In SiCKO, Dr. Moore Proves Himself to be the Biggest Quack

by Samuel M. Rivera, Brooklyn YRs

There is no doubt that the healthcare system in America is imperfect at the very least, and one can read about the downfall of Medicare almost daily in the national newspapers. Thus, one can hardly ignore a film with healthcare as its major theme, especially when the creator of such a film is a lightning rod for controversy. Most recently, Hollywood’s latest concoction with this formula is “SiCKO,” a two-hour diatribe against the status of US healthcare.

A quick check of the renowned “RottenTomatoes.com” film review website counsels viewers that “SiCKO,” Michael Moore’s “documentary” (an increasingly tainted genre) about the American health care system, is “fresh” and earns 91% of positive ratings from 151 film critics nationwide. If you believe individuals such as Bill O’Reilly, you might think that this is due to a perplexing ideological imbalance in the media favoring the Left. However, this fact cannot explain the critics’ irrational love of “SiCKO” alone. Such socialist charlatanry can only convince the dumbest omadawn that Cuba and France are utopias and Hillary Clinton is “sexy.”

Yet, these are just a few of the claims that Dr. Moore makes as part of his prescription for a better life. “SiCKO” starts off by telling viewers that this film is not about those in America who are without healthcare but those that have it. Then come the litany of complaints from “real people” who have suffered (even died, Moore claims) because of the horrid nature of our health care system in America. This part of the film is the most human and emotional part. Moore transitions from these individual horror stories to muckraking. At least, one presumes this is muckraking, yet no citations are visible during much of the film.

This is Moore’s most overwhelming mistake. Here is a film made by a man whose last film accused the government of orchestrating the September 11th terror attacks. After his mockumentary on gun control (“Bowling for Columbine”) and producing the grotesque “Fahrenheit 9/11,” Michael Moore expects his viewers to trust his numbers? Since citations are seriously lacking, a reasoned viewer is left to guess which numbers in the film are cherry-picked and which are true.

For example, viewers are led to believe that the United States ranks 37th in health care performance, “just above Slovenia.” It sounds like a rather remarkable statement, considering the wealth and power of the United States. This, Moore says, is what makes “SiCKO” a comedy— a comedy about the failings of the richest nation in the world. Moore’s number is from the World Health Organization’s (WHO) World Health Report, a seemingly unbiased source (then again, it is the U.N.). However, a glance at the American Journal of Public Health underscores the inherent unfairness in this number. The WHO does not count as part of that ranking the tens of billions of dollars the US spends on research and on medicinal advances. He fails to note that over 60% of Americans rank their health as “excellent” or “good” and only 2.2% rank their own as poor. Additionally, the US ranks first in healthcare responsiveness and also deals with an impressive amount of lawsuits and malpractice claims that drive up insurance prices. But to Moore, reporting these facts and maintaining this standard of accuracy must be confusing and boring to his viewers, since he would much rather play an embarrassing clip of his favorite President, George W. Bush.

Next up, Moore does what those on the Right consider the unpardonable sin: praise anything of Hillary Clinton’s. More shockingly, he actually praises her 1993-1994 push as First Lady for universal national health care reform (perhaps her biggest weakness in her bid for president). One is forced to view a barrage of old Clinton photos, all while Moore claims that she was once “sassy” and “sexy.” Moore claims that when she pushed what conservatives appropriately called “HillaryCare,” she was proclaiming the civil right of health care. But now that she has become a big time senator, he says, she has betrayed her principles. No complaints there.

Not quite done sickening viewers, “SiCKO” travels to Canada, and then the UK and France on a bizarre European road trip to solidify Moore’s thesis that America sucks—I mean, America’s healthcare system sucks. The end result: we the viewers are subjected to the ramblings of expatriate Americans in a French bistro, a solo doctor in the UK who believes doctors should take pay cuts on principle (but somehow drives an Audi), and Dr. Moore’s logic that it’s true Europeans pay taxes (how much he never reports) but insists that healthcare’s still “free.” Moore suggests that the government should, while they’re somehow (taxes) managing to support the bureaucratic nightmare that is universal healthcare, also hire government nannies (I’m serious, he praises this) to take care of our kids. Government does so well hiring people like teachers with only minor setbacks (fondling, having sex with students and, of course, not teaching well—this last part being the most widespread), why not let them rock the cradle?

Not surprisingly, the last and most obtuse segment of the film is his use of ill 9/11 workers to make a grotesque statement about Cuba’s “superlative” healthcare system. Always the master manipulator, Moore and a posse of unfortunates (you do feel sorry for the 9/11 workers—at first) sail to Cuba and then to Gitmo, where Moore extols our healthcare for terrorists and our treatment of inmates. Suddenly, I feel as though I’m watching an EIB skit for Rush Limbaugh (“Club Gitmo,” anybody?). Of course, they do not get into Gitmo, but Dr. Moore has succeeded in his purpose: he has insulted America using a play out of the conservatives’ handbook and has managed to hide behind the 9/11 workers. Can you imagine how the US would look if they prosecuted 9/11 workers who went to Cuba illegally looking for adequate healthcare? What trickery!

Then, when they fail to get anything at Gitmo, Dr. Moore’s troops head back to Cuba, where Moore claims that there is a pharmacy on every corner! That’s better than New York! The sick folks find their way to a hospital (from my research, one of the better ones in Cuba), where they pay next to nothing to be treated. After brief interview with Che Guevara’s daughter, we see the SiCKOs (just examined and released with prescriptions) meet with a government fire department official and are saluted by Cuban firefighters, whom one of the healed SiCKOs calls their “brothers…”

…And then Elian Gonzalez came out arm in arm with Fidel Castro and healed the sick and the blind. Ok, just kidding. Roll credits.

This is what the emcee of healthcare reform, Dr. Michael Moore, has prescribed for us. No wonder the film has made far less money than “Fahrenheit 9/11.” But Moore does open some wounds that are sure to infect the 2008 presidential election. With healthcare costs on the rise and dire predictions concerning the future of Medicare, Moore takes the lazy socialist’s way of handling the issue by saying that if we just do what France does, death will end and life expectancy will increase exponentially. Yet consider this: for France’s entire universal healthcare, 5 hour work week (I’m joking—I hope), government-subsidized everything—they only live a few years more than the average American! That’s right! All our supersized, transfatty, obeseity-causing foods and stressful work weeks do not kill us much sooner than the French! Imagine if we all lived a little healthier?

Does this mean that the high insurance premiums and doctors living in fear of the next lawsuit are not problems? No, but thinking logically will dispel the notion that we must throw away the baby with the bathwater. Our healthcare system is flawed, yes, but it is not insurmountably flawed. Lawmakers—being led by their constituents’ demands and not the demands of special interests— can cause change without creating a class of American do-nothings who sit in their government-subsidized apartment houses with their food stamps and weekly trips to the government-paid doctors. Before you accuse this advice as outlandish, take a look at Europe’s average unemployment rate: double digits.

But forget that! We could just remake our money, increase taxes severely and form an economic and healthcare union with Canada and Mexico. Then maybe we can hire one of those government nannies to nurse Dr. Moore’s next communist pet project. However, I think not.