Sicko

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source: Sicko

One wonders if triple-chinned filmmaker Michael Moore, when his own arteries finally clog shut from trying to personally rid the world of donuts, will seriously consider a Cuban hospital for his bypass surgery? Or will a road-to-Damascus experience bring him to reconsider the sour views on American healthcare propagandized in this, his latest film. My wager is that he'll opt for the very best surgeon that privilege can buy, along with a private hospital suite, armed security guards and media handlers primed to spin away the irony. Horror stories can readily enough be found in most areas of life and Moore makes the most of suitable anecdotes, garnishing everything with cute pop musical cues. But he blithely passes over a litany of horrors long identified with socialized medicine: long waits and crowded hospital wards; impersonal service and a lack of choice in physicians; the destruction of incentives to innovate; and the staggering costs to taxpayers of single-payer healthcare. He turns an even blinder eye to that 500-pound gorilla lustily strangling our medical sector in America -- the greedy lawyers whose runaway lawsuits continue to skyrocket the cost of virtually anything connected to medical care. Trial lawyers, one must understand, are regular and heavy contributors to the Democrats ... Michael Moore ceaselessly disparages an America which produces no shortage of millionaires who infer from their own success intellectual abilities embarrassingly beyond their competence. This film will only buttress his standing among both groups.

For those of you that seem to get "stuck" on HOW Moore chooses to pass a message to viewers, and thus mainly missing the message itself....you will find this film more to your liking. Moore here is more substance and documentary, than what some people would call "Rambo revolutionary". The documentary examines the US Health system, and then indirectly compares it to Canada's, France's and other countries.The differences are obvious.In the U.S if you cant pay the huge amounts of money required, you get no help. In these other countries, exactly the opposite. You pay nothing. And if you think you are left with no money, because of taxes, you're wrong. The sad thing is, that countries with much less development and resources can offer a better overall health system. It IS true that you can judge a people from how it treats, it's most unfortunate citizens. The conclusions are indisputable. The only thing i was hoping for, was some more heat on Pharmaceutical companies (major heat is on Insurance ones). Maybe in Sicko 2 , or the extras. A MUST see!

Quite simply, this film is brilliant. Michael Moore's Sicko covers the spectrum from universal health care, to HMOs, to pharmaceutical companies, to sickening governmental complicity. It is a truly intelligent documentary on the state of America's health care system. But the film is about more than just health care; it is a non-partisan, richly in-depth piece of film-making that manages to capture the zeitgeist of our times. Unlike his previous work Fahrenheit 9/11, this film does not carry with it a blatantly biased point of view. Rather, it speaks to the human condition, in sometimes gut-wrenching ways, and the pathetic, dangerous state of America's health care system – a system that doesn't care if you're red or blue, but only about the bottom line. In a country where the vast majority of citizens feel we're headed in the wrong direction, Moore manages to take the issue of health care and shed light on much broader reasons for American discontent. Good work Mike - no one can argue with what you've done here.

Mr. Moore seems once again to portrayal the facts with a most one-sided look. I have no doubt in my mind that what was said about the American health care system is true with the gross examples presented in this movie. And there is nothing wrong with questioning that system giving said horrible examples of a system failing. However, what Mr. Moore does when comparing the American system to other country's systems simply makes it a Lie. And this is really bad documentary making and all of you people voting this documentary anything above a 6 simply deserve documentaries like this. They are made for you, people that can't think for themselves. Believe it or not but almost all other countries in the world have problems to some extend with their healthcare system too. Certainly not all as rotten as how the American one is presented to be in this documentary, but the glorification of systems like in Canada, France and Britain is grossly oversimplifying the issue. I have nothing against Mr. Moore and I generally find his films enjoyable and important. But this documentary is simply way too black and white. I'm not going to correct Mr. Moore point for point but let me say that of course there are people in France and Britain that have been denied treatment for system technical reasons as well. And a monthly income of $8000 does not define a middle-class income. Mr. Moore's failure to present nuance in this documentary makes it hard to pick out the real facts and distinguish them from fiction or oversimplifications. He is fighting lies with lies so it seems. This subject deserves more than that. 4/10

