The Populist

This is not a movie/documentary review.  I don’t tend to do those, mainly because I’m not a very good film critic.  But as a citizen of the United States who has been subjected to the American health care system and a former community organizer who heard the health care stories of the poor and middle class, I walked out of the theater with tears in my eyes and rage in my heart.  This entry is for those who have seen, or are thinking about seeing, the film.  I hope every U.S. citizen gets a chance to see it.

Let me start off by saying that Michael Moore is an accomplished propagandist.  I’ve seen parts, but not all, of his other films.  His first work “Roger and Me” was nothing if not groundbreaking.  As a very wealthy filmmaker he takes on the “everyman” role and plays it quite well.  He has been known to take facts and bend them to his own design, and was most notably criticized for the rampant conspiracy theories put forth in his 2004 release, “Fahrenheit 911.”  In “SICKO”, Moore masterfully strings together some of the worst case scenarios in health care he could find and creates a dark comedy that successfully points out the American people as the butt of the joke.  These stories were picked from what Moore claims is over 25,000 submissions to an email address, after he put the word out that he was looking for health care stories for his film.  In the film, Moore travels to Canada, Great Britain, France, and Cuba to test their health care systems.  It appears that, no matter where he goes, the health care in that country is better than what the average citizen of the United States receives here.  His point he echoes throughout the film is, “Why can’t we have this?”

There are many who will claim that the Canadian health care system is a mess, that the taxes paid in Great Britain and France to cover such outlandish health care costs would crush our economy, and that Moore’s smoke and mirrors showmanship deftly hides any problems that “socialized” medicine puts on a nation and its people.  Sadly, these naysayers – many from the for-profit health care system – are missing the point.  It doesn’t matter if 90% of what Michael Moore put into “SICKO” was a complete lie.  It doesn’t matter if he made up the statistics – most of which are legitimately taken from the World Health Organization – or if he simply has some vendetta against the health care industry.  None of that matters because if just ONE of those stories is true; if just ONE little girl DIED because she was denied care when she was taken to the wrong emergency room; if just ONE woman DIED of a brain tumor because the only viable treatment option was deemed too “experimental” by her insurance company; if just ONE working class citizen with a life threatening illness was denied treatment because it was considered a “pre-existing condition”, then Mr. Moore’s point has been made.

In Iraq, the Bush administration has pushed for health care to cover all Iraqis.  We demand this kind of humane treatment from other nations but continue to ignore the fault in our own country.  We constantly claim that higher taxes will hurt the citizenry, squelch innovation, and suppress investment in our economy.  Out of nothing more than fear, we ignore our social compacts; that society cannot exist without cooperation.  It makes more sense to us to turn our backs on each other rather than to give up another dollar.  We make sure people “take control of their own health care” all in the name of corporate profit.  And, consequently, the nation that gave the world its first democratic revolution falls short of Saudi Arabia in health care for its citizens.  That’s right, Saudi Arabia; a totalitarian nation that won’t let its women drive cars.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”.  So tell me, can there be any greater injustice than the death of a child to save a buck?  I doubt Dr. King would have thought so.  It’s about time we started redefining “profit”.