In Continuum.

Sicko



Ever since Michael Moore's first documentary was released a few years ago, he has single-handedly generated enough haters to occupy a small country. This country of haters have different reasons for hating this hundred kilogram filmmaker. All of them dislikes the fact that he is dissing the very country that he grew up in, the country that he received his education in, and some are even calling him a traitor of the country. True enough, Michael Moore is a true blue American who grew up in Flinn Michigan, and is also a person who has more than a little thing for his government - particularly the Bush administration.

There are a lot of people out there who dislikes Michael Moore, and there is even a website dedicated to people who hates him as well. However, if you think these websites are going to stop Michael Moore from dissing the very same country that he grew up in, you are wrong. Because he is back with yet another film called Sicko, this time targeting the American health care system, and he is going to cause the membership at the Anti-Moore website to drop drastically. Here's why.

In the past, Michael Moore had his barrels pointed towards the White House most of the time. In Bowling for Columbine, he blamed the government for the weapon policy in America. In Fahrenheit 9/11 he blamed the government for the tragedy that happened on that very day. People got sick of all his procrastinations, some calling them half truths and whole lies. To most, he wasn't much different to the kind of storyteller that Dan Brown was. Both of them took facts from history and weaved them together in a fictional way to work for his cause. He was just a fat white man out there, speaking his mind and a lot of people were unhappy with him - though a lot of people were encouraged by his courage as well. However, though the aim of Fahrenheit 9/11 was to work against the Republicans in America, Kerry lost the second election to Bush after the documentary was released. It was quite a slap in the face from the White House in a way, but that wasn't enough to reach the ego that was within this fat white man.

You can always argue that you have nothing to do with politics, that Moore is just another left wing procrastinator trying to bring down the government based on unsubstantial evidences. However, Sicko has a totally different story to tell, though it still has a lot of elements to do with the government. Bush appears for less than a minute in this documentary, significantly less than Moore's last outing. However, lesser screen time doesn't necessarily translate to less anger and frustrations by the end of the movie either. This movie dealt with the health care problems in the States, and how it has affected various people throughout the documentary. Health is something that has got to do with everybody in a country, and it is something that you cannot run away from. As true as it is that we are going to die someday, it is also true that we are going to fall sick sooner or later. So what happens when the people that are supposed to aid you when you are sick, turn their backs on you and deny you a place in the hospitals because you are not properly insured, or if you don't have the money to pay to medical bills?

The documentary begins with an amateur video of Adam, a man with a deep and nasty cut in his right knee. Then you see Adam picking up a needle and a thread, followed by him sewing up the wound one stitch at a time. Then we meet Rick, whose middle and ring finger got sliced off by a table saw while working on carpentry. The first thought in his head when the tips of those fingers flew off the table were not about how much pain he was suffering, or how he was going to live the rest of his life without the tips of his fingers like normal people would. Rick is not covered by insurance, and in his mind at that split moment was how much it would cost to attach his fingers back, how much money would he have to pay for the hospital bills. In the end, Rick was given a choice at the hospital: Either attach his middle finger back for $24000, or attach his ring finger back for $16000. Being the hopeless romantic, Rick chose his ring finger and had to live with the fact that he had to choose between parts of his body to save for the the rest of his life.

We then meet Becky, who worked as a phone operator of sorts at a major health care company. People call in to inquire about insurance policies, and there was this once when an old couple called in to ask about whether or not they were eligible for the insurance coverage. Sending their medical history over, Becky knew that they were not going to get the insurance coverage, and was sure to be rejected by the company via a phone call. However, she didn't have the heart to tell those old folks that they were going to be rejected, because the old man sounded too happy on the phone that they were going to be insured. So she remained cold and laconic to most callers afterwards, getting in and getting out. She didn't want to be involved in the callers' lives, so as not to have any emotional attachments with them. When asked about the criteria of rejection, there was a list of illnesses that would get you out of the insurance coverage consideration right away. That list is about 37 pages long, and it even involved diseases like "Burger disease" and "Yeast Infection" - whatever they are.

Of course, there are a dozen different stories throughout the documentary that is going to cause your jaws to drop, simply because it is hard to believe such things actually happen in the richest country in the world. You would expect and believe that such a country would have the best medical facilities for its own people, but the truth is every American - on average - forks out $6000 on medical bills alone. And it is not like it is making their medical system any better from where they now stand on the WHO world ranking list - just slightly ahead of Slovenia at 37. That is aside from talking the story of Tracy, who died from cancer because the insurance companied refused to pay for the supposedly experimental medication that had a high possibility of curing the disease according to statistics. Also, the eighteen month old Mychelle who died from a high fever because the nearest hospital to her placed wasn't affiliated to her mother's insurance company, and thus refused to treat them.

As before, Michael Moore asked more questions than he answered in this film. You are going to say that this is the view of one man, that is he merely a pot calling the kettle black. Like before, many people were unhappy that he dissed the government all over again, that he is making a mockery out of everything. However, when it comes to health issues, who is to say that they didn't have their own medical horror stories? Everybody had their stories to tell, debts unpaid and bills owed because of whatever reasons their insurance companies decided to throw at them. They almost seem like they are always looking for a way out, that they cannot care less about their clients at all. In fact, as an employee, if you are able to deny a client of their medical coverage, you are going to get a pay raise in the company simply because you helped the company to save money - which is in a way, earning profits.

