accident, so he had to choose which finger he liked more. There's the woman who couldn't pay for her hospital stay, so she was put in a cab and dropped off, still under heavy sedation, on a sidewalk in front of a free clinic. Then there's the mother who had full health care for her child. She rushed to the hospital when her kid was deathly ill, only to learn her insurance didn't cover that particular hospital. The child died on the way to the closest covered hospital. Now some people might be cynical enough to say "yeah, but what are we supposed to do, not pay our doctors?" To that Moore gives us a very long winded and strong answer.
Moore travels to Canada, to Great Britain, and to France. All have free health care. All have higher life expectancies. The doctors live off government pay, and they live very nicely (one doctor lives in a million dollar mansion). The patients are better off and are allowed to stay in the hospital as long as they need to without fear of being kicked out for lack of funds. In Great Britain they even pay for your ride home if you need a cab. We begin to see that these benefits go beyond health care. People don't have to pay for college, day care is almost free, and you can get a government paid helper to come to your house after you give birth and take care of everything from meals to laundry, free of charge to you. At times you think these places must be some imaginary utopia, not our allies and neighbors.
Usually Moore relies too heavily on inserting himself and his jokey gimmicks into his documentaries in order to get a rise out of you, but not this time. Moore is really barely seen, and it feels a lot like a traditional documentary. That is a wise choice on his part, as there is a lot here to digest without having to question the validity of his stunts. The whole thing is much more mannered and methodical, showing us exactly what is wrong and how we can fix it. Our health care doesn't have to be this bad, and that's the saddest part.
I know a lot of people have a hard time with Michael Moore, and I myself was a bit resistant to the film at first. I think he is usually an entertaining filmmaker, but a poor documentarian, letting his personality get in the way of the facts. Yet this film won me over completely by the end. It's engrossing, thought-provoking, and insightful. Moore has really opened up the audience potential for documentaries in the last few years, so I hope that trend holds for this film as well, because this isn't just Moore's most important documentary, but the most important film of the year. And also quite possibly the best.
