Sicko : What Lies Beneath

Michael Moore’s Sicko suggests that the ill health of our health care system is itself a symptom of a more virulent disorder

by Mary D. Chaffee

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Michael Moore’s Sicko , an indictment of our broken health care system, reveals a more fundamental problem: the hijacking of our nation’s lawmakers by special interests who feed the insatiable hunger for campaign funds, and then demand quid pro quo. And get it, the public good be damned.

Critics who sneer at Michael Moore’s anecdotal style and dramatic stunts miss the point. He’s an entertainer in the grand tradition of polemical theater, not a scholarly researcher. As in his previous productions, his goal in Sicko is to shock and goad us into empathizing with a cast of ailing characters that includes 9-11 volunteers, middle-class Americans and derelicts – all abandoned by corporate “providers” that value healthy profits above the very lives of their bewildered clients.

What’s a country to do? Michael Moore shows us how Canada, France, Cuba, and even the GITMO detention center treat their citizens (or inmates, as the case may be): state-of-the-art health care at zero cost. Inmates aside, U.S health stats are dismal when compared with the other developed nations – all of which (with the sole exception of South Africa) provide health care to all their citizens. Coincidence? Not on your life.

So will the U.S. do the sensible, cost-effective thing and provide universal single-payer health care to all its citizens? Not until campaign finance and lobbying reforms decouple lawmaking from massive corporate influence, And since the lawmakers are not likely to bite the hands that feed them so generously, I won’t hold my breath.

You see, I’d just turn blue and pass out…and my health insurance might not cover resuscitation.

[Welcome to Mary Chaffee, who went to see the movie Sicko with me; Mary is a friend and wonderfully creative and versatile writer, with extensive credits as a scriptwriter, direct marketer and media producer]