SiCKO

Rusty was out visiting the other day and we caught a matinée of Michael Moore's new film, SiCKO. While it has become popular to criticize Moore for his bias and question the facts in his films I think, as usual, we need to take seriously the argument he makes rather than get hung up on the critiques from conservatives on his editing technique. And just to be precise, Michael Moore did not edit this film, like most films there is an editor who is assigned this task. While some are already questioning a fact here or a fact there, Moore has said repeatedly that everything in the film was based on solid research. That being said, it wouldn't be hard to find other research which contradicts his own. This does not mean he lied, this means you are consulting differing sources. Moving on.

Moore's argument isn't a surprising one. The American health care system is set up to put profit above caring for all. This means that many people just plain get screwed by the system because unlike other public institutions (Fire Dept, Library, Police, etc.) the health insurance companies' number one priority is profit. A corporation seeking profit before the good of all people no doubt cuts corners in order to maximize profit. Rather than understanding paying for someone's medical needs as the goal of business, insurance companies understand this as a "loss" and seek to minimize losses. So that's a small summary of how our system is rigged to benefit the shareholder above the insured client.

The second part of Moore's argument is that all the fear-mongering about how the rest of the western world does medicine is just plain unfounded. So we visit Canada, the UK, France and even Cuba to see what publicly held health care looks like. Conservative politicians have familiar talking points when it comes to public (or socialized) health care. They say that we won't have any good doctors left (assumption: medical professionals are all incredibly greedy people and if the government pays less doctors will quit). They say that wait times will increase (assumption: if everyone has access to health care, then when I have a heart attack I'll be told to come back in two months), but Moore's trips are full of people who are incredibly happy with the speed at which they're seen by a doctor and emergencies are treated as such. They say that the government can't handle the health care system (assumption: only corporations can be trusted to oversee such a large and complicated system), but when corporations are in charge it is profit rather than care which is the primary goal, this is fundamentally mismanagement.

I think this is Moore's best film to date and his argument is a good one. Savage Capitalism is doing to the health care system what Enron did to power in the west. Like the library or the fire department the health care system must be held by the public, not privately held by corporations.

Check out biblical scholar, Ben Witherington's take on the film here.

Labels: Film, Politics