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I was privileged enough to be invited to an early screening of "Sicko" by a number of activist friends who are involved with the movement for universal health care in the area.
Let me say that this is the best film Moore has made. For all the ideological bombast of Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore takes a back seat in the movie (he's barely on camera) and instead lets the peoples' stories lead the movie. These are incredible stories because, sadly, we probably all know people who have had similar problems with health care. Moore doesn't even focus on the 50 million of us (myself included) who are without health care in this country - he spotlights the millions of us who think we *have* health care but, when we do get injured or sick, find out that getting our health insurance to do anything about it is almost impossible.
So we hear stories of things that should be impossible in this country: a mother whose infant had a 104 fever, and took her to a hospital, but because the hospital wasn't in her HMO's plan, was refused service - and the child died 30 minutes later because it wasn't given any care at all. Or the older Colorado couple forced into a humiliating situation of living in their daughter's work room because they had to sell their house to cover health costs, after not being able to meet rising health insurance premiums after the husband's heart attacks and the wife's medical problems.
There are lighthearted moments, such as when Moore looks at the health care systems in Canada, Britain, and France; talks to a group of American expatriates in France who explain that the French medical service makes house calls - yes, 40 years ago a French doctor decided that if plumbers can make 24 hour service calls, why couldn't doctors? Or when he walks through a British NHS hospital and asks a young couple how much the hospital charged to deliver their baby, and they chuckle as they act a bit confused, answering, of course, nothing.
Then there are moments that will make even the coldest of us cry - such as the stories of the 9/11 rescue workers abandoned by the American government and refused coverage by whatever health insurance companies covered them. People - many of them EMS responders who volunteered weeks and months of their lives to aid in the rescue and cleanup effort, who are now debilitated for life and forgotten. This is of course the part of the movie that caused early controversy - Moore found out that the Al Qaeda detainees at Guantanamo actually received quality free health care - the one place "in" America where health care is free. So Moore takes a number of the 9/11 workers and some of the other people we've met in an effort to get them care at Guantanamo. While they don't get in, of course, they end up at a Cuban hospital and are treated by the Cuban health care system - one of the saddest moments in the entire movie is one of the women breaking down when she finds out at a Cuban pharmacy that the inhalers her insurance charges her $120 for are literally 5 cents as provided for by the Cuban system (and she explains that she lives on fixed disability income and that money does matter).
This is a movie that reaches across the spectrum of ideology and asks why the richest country on the planet can't care for its sick the way it is capable. I expect a great deal of Americans will watch this movie and come out amazed and angry, and probably even those who hate him will find some grudging respect for Moore after this. I know that, if nothing else, the song that closes the movie as the credits roll is bittersweet, a weird homage to the spirit of one of my other favorite films, "Harold and Maude".
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