Sicko

Sicko is Michael Moore's latest, and possibly least controversial documentary film. While his previous work has been at times more belligerent than edifying, Sicko showcases a mature and sensitive side of Moore that only sells his witty, fast-paced social commentary with greater aplomb. Moore's comic sensibilities are alive and well, but there's a more good-natured usage of his acid tongue here that makes it much more enjoyable and much less uncomfortable. It's the American health care system that's on trial here and from the very beginning of the film, Moore puts emphasis on its victims more so than himself. His much debated screen persona, a tactic maligned by those who prefer the "invisible camera" style of more classical documentaries, is not quite so overbearing in this case. It's not "The Michael Moore Show." Moore is mostly just the narrator of the numerous vignettes featured detailing the many incidences of cruelty on the behalf of HMOs and the various amounts of red tape lobbied at the ill and grieving when they should be receiving support and care.

The film is more or less a public outcry to have a universal health care plan in America similar to those found in most Western nations. Moore happily points out recent statistics that weigh the American health care system at #37 globally, putting it just above Slovenia. He visits with a number of countries that have a national health care plan in effect including Canada, England, France, and the much discussed visit to Cuba. It's actually the Cuba sequence that best reflects the hilarious and heartbreaking strong suits of the feature. Moore gathers together a number of the sick people without health care in America that he has met during the process of making this film, particularly three 9/11 rescue workers who were not covered under government care because they were spur of the moment volunteers and not official employees of government rescue services. They go first to Guantanamo Bay, the unlikeliest of places, but the only American territory where universal health care is provided - in this case it's for the detainees. Standing in a boat in the bay of Cuba, Moore gets on a tiny megaphone and proclaims "I've got some 9/11 rescue workers here that need some medical treatment. They just want the same kind that Al Qaeda gets!" After an unfriendly greeting from the American base, he travels into Cuba with his fellow travelers where they are treated to free health care, including treatments they were denied by the American system and simply could not afford.

The fundamental difference between the American HMOs and the universal systems offered elsewhere is that private organizations operate solely to obtain profits. The film offers a wide variety of truly upsetting horror stories involving HMOs, the darkest of which involves a former Humana employee who details how she received cash incentives for denying the highest number of treatments to the most patients. Conversely, Moore interviews a British doctor who happily discusses how he is paid better if he helps more people. It's Moore's hope that the American attitude will change and start to include medical treatment as a universal public service much in the way it runs systems ranging from the fire department to the public library at the moment. The sting of private businesses' greedy endeavors to make people's illness a into a cash service has gone too far.

Grade: A-