sicko

Even more than usual, I should come clean at the start ... I have a history with Michael Moore, and with HMOs, that probably affects my reaction to Sicko. It's true that we all always bring our pasts into our cultural interactions, but this seemed worth emphasizing. I am a longtime fan of Moore's ... one of the earliest items that pops up on Google when you search my name is something I said about him about 15 years ago (I loved TV Nation, and was talking about the scene where he had rival country's representatives slicing up a pizza as if they were dividing their countries). I have had many good things to say about his work, and some not-so-good things ... I wish he was more clear about his facts, but mostly I've just objected to the way he comes across as a champion of the "little guy" while at the same time ridiculing the common folk. He's much better about the latter than he was earlier in his career, and there is virtually none of it in Sicko ... the movie is the better for it, and I can finally believe with confidence that Moore actually does care about us.

The other thing my personal experience brings to the table relates to Kaiser. I've been a member since the 1960s, and I've been mostly happy with the care I've received. It's true, at one point when we weren't on a group plan and I had to apply as an individual, Kaiser turned me down for prexisting problems, but I saw that as a national problem more than a Kaiser problem. More to the point, my wife works for Kaiser and likes the company ... I get to spend my days watching Sicko and posting to my blog in part because Kaiser pays my wife good money.

Kaiser doesn't come off well in Sicko, of course, and I was prepared to find that troublesome, but the truth is, Kaiser doesn't come across much worse than any of the other U.S. providers, and Moore isn't particularly unfair in his representation of Kaiser. (They are a non-profit, which goes against his useful argument against health care for profit ... and their non-profit status is one reason Robin likes them ... on the other hand, parts of Kaiser are for-profit, although I don't pretend to understand how that works ... again, Robin has much more experience in that area, she has worked in the past on coordinating the non-profit and for-profit sectors, and if she were here right now, I'm pretty sure she'd be sticking up for Kaiser.)

Ultimately, Sicko is an effective piece of propaganda on a subject that needs to have light directed its way. And Moore deserves credit for shining his light. His depictions of the horrors of the American health care system are too grounded in the anecdotal, as are his portraits of the glories of health care in other countries ... it makes for a much more effective movie to do it his way, but I'm boring enough that I would prefer more hard data and fewer touching tales. If he paints too rosy a picture of health care outside the U.S., the fact remains that what we have here in the States is seriously broken, and I don't see anyone else making feature documentaries for the American masses, so more power to Moore. I really wish he hadn't thrown in that coda about helping out the guy running the anti-Moore website ... it's so Michael Mooreish, do something good, anonymously, then announce what you've done to the world. Whatever ... in the end, Sicko is a powerful piece of work that will hopefully open up serious dialogue.