Thursday, May 29, 2008

Sicko (2007)


Perhaps Michael Moore’s greatest gift is taking what you would mostly consider to be a mundane subject and turning it into an attention keeping movie. Mr Pinky put this DVD on wondering if he would get to the end of it. Who wants to hear about people’s health care problems?

Sicko soon had me hooked, and shaking my head in disbelief. How can such a rich country like America not have universal health care? Answer: they think it's some communist plot.

Moore pulls up some interesting footage. To whit, a record made by Ronald Reagan (that’s right, a 33rpm vinyl platter) warning against the dangers of ‘socialised medicine’.

After relating numerous horror stories, with people plunged into bankruptcy, or worse, death, by unscrupulous health care insurers, Moore takes his crew to such socialist havens as France, Canada and England. All naturally have excellent public health care systems that are not pushing their economies over into the abyss.

Michael Moore rightly has his critics. He’s more a cartoonist / polemicist than a journalist. He doesn’t exactly strive for balance.

In one section of the film he talks about Hilary Clinton and her being appointed to develop a health care plan. Moore then describes how the health insurance companies piled all this money into knocking her down. Moore makes no mention of Clinton’s poor performance on this job herself.

This omission left Mr Pinky a little miffed, until Moore highlighted that her second biggest donors to her current presidential candidacy are from the same health insurance lobbyists!

Balance restored, perhaps.

I think Michael Moore really just wants to wake people up from their torpor. He wants to reach people who usually don’t think at all about politics, and then motivate them to do something.

The most fascinating insight in this film came when a group of Americans living in France were talking about the differences between the two countries.

One woman said that in France the people were not afraid of government. The French took to the streets to protest when they were not happy. In America, however, the people were afraid of government. They were cowed and did whatever they were told.

This gave Mr Pinky pause. Maybe, I considered, this is why Americans fly their flag at every opportunity. Oh, I don’t know. Just a theory. But for a people who claim to love their country so much, it’s a mystery why they’re not so crazy about their countrymen.

Mr Pinky commends Sicko for your viewing pleasure. If you live in a country with a good public health system, please make sure you protect it.

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