Review – Sicko

Michael Moore does it again. This time around he starts with some valid points about health care in the United States. Yes, we should all be ashamed to live with a system that kills people by denying them medical care merely because they can’t afford to pay for it. And yes, the socialized medicine systems in place in other countries could alleviate a lot of suffering if implemented here. As usual, however, what could be a persuasive argument sinks almost immediately under Moore’s shrill, one-sided brand of humor. He paints a picture in which everything in the United States is bad and everything in Canada, Great Britain, France and Cuba is wonderful. Anyone above the age of five should be able to recognize the inherent falsehood of such drastic oversimplification. But worse, he openly makes himself a liar. His love for the Cuban system (expressed in obviously-orchestrated photo ops) is undermined by a quality ranking of national health care shown earlier in the movie, a list that clearly places Cuba below the United States (though not by much). He also includes a clip of a British journalist reporting that on average even poor English people are in better health and live longer than wealthy Americans. If that’s the case, then health care alone isn’t the issue. Even Moore doesn’t contend that good medical care isn’t available to rich people in the United States. So the answer must lie at least partially in other factors, which of course he leaves largely unexplored. So shame on you once again, Michael Moore. If only you had used your film-making talent to produce an honest consideration of this serious problem, you might have actually helped us do something about it. Polemic like this only further polarizes the issue, adding to the problem rather than aiding the search for a solution. See if desperate