Review: Sicko

There's a good reason why most people tend to either love Michael Moore's films, or absolutely hate them. And it's not because he's overweight, smug in his beliefs, or from Flint, Michigan (although he is all of those things).

Well, OK, maybe the smugness has a little to do with it! But mostly it's the fact that he's willing to both stand behind what he believes and shame the Hell out of anyone who's on the other side of the argument!

In case anyone is wondering, I'm definitely in the "love his movies" camp, although I can't help but acknowledge many of the flaws that keep him from qualifying as a true documentarian. His anecdotal approach to film-making, for example, always leaves him open to criticisms of selectivism, which I think are very valid. His over-the-top storytelling style, while every bit as entertaining as a dozen clowns crammed into a Volkswagen Beetle, often undercuts the seriousness of his subject matter. And his condescending narration probably doesn't help, either.

But had his Fahrenheit 9/11 film had the intended effect and cost George W. Bush his re-election bid in 2004, Moore would have transcended the level of "dispassionate documentary maker" and actually affected history (sadly, it wasn't to be). Now, with Sicko, he's trying once again, but this time on a more personal front: he's championing the fight for universal health care within the United States of America. And as such, he's set his sights squarely on the ironically-named Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) who've successfully shifted American medicine's focus away from saving lives and onto saving money.

Along the way, there are a lot of great scenes in Sicko, although the subject matter tends to weight it more toward the heart-wrenching than the comedic. I suppose some might find a dark humour in the contrast between the American man who had to choose which of his two fingers to have re-attached (one was going to cost $12,000 and the other $60,000, and the poor guy had to... sorry... foot the bill himself) and his Canadian counterpart who had all five fingers saved after they'd been severed (total bill: $0, courtesy of OHIP). Me, I could only think how sad it is that those types of scenarios are playing out on a regular basis in the country just a few hundred kilometres to the south of us.

And Sicko is full of tableaux of that sort, including a young girl who died because she couldn't be treated at the hospital that she was initially taken to (the HMO insisted that she go to a facility under their control, by which point she'd gone into a coma), a young man who needed a bone marrow transplant to save his life but couldn't get his insurer to approve the operation even after his younger brother was found to be a perfect match, and the senior citizen couple who had to move into their daughter's basement storage room after losing their life savings to medical bills. The film is a litany of tales that citizens in "every other Western country" can't help but regard as something akin to a horror movie. Moore visits Canada, England, France and even Cuba, and of course he casts those health care systems in a little too unrealistically-perfect a light... but one has to remember just what he's comparing them to!

One of the more pointed segments of the movie deals with the American doctors who go to work for HMOs and whose bonuses are then tied to how many health insurance claims they help deny! That raises the question: Is there still a Hippocratic oath, or are they all just hypocritical oafs? Moore actually missed an opportunity to really drive that point home when he interviewed a British doctor who described how his salary structure rewarded efforts like early detection and preventive medicine. There was a chance to show how both of those systems ultimately save money for the insurer; it's just that the English one does it while also serving the best interests of the patient, whereas the American HMO model focuses purely on profit and loss. I wish that the film-maker had drawn that parallel a little more clearly, as it's a powerful (and positive) message that shoots to Hell the notion that you have to choose between either saving money or saving lives.

Sicko is a must-see movie, as far as I'm concerned... but as I said earlier, I'm a bit biased. If nothing else, it certainly paints a picture of just how screwed up the American health system is, and should help those of us who live elsewhere appreciate just how well off we really are, at least in comparison!

Rating: *** 1/2