Sicko – The Movie


By Karl Abrams

Michael Moore has done it again, Venetians. His documentary film “Sicko” about America’s dysfunctional healthcare system will make you laugh and cry for 2-hours straight as you come face to face with the countless and absurd failures of our profit-driven corporate health care system.

Using a variety of now legendary Moore-esque techniques, we are taken on a long overdue epic journey dramatizing simultaneously the heart-rending problems faced by 47 million uninsured Americans (13%) and the shameful, cost-cutting, obscene profit driven corporate treatment of the rest of us who have health insurance.

Moore shows how former and disgusted HMO employees were given bonuses to deny treatment to people who thought they were insured. He tells the story of an insured woman who learned that she would have to pay for her emergency ambulance to the hospital because she did not get the trip pre-approved.

Moore has no hesitation in demonstrating, time and time again, the failures of the American system and the amazing successes of the French, Cuban, English, and Canadian health care programs. Single-payer health care works in other countries and does so with a compassionate efficiency that makes us all wonder why it took this long to realize. Moore asks why Ronald Reagan’s rantings during the 1950’s about the evils of socialized medicine were so convincing to virtually all of America. Was it out of such fear mongering that America’s health care system has slipped over the years to just above Slovenia? This film will in convince you, I believe, to join a new struggle to convince our politicians that if single-payer health insurance works in so many other countries, why not here in America.

Instead of 31% of every “health dollar” going to corporate profit, a mere 3% will allow single-payer insurance to work efficiently. (Moore points out that opposition by most of our politicians results from their being bought out long ago by the drug-health care corporate complex).

This film is a must-see. It clearly shows how our present health care system is a failure and will remain antiquated, selfish, and profit-driven. Go see the movie, wipe away your tears, and get involved in the health care revolution of the 21st century.

Posted: Wed - August 1, 2007 at 07:00 AM          


©