Sicko, the new Michael Moore film about the state of healthcare in the United States, opens with a video clip of George W. Bush, during a speech he made to a group of handpicked audience members in anywhere U.S.A. The specific locale doesn’t matter: he’s incapable of making any other kinds of speeches. The clip might have been taken out of context but Mr. Bush seems to be discussing what he sees as one problem with the healthcare system. "Too many good docs are getting out of the business," he says. “Too many OB-GYNs aren’t able to practice their love with women all across this country.”
I know this clip has been a major part of the film’s advertising campaign. I have seen and heard the clip many times myself and yet I still laughed incredulously as our President humiliated us yet again. The sight of President Bush standing at a podium these days is akin to having a joke telling friend walk up to you and say “A priest, a rabbi and your sister walk into a bar…” But it smartly establishes the climate of the
Sicko and deviously hides the film’s greater questions.
Michael Moore has the skills of a journalist, the timing of a comic and the audacity of a carnival barker. He’s a trickster who operates outside the lines and tastes of everyday life. Tricksters are interested in facts inasmuch as they can distort, manipulate and highlight certain truths. In Moore’s film, the streets of France (Paris particularly) are lined with kissing couples and goateed men smoking cigarettes, drinking wine and living far healthier lives because of it; England is full of wealthy doctors and academics who receive bonuses from the government for getting their patients to live healthier lives and speak eloquently about a democracy’s need to take care of its downtrodden; Canada is full of people, conservatives even, who calmly yet fervently believe in the need for a society to look after one another; and Cuba is a place full of doctors who consult with their patients with patience and compassion while thoroughly and creatively finding solutions to their medical problems.
The fact is Michael Moore has a camera and a reputation and his subjects are, for the most part, equally enamored with – and of - both. The people he interviews in the film are all on their best, thoughtful behavior and paint a rather rosy portrait of every industrialized country he visits. He never once points his camera at the seedy underbelly of these systems. I’m sure these systems are not perfect and that there are people in them who fall into the cracks or, as one ex-insurance adjuster says in the film, are being swept into the cracks made by the system.
Moore plays stupid but is really smart. Here he goes, wandering around a hospital in England, looking for a billing department or a cashier. When he finds one, he’s dumbfounded when it is explained to him that the cashier is only there to pay patients’ transportation costs as they leave the hospital. He talks to a group of Americans living in Paris about France’s healthcare system and sits googly eyed as they revel in their 5 weeks of paid vacation, one week’s mandatory pay for newlywed couples’ honeymoon (outside the aforementioned vacation) and state sponsored house calls by very qualified doctors. His jaw hits the floor listening to a group of domino playing Cubans in a rundown neighborhood give him directions to a nearby hospital as they explain how every neighborhood has one.
Every one of these instances is a surprise in itself to those unfamiliar with healthcare policies in different countries (i.e., me) but the reason Mr. Moore comes across as disingenuous sometimes is that he already knows the answers to the questions he’s asking. He knows everything and he seems to think that by feigning ignorance, he is somehow bringing his point home more effectively or speaking for the ill-informed (i.e. me again). It’s an interesting but not altogether effective tactic. It’s a mild form of narcissism – or maybe self-indulgence - that distracts from the force of his argument. Instead of allowing the problem to speak for itself, Moore forces us to deal with the issues through the prism of his personality and wit.
But there is a moment in the film that packs supreme power. In it, we are told a simple story of a woman who, dazed and poor, is put into a cab by a major University hospital in Southern California and dropped off outside a Skid Row Hospital in Los Angeles. This illegal act is horrifying enough when recounted but Moore ups the ante by showing us video surveillance tape of the actual incident and includes filmed footage of the woman being interviewed following submission to the hospital. Moore presents this footage without commentary and without music. He allows the events to speak for themselves. And to top it off, he posits a question that caused me to consider the film in a different light. The Question? “What has become of us? Where is our soul?”
It’s a fair question and one I can’t remember ever being asked so directly. How is it that the world’s richest country lives with a system where the value of money takes precedence over the value of life and health? Why have we bought into and come to accept a system which values profit over compassion? Why do we, our politicians and our health care providers continue to perpetuate a system in which we don’t look out for the health and well being of our fellow citizens? We are not uncaring people. Why do we accept a system that is so heartless and selfish?
There are no easy answers to these questions but I never got the impression that Moore wanted any. The film provides the history of the U.S. Healthcare system and compares it to that of other industrialized nation but doesn’t offer any overt solutions. This may seem irresponsible but I’m not sure it’s his job as an entertainer to provide them. I’m pretty if you sat him down he’d have a few hours worth of ideas but that is not the point.
Sicko seems to be saying the healthcare system is fundamentally sick but he does it, strangely enough, not by blaming anyone in particular (Bush is a symptom, not a cause) but by highlighting our country’s unhealthy attitude toward it. The film is a good one because it raises important questions and implies that EVERYONE is responsible by allowing the disease to fester. I left the theatre incredulous rather than angry. It caused me to look around and think about how we as a society and as individuals come to accept certain injustices as normal. I still think Moore is a bit disingenuous. But it has been a while since someone has asked the question “What the hell is going on here?” to such dazzling effect.
