When Dialing 911 In America To Rescue Your Health Could Endanger Your Life
The Popcorn Reel Movie Review: "SiCKO"
By Omar P.L. Moore/June 25, 2007
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Do you live in the United States? Have you ever been
sick and in need of medical treatment? Do you lack health insurance?
Do you have health insurance? (That would be 250 million of you.) If
you do, then Michael Moore has a dirty little-not-so-secret for you: you may not
be guaranteed healthcare for what ails you, even if your wallet aches after
making monthly premium payments. "SiCKO", Mr. Moore's latest documentary,
is potent in its unassailable truths and in its ability to turn its cameras on
ordinary people of every race and background in America and show the movie's
audience a catalog of tragic and devastating stories that William Goldman,
Robert Towne, Steven Spielberg or Syd Field couldn't script in their own most
grandiose imaginations. Heartbreakingly sad, deeply infuriating and
outrageously funny, "SiCKO", which opens wide on Friday across North America
(while continuing in New York City) argues persuasively for the dismantling of
the American healthcare system and for the regulation of the healthcare
corporations (Kaiser Permanente, Blue Cross, etc.) that profiteer from the
denial of payment of healthcare claims for treatments that could save lives.
The film shows testimony from Dr. Linda Peeno, a former Humana healthcare
official, during a May 1996 U.S. congressional hearing in which she admits to
being a merchant of death, having her salary raised exponentially when she was
told to deny claims of insured patients who would have lived had Humana paid for
their treatments. One of those she denied died when a liver transplant
treatment claim was rejected. The fewer claimants granted treatments by a
doctor the more money the doctor and the healthcare company makes. ("When
you don't spend money on somebody, it is a savings to the company," Dr. Peeno
says in an interview with Moore.)
The documentary filmmaker's old target George W. Bush is still in Mr. Moore's
crosshairs, with archive footage (researched by Judy Aley) showing more of the
commander-in-chief's malapropisms. And other familiar faces are also on
display.
It is not difficult for even the most objective, partisan or adverse viewer to
boil with outrage or be moved by the stories of the everyday people -- whether
poor, working class or middle class, insured or not -- who suffer, toil, even
die -- or in astonishing fashion, take matters into their own hands (as is
briefly shown in a grisly moment very early on) to get better very soon.
Witnessing the stories unfold is unreal and rather than describe any of them
here, watching them on the big screen is advised. The stories and the
people in them speak loudly for themselves, as does the director's town hall
meeting with Americans living in France, a country which Mr. Moore sarcastically
admonishes for having an "anti-American" sentiment. With one statement, he
hilariously and satirically wonders aloud why Americans are taught to hate the
French. (Their healthcare and open protests against government and
employers, perhaps?) Mr. Moore also tackles the recurring theme in his
films of fear-mongering by the mainstream American media and government, and
ignorance on the part of the American public, and has a brief sequence in the
film's final 20 minutes that resembles a reconnoitering operation typically
found in an action film rescue or police-crime drama.
All smiles in England: the joys of socialized medicine shared by a couple in
London. (All photos: The Weinstein Company)
Viewed in their crudest denominator, the situations in "SiCKO"
prompted by the malfeasance of the medical insurance companies that Mr. Moore
documents subvert and drive a poisonous stake through the heart of one of
America's greatest and oldest maxims, inscribed on Lady Liberty in New York
Harbor: "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe
free." The stories presented are so incomprehensible that they are
disturbing. Mr. Moore then broadens the discussion by comparing the
treatment of Americans to the kind of healthcare assistance the citizenry in
such countries as France, Canada, England and Cuba receive. Once again the
film is highly effective in these moments in stirring thought, outrage and
despair. But most of all, Mr. Moore wishes for us to act upon our anger
and actually agitate the very system that he holds responsible for the malaise
in the healthcare industry that has crippled Americans. In this sense
Michael Moore is the ultimate populist and those instincts are never more on
display than they are in "SiCKO". The film may be one of the first of the
new century (aside from "An Inconvenient Truth") that exhorts its audience to
deputize itself. And with an issue that is as universal as healthcare how
can one not be affected?
