At this point of his career, Moore is the most bankable documentary film maker in the world (and likely in the history of the genre). And Sicko shows why. Moore shows his skill by weaving 1950s stock footage with recent political sound bites and touching real-life stories. He also shows his skill at choosing the perfect music as background to the stories.
Sicko preaches that the American health care system is sick. It has been poisoned through the greed of HMOs and pharmaceutical companies that do whatever possible to deny care to patients in order to maximize profits for the company.
Moore presents story after shocking story of people denied care, some of which result in the death. After presenting the deficiencies of the American system, he moves on to examine countries that offer free universal health care. He visits Canada, England, France and Cuba.
As a Canadian I have hugely benefited from the system in Canada. But Moore fails to point out the massive wait lists—in my home province of British Columbia there are currently 327 people on a wait list for some kind of non-emergency cardiac surgery. This is certainly a glaring problem in the Canadian system. But as a filmmaker, Moore knows the power of the edit, and he can spin the stories to represent his views. And he represents Canada in glowing terms.
In France and England he surveys patients in hospitals and physicians giving out the care. There is a particularly funny scene when a young couple is leaving a hospital with their newborn child. Moore asks, “How much did that kid cost you?” The couple laughs out loud before saying it cost them nothing.
The film starts to falter when Moore meets some 9/11 rescue workers who became ill during the rescue efforts. After finding out their inability to get health care in the States, he loads them on a boat and heads to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where Al Qaeda detainees enjoy free health care. This obvious publicity stunt makes the ill workers appear as mere pawns in Moore’s attempts to get his view across. Indeed, they all seem rather uncomfortable during this scene.
The Cuban debacle continues as Moore finds a completely up-to-date hospital that chooses to treat all the Americans. It is unclear whether any payment was made. (I’m sure there was, as many Cubans travel to Cuba as “health tourists” to receive treatments at the fraction of the cost of the U.S.)
Moore succeeds in once again provoking a national conversation in America. Nations need to decide what kind of culture they want. If you live in a culture of compassion, you will choose to care for the “least of these,” even if it means you pay more taxes in order to subsidize caring for poor people. But if you choose to have a culture of commerce and competition, you will look out only for yourself. In that kind of culture, the poor and vulnerable are often overlooked.