There are going to be people out there also, who are going to be skeptical about this whole issue. After all, they've never seen or heard the stuff that was shown on the screen before. So if seeing is believing, and they have never heard of such stories in their lives, then how can Michael Moore be telling them truth at all? Besides, this is America, how is it possible that the hospitals are dumping people at the side of the streets when they cannot pay their hospital bills. These are the kind of things that happen in third world countries, or at least not in that country anyway. They can also argue that the crying beggars and the lady who was thrown out of a cab were paid to act as pathetic as possible before the camera. It's just difficult to imagine such a thing happening in that country, when everywhere else in the world is doing much worse than America - theoretically.

Michael Moore made visits to Canada, England and France. In those countries, he was shocked to hear about universal medical care, where people received absolutely free medical services in hospital. It'd be free if you give birth to your child in the hospital; it'd be free if you call an ambulance to your house if you broke your ankle; it'd be free if you have to attach all your fingers back onto your hand; and it is also free to have doctors come to your house in the wee hours of the morning - for reasons as trivial as abdomen pains. The truth is, all those countries seem to have way better medical care than America - or at least much cheaper ones to say the least. I especially loved the part in the documentary when Michael Moore visited England and France.

In the hospital in England, Michael Moore was determined to find a billing department, where the bills of the patients would be stored. He couldn't find it anywhere in the hospital at first, and were laughed at by the people working there because nobody ever talks about money in a hospital. So he decided to visit the more expensive part of the hospital - the E.R. - since that is where most of the expensive equipments are. Even there, there isn't a billing department anywhere to be seen at all. When Moore finally found a counter that said 'Cashier', he asked the Indian man behind the counter if that was the place where people paid for their hospital bills. That man said no, and people don't pay for medical bills in England at all. That counter was meant to return money to the patients, in the events that they actually had to take public transports to the hospitals. So let's get the facts straight now: Instead of money going into the hospitals in England, we have money coming out instead. Brilliant.

In France - the number one country in terms of health care - things became even more amazing. Like before, everything is free. A man received a three months paid leave to Southern France after his brain tumor operation. Not to mention the fact that you can call up their service hotline to have doctors visit your home in half an hours time at any time of the day, to check up on your aching stomach or you son's aching penis. It works at any time of the day, with absolutely no charges whatsoever. That is not all the French are enjoying on their side of the world either. If you are busy with your work, if you have no time to stay at home for the kids and do household chores, you can hire a maid - who works for the government - to come to your place and do the job for you four hours a day. She does anything you want, and it is completely free in France as well. Which is indirectly saying that the government of France is actually doing the laundry for their people - and no, this is not a fairytale, it's as real as it gets.

Coming back to America, the situation is not getting any better. Escalating medical bills aren't helping the people out of their health problems at all. Moore focused on several 9/11 rescue workers, and how the dust in the air caused permanent damages to their lungs after their heroic efforts six years ago. However, the government has neglected them altogether, and provides them with $1000 social medical care every month. So Moore was eager to have these heroes treated with the best medical care there is on American soil - for free.

So he bought a couple of boats, loaded these 9/11 rescue workers onto them, and sailed through the seas to the island of Cuba where Guantanamo Bay is located - it is also the place where the 'evil-doers are being locked up, the same place with the best and the most up to date medical facilities. Screaming through a loud hailer, Moore demanded that the guards at Guantanamo Bay to open up its doors to these 9/11 rescue workers, just so that they'd be able to receive the same medical treatments that the terrorists were getting. Of course, they were denied and chased away by the sirens that rang out from the military camp. They had to retreat from the high seas, and they were forced to evacuate back to mainland Cuba.

In Cuba, one of the rescue workers found out that a bottle of inhaler that would normally cost $120, cost only five cents in Cuba. Hospital registrations there needed only your name and birth date, and even Cuba - the mortal enemy of America with their Communism rule - has universal medical care for their people - for free. These ene...I mean, Americans, were treated for free and were given prescriptions as well. So you start to wonder if it is possible for the richest country in the world to do just the same, if they are able to treat the group of lower income people in the country just the same as everybody else. After all, a society is judged not by how well the upper class people are treating themselves, but rather the way the upper class people are treating the lower class people.

Like the post on Fahrenheit 9/11, I am not supporting Moore's claims or disagreeing with him either. This man is biased, and as do all arguments we read or watch, they shouldn't be fully trusted. However, this is the man with a lot of guts, the same man who dares to ask questions like," What are you going to do about this problem?" He does not answer a lot of questions, but then he asks questions that reach deeper than the bones. You start to look around you room, your house, your neighborhood, and you start to ask yourself about the kind of stories that you have heard. They all add up one way or another, even if it isn't half as bad as the victims shown in the documentaries itself.

People shouldn't be afraid of their governments, the government should be afraid of their people. There are times when we can do something, or at least protest our dissatisfactions. When the powers at be are doing things that shouldn't be done, we have the ability and right to stand up for what we believe in. Democracy is probably the best creation of mankind, and this is the sort of time that we should fully utilize it. After all, if we are not going to give a shit about our medical health care, what is going to happen when we are sick?



Hear him out. He has a point.