There is a quietly spiritual undertaking that Moore develops during the near
two-hour experience: the principle of helping your fellow man and woman in need
to achieve a happier, healthier society is present in an unabashed way in "SiCKO",
and it is this spirit of benevolence that gives the film its emotional
crescendo. The film follows the tripartite structure of shocking story,
comparative narrative and analogy, then uplifting and inspiring do-good
behavior. This thread was constant in both "Bowling For Columbine" and
"Fahrenheit 9/11". To some people more concerned with appearances than
facts it will matter that the director appears in "SiCKO" more often than he did
in "Fahrenheit 9/11". But there's no getting around the following: Michael
Moore is not the issue -- the state of the healthcare system in America that
affects millions adversely, is. There is always that unmistakable
signature in Mr. Moore's films: the moment when someone delivers that
unavoidable -- or in the case of the director's former television series --
awful truth. In "Columbine" it was Marilyn Manson's comments about
listening to the students; in "Fahrenheit 9/11" it was the words of Lila
Lipscomb and her husband on the Iraq invasion; and in "SiCKO" it is former
British member of parliament Tony Benn, from the country's Labour party.
In your heart of hearts when you listen, it's difficult to argue against what
Mr. Benn says in the film.
Wonderment in France: The director on a street in the much-maligned (by some
Americans) country, in "SiCKO".
Thought-provoking statements, documented facts and
truth-telling are a constant in "SiCKO", as is the excoriating and bitter
sadness of Hillary Clinton's about-face on healthcare over the years -- from her
bold and innovative proposal on healthcare in the early '90's as First Lady in
her husband's administration to make it more accessible to the poor and
middle-classes -- to her new place at or near the top of the list as the
politician taking the most money from health insurance corporations in the
present day. Especially when the American healthcare system is juxtaposed
against that of the other countries' healthcare systems, there is an irony and a
sense of shame and disappointment that bites throughout this film.
Sometimes one may even feel ashamed to be an American when watching the events
chronicled in Mr. Moore's film. ("Who are we? And how did we get to
this point?", Moore asks at one stage.) Many of the documented facts may
not be new to the educated or topically aware. But to the uninitiated the
news that the United States lies 37th on the World Health Organization's most
recent survey of countries with the best healthcare will be dismaying, as will
the relatively ho-hum observation that the vast majority of American politicians
receive large campaign contributions from the very healthcare insurance
companies that Moore argues bilks their constituents. He urges a solution
of universal healthcare (aka socialized medicine) for the U.S. (the only
industrialized western society without a universal healthcare) -- a system that
has largely worked -- though has at times shown its shortcomings in other
countries.
Mr. Moore's film is again quintessentially an op-ed documentary and its style is
one of entertainment and substance. Mr. Moore made the documentary film
sexy again with "Fahrenheit 9/11" and here he elevates it to riveting and
prescient timely status. (Earlier this month at the Martin Luther King
Jr.-Charles Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles a 40-something woman coughed up
and vomited blood as she lay on the floor for 40 minutes in the Center's
emergency room as many patients and hospital employees watched and did nothing.
A janitor mopped up the blood around her as she lay dying. And 911
dispatchers declined to help her, stating that she was already in a hospital and
someone there would help her. When the dispatcher was told by the caller
that the hospital's doctors refused to help the woman, whose name was Edith
Rodriguez, the dispatcher declared that it wasn't an emergency because Ms.
Rodriguez' condition wasn't brought about by any criminal wrongdoing. The
whole episode was caught on video and audio tape, but happened too recently to
appear in "SiCKO".)
The greatest yet most elementary revelation of "SiCKO" is that it isn't
necessarily a film that Michael Moore "made"; it is made by the ordinary
everyday people in America, France, Cuba, Canada and England. All the
filmmaker did was to ask readers of his website to submit their healthcare
horror stories to him. (Before the first week of the appeal was over in
early 2006 more than 25,000 stories bombarded Mr. Moore's e-mail inbox.)