SICKO is right on target. The US is 37th in the world in terms of quality of health care--slightly ahead of Slovenia, but behind Costa Rica--but number one in terms of per capita health care spending, or $7,000 per person per annum. Michael Moore chose the title "Sicko" for the movie, but what I think he meant by this was "ghoul," which is an Arabic word, among so many in English. In Muslim folklore, a ghoul was an evil spirit believed to plunder graves and feed on corpses. What is the for-profit, insurance industry run, so-called "health care" system, then, if not a truly evil racket run by conscienceless, psychopathic ghouls who feed on human flesh? And the only way you combat this system--long buttressed by the government, the insurance companies and the AMA--is to take the profit motive out of it: it is an immoral motive when it comes to people's health and their lives. Michael Moore wants to take the insurance companies out of the equation and wants to regulate health care like a public utility (a public good)as it is done in practically all other developed countries. He points out that all this fear of "socialized" service is nonsense: our fire departments are run as a public good, and so are police departments. Would we allow the bottom line to determine whether or not the fire truck went to a home to attend to an ongoing fire? Well, in another movie--the Canadian documentary "The Corporation"--it is pointed out that until very recently (as late as the 1950s)--that is the way it was in the US: if your house caught fire, and you didn't have a particular fire brigade's medallion on your house, the fire truck went right past your house and didn't extinguish the fire. Do Americans want to go back to those days? Why do they allow it when it comes to health care? A deeply Christian sense of justice permeates the movie: Moore is a Catholic Christian who believes, as the New Testament says, that when we leave our mortal coil and arrive at the pearly gates, Jesus will ask us only two questions: "When I was hungry, did you feed me?," "When I was homeless, did you take me in?" As Valgard Haugland, the leader of Norway's Christian Democratic Party and the cabinet minister for children and family affairs, told Washington Post correspondent T.R. Reid: "Americans like to talk about family values. We have decided to do more than talk; we use our tax revenues to pay for family values." (Reid, T.R. The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy. New York: Penguin Books, 2004. pp. 152-153) Through anecdote after anecdote about how this question is tackled in other industrialized countries, Moore points the way to what a just system would look like, and how unjust the US system truly is.

Brilliant documentary, with a softer, less angry Moore taking a good hard look at the current state of the inner-workings of the American private health care system, and comparing them to the universal systems in Canada, England, and France. The nay-sayers will argue that he's skewing his content, or simply choosing the worst HMO stories, but that's exactly what he has to do to drive his point home! The content here is far less controversial than in his previous films. It's widely known that, despite being one of the richest countries in the world, the states is far from best when it comes to taking care of their own. The film gives the impression that Canadians wait an average of 45minutes to get seen at a hospital. Being a Canadian, I'll tell you right away that is not the case. There is an issue here in Canada with long wait times (both at the hospital and for major surgery), however, the system still works well, and everyone is taken care of, regardless of financial or social status. Seeing sicko really made me realize just how much I take our universal health care system for granted. Some of the HMO horror stories Moore gives are shocking (to put it lightly). While this film doesn't pack quite the punch, compared to Fahrenheit and Columbine, it's still going to turn a lot of heads. Everyone should see this movie.

While it may not win any awards, when looked at purely as a film, this documentary by Michael Moore is an entertaining and interesting one. It presents all the facts (whether you consider them to be biased or not) in the typical Michael Moore style (heavy on the sarcasm and wit) that we've all gotten used to by now and in an easy to digest format. As this is IMDb and people should rate movies based on their values as films rather than opinions expressed, I think it's best to refrain from mentioning Mr. Moore's obvious view on the American health care system. However, if at all you're interested in learning more about the system or simply want to watch an entertaining documentary, I suggest you go out and watch this film when it arrives in cinemas near you.

Having read all the comments and reviews, this movie was pretty much what I expected. Moore does a really good job in making his point. What bothered me a little was his black & white view of the healthcare industry - either it is public OR private. In reality, many western countries have a "hybrid" system. For example here in Finland we have a pretty reasonable public healthcare system (which by the way is not totally free for the patient, albeit very cheap), but in addition, we also have private clinics, if you want even faster service and are willing to pay extra. You can also get an insurance from private companies, which provides extra financial support and/or service in the private clinics in case of illness. Also some workplaces and institutes have free doctors. A portion of the cost of medicines is substituted by the government in either case, and there is an annual limit after which they are totally substituted. I think it would be pretty straightforward to establish this kind of system in the US. There is no need to socialize healthcare TOTALLY. There is no need for the insurance company to "go" (as Moore put it), they just need to step aside a little and stop being the main authority. Also, if insurance companies have to compete with FREE (health care), there is only one thing they can do: offer really good service!