All private health insurance companies must be abolished. Not reformed, reconstituted or regulated—abolished. We should have guaranteed universal health care instead. This is the thesis of Michael Moore’s newest documentary, “Sicko,” a powerful cinematic polemic against the for-profit health industry in the United States.
Moore begins by introducing Rick, a man who accidentally “sawed off the tops of two of his fingers.” Moore narrates,
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But, we soon learn, this is not a movie about people like Rick, who is one of nearly 50 million who lack health insurance in the United States today. Instead, the film documents the crimes and injustices perpetrated against the 250 million people who have health insurance.
We meet Frank, a 79-year-old man who takes a job as a supermarket janitor because the job offers free prescription drugs to its employees. It is the only way he can afford them. We meet Tarsha Harris, who was denied coverage because she had not listed a common yeast infection as a “pre-existing condition.”
Their stories range from the ridiculous to the tragic. We meet Dawnelle Keys, whose feverish 18-month-old daughter was refused care by King-Drew hospital in South Los Angeles on the grounds that it was not the facility supported by her health insurance company, Kaiser Permanente. When she insisted on immediate care, hospital security ushered her out of the building. Her infant daughter, Keys tells us through her tears, went into cardiac arrest on the way into the Kaiser facility, and died shortly thereafter.
In this film, unlike his earlier documentaries, Moore is not chasing down corporate executives. Instead he relies on confessions.
Moore rolls footage of Dr. Linda Peeno, a former medical director for the health maintenance organization Humana, testifying before Congress in 1996. Peeno confesses: “As a physician, I denied a man a necessary operation that would have saved his life,” which “saved the company a half a million dollars.” This act, Peeno testifies, secured her “reputation as a good medical director.” She was rewarded with a raise.
Politicians for sale
How has the health care system gotten so sick? Moore points to the health industry lobby, which over the last decade has poured over $2.2 billion into its efforts—more than all other industry sectors.
While political candidates often speak generically about the need for universal coverage, and promise to help fix a broken system, they are simultaneously receiving huge sums of money from HMOs.
One is Hillary Clinton. In the 1990s, she led a health care reform campaign, which Moore misrepresents as an attempt at universal care. In fact, Clinton’s plan was to “manage competition” by funneling everyone into the five biggest health insurance companies. The health care lobby that spent $100 million to defeat Clinton’s package was composed of the small- and medium-sized insurers who would have lost out on the deal.
Regardless, any sympathy that “Sicko” generates for the leading Democratic presidential candidate is quickly washed
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According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Clinton received $848,872 from the health industry in the first three months of 2007—more than any other candidate. Moore’s website ranks Clinton as the leading “Sicko for Sale.”
The film is undoubtedly “non-partisan” insofar as it condemns both the Republicans and Democratic establishment. This is a welcome step forward for Moore.
In “Fahrenheit 9/11,” he obliterated the justifications of the Iraq war, but provided only misdirection—the endorsement of John Kerry, a pro-war candidate—when it came to proposing a way to end the imperialist adventure. This time, Moore is clearly encouraging his viewers to think bigger than the next electoral cycle.
In “Sicko,” Moore goes a step further. He shows us alternatives.
Learning by example
Traveling to Canada, France, Britain and finally Cuba, Moore shows how universal health care works: if you have a medical problem, you go to the doctor without worrying about the bill.
Moore walks through British hospitals, asking employees where he can find the billing department. He asks a couple holding their newborn baby, “How much did they charge you for that baby?” His questions only evoke laughter. The father of the newborn responds, “It’s not America.”
Finally, Moore finds a cashier’s desk and questions the clerk if this is where the hospital bills are paid. But alas, the cashier collects no money! His job is to give money out to reimburse patients for transportation expenses to the hospital.
Moore moves on to France. Its health care system was ranked first by the World Health Organization. There, doctors make free house visits; every resident has the right to five weeks of paid vacation, unlimited sick days, affordable childcare and the 35-hour work week.
Of the world’s 25 leading industrialized countries, the United States is the only one that does not have universal care. What is different here?
Moore does not just chalk it up to divergent moral or cultural sensibilities. The people of this country have as much compassion for our neighbors and family members as any other country. Besides, France, Britain and Canada certainly have no shortage of money-hungry capitalists.
In large part, the difference is that “the government of France is afraid of their people,” as one interviewee puts it. In the face of efforts to privatize social services, the French people, and particularly the labor unions, have a history of conducting mass strikes and street actions that paralyze the country until their demands are met.
Likewise, Tony Benn, a former Labour Party Member of Parliament, tells Moore that if the British government had tried to dismantle the National Health Service, “there would have been a revolution.”
The European universal health care systems grew out of the post-World War II period, when powerful labor and socialist movements could have threatened the political stability of capitalism. To mitigate the intensifying class struggle, the governments had to grant significant concessions. Moreover, the European capitalists were trying to resuscitate economies exhausted by war. They were willing to rely on a centralized state to streamline the rebuilding.
Looming over the European capitalists also was the specter of the Soviet Union. The country’s prestige soared after World War II. The Soviet Union boasted of universally guaranteed social and economic rights. The capitalist states were forced to emulate these rights, albeit in lesser forms.
During this same period, the U.S. capitalist class used anti-communism to steer people away from the idea of universal health care. Moore plays a recording in which Ronald Reagan—then a Hollywood actor—calls compulsory and universal health care an “abridgment of freedom” and a “short step all the way to socialism.”
“Sicko” mocks this Cold War portrayal of universal care, but by the film’s end we do make “the short step all the way to socialism.”
Socialist Cuba provides cure
By way of a small motorboat, Moore takes a crew of sick 9/11 rescue workers—all of whom were denied affordable
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The 9/11 rescue workers are welcomed in Havana Hospital, and asked to answer only two questions—their name and date of birth—before seeing a physician. The rescue workers are astonished to find themselves in a hospital without the bureaucratic maze of insurance applications. There is virtually no waiting time. Before long, they are receiving treatments and tests that would have cost them thousands of dollars in the United States.
Reggie Cervantes, who has suffered from a pulmonary condition since 9/11, purchases the same medicine for five cents that would cost $120 here.
The right wing has been quick to call the Cuba visit a cheap trick. They say the Cuban government just put on a show for Moore because a camera team from the United States was present. The rescue workers have asserted otherwise. Cervantes, who speaks Spanish, claims she snuck out of the hospital and readmitted herself to see if she would be treated differently as a Cuban off the street. She received the same treatment.
Every progressive person should want to be associated with this type of health care.
While the workers of France and England have had to take to the streets to protect their health care rights, and are forced to fight constant privatization efforts, the Cuban people’s rights are secure. Their socialist revolution made the right to free, universal health care inviolable. Only a counterrevolution could return the island of Cuba to the barbarism of the for-profit U.S. health care system.
Universal and equal care is part of socialism. Under socialism, no private corporations can profit off the backs of the working class. We should aspire to reach this goal.
But universal health care is not out of reach. With a fierce nationwide struggle and a coherent proposal, universal health care can be achieved here in the United States, the epicenter of the for-profit world. What is needed is to fashion the strategy and tactics that engage millions of people. This is the challenge that “Sicko” leaves to us—the challenge to make it happen.