In the film, when the people of the world speak, without the filters of press,
politicians or professional experts (all of whom are virtually absent from "SiCKO")
it is highly compelling and direct. The parade of everyday faces and names
and predicaments makes "SiCKO" a deeply personal experience. Viewers who
have had similar experiences will relate strongly to the stories they see, as
will those who have been fortunate enough not to. The no-filter zone is
effective in the director's latest film, for in "Fahrenheit 9/11" a woman
discounts and trivializes Mrs. Lipscomb's dead son's service; in "SiCKO" there
is no such response to the cavalcade of healthcare horror stories and tragedies.
And wisely so. The enemy in "SiCKO" isn't opposing political parties or
people, it is a system that punishes people for being sick.
With the Eiffel Tower in the distance, Mr. Moore visits to explore the
healthcare system in France in "SiCKO", Mr. Moore's crowning achievement.
Again there is a biblical theme running in the film: feeding the
hungry, clothing the needy -- a "what you do unto the least of mine, you do also
unto me" declaration. "SiCKO" is Mr. Moore's most personal film. The
film was essentially born in 1999 on "The Awful Truth", Mr. Moore's television series,
where a man was denied a pancreatic transplant by Humana, his health insurer.
(The man had spent seven years paying high premiums to Humana.) Mr. Moore
and his crew responded by holding a mock funeral for the man in front of the
healthcare insurance company's headquarters, with the man present and additional
news media TV cameras in tow. Almost instantly, Humana relented and agreed
to pay for the man's transplant. If Mr. Moore could achieve this result in
such a fashion in a ten or fifteen-minute period, then what could he do in an
hour? Or two? "SiCKO" is the answer to those questions.
Even when neglect and abject cynicism run at their height in the film --
especially in a revealing, little-heard audio tape of former U.S. president
Richard Nixon and his top aide John Ehrlichman in the White House in 1971
discussing the need to keep healthcare away from the nation's masses and turn
profits for Edgar Kaiser, the son of the founder of the Kaiser Permanente health
insurance company, which is ironically billed as a non-profit organization --
the focus on the personal stories of everyday Americans does not get lost in a
fusillade of rants and indictments. The pain of loss is indictment enough.
The damning tape of Nixon and Ehrlichman is immediately followed by footage that
will probably make the most cynical in the audience cringe and seethe. Two
years after that recorded White House conversation the Health Maintenance
Organization Act of 1973 was passed in the U.S., legislation that transferred
more costs and less care to the average American.
If Reverend Al Sharpton is now viewed as America's foremost advocate on behalf
of African-Americans encountering injustice, then Michael Moore is currently the
country's most prominent cinematic avenger against the assault on the universal
little guy in America. A tricky analogy, but maybe not so much: apart from
their rotund appearances, both loudly operate from a pulpit that is guided by a
spiritual hand. Some people have their doubts about both, but to the
people who know them best their intentions are unmistakable. (Often the
filmmaker invokes the biblical proverb that "it is easier for a camel to pass
through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of
heaven.") And these days Mr. Moore is wading into the political waters by
appealing to Congress, lobbying, and holding rallies across America with Nurses'
Associations and expressing support for a current healthcare bill in Congress
that calls for universal healthcare for all Americans.
The director, perhaps a little piqued or jaded by some of the vigorous
long-running anti-Moore sentiment in parts of the United States, extends an
olive branch to one of his most ardent antagonists with a heartfelt and selfless
gesture. This act is recalled in amusing style and irony in "SiCKO" and
leaves one with an "only in America" sentiment.
How often has one been used to seeing a film that entertains but leaves you
empty? "SiCKO" is a winner: it entertains, provokes, saddens, angers,
amuses, uplifts, and nourishes. Just like conventional feature films (as
in life) there are good guys and bad guys, winners and losers, the lucky and the
luckless, but most of all there is a feeling of humanity and acts of kindness
that make the human heart flourish with emotion, hope and triumph.
That's what a good movie is made of.
"SiCKO", Michael Moore's best and most open-hearted film, delivers.
"SiCKO", which opened in New York City last weekend, opens across the U.S. and
Canada on Friday. The film is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture
Association of America for brief strong language, but also features the
aforementioned grisly sequence early on during the film's opening credits.
The film's duration is one hour and 56 minutes and is released by Lions Gate and
The Weinstein Company and is produced by Meghan O'Hara.
Related feature: "SiCKO" runs amok in
America
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