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Michael Moore's SICKO is part horror film, part hope film. I watched it a second time today to take notes and make comments. If you've seen SICKO, this recap will remind you of the parts you shouldn't forget. If you haven't, you probably are sick and too swamped in co-pays and deductibles to afford the $4 rental fee. In that case, you can get the gist of it here in 5 minutes.

The movie starts off showing us a guy sewing up a deep gash in his leg with a needle and thread because he doesn't have insurance, and another guy who'd probably like to give the finger to politicians who allowed health care to become un-affordable in this country, unfortunately half of that finger is missing to an accident because it would cost him $60,000 to have doctors sew it back on (in his case, a needle and thread wouldn't suffice).

But Moore explains that this film is not about them. It is about the pitiful state of Americans that do have health insurance!

The next couple he interviews demonstrate that if you have a serious illness you can have a good job, pay your outrageous monthly insurance premiums, and still end up broke and homeless because of co-pays and deductibles. Several insurance company employees confess regarding a variety of techniques for arbitrarily denying treatment all together, such as, designating one women's prior yeast infection as a disqualifying "pre-existing condition". Adding insult to injury is the bonus incentives for agents who issue the denials.

Moore points out that the decline of health care in America is rooted in 1971 when President Nixon approved a plan for expanding privatization in our health care system. We hear Nixon endorsing "less care and more profit" in a taped meeting with Ehrlichman. The next blow was the health care industry's 100 million dollar campaign to squash First Lady Hillary Clinton's universal health care plan. As the president of the American Medical Association once warned, the risk is that government would "set standards" because god forbid, "the government, wants to treat everyone equal, don't you know". For the next decade Hillary Clinton was reduced to Laura Bush and America's health care rating slipped to a rating of 37th in the World, just ahead of Slovenia. Health company profits soured and their CEO's became billionaires. The final blow was/is the industry buying off old foes and making Hillary Clinton the second leading recipient of their campaign contributions.

Fast forward to Canada where free universal health care helps them live an average of 3 years longer than Americans. And Britain where ALL prescriptions are $10 (HIV treatment, cancer, whatever...). If you're unemployed, you pay $0. A pregnant women gets 6 months off, payed. When Moore visits a hospital each person he asks about "paying", laughs at him. In fact, they have no Billing Department. Moore does, however, find a window under a "cashier" sign but discovers that the cashier pays OUT money to patients who can't afford transportation home.

A former member of Parliament points out that, after the war and a period of massive unemployment, the British figured out that, "if we could have full employment for the purpose of killing Germans" we could make a similar effort towards helping Britons stay alive by building hospitals, recruiting doctors, etc.. The change came when democracy "moved the power from the wallet (of the rich) to the ballot (of every citizen)". In 1948 their government issued the following leaflet that is profound in its simplicity. It should bring a tear to the eye of any American who has ever dared to try to read through their health insurance booklet: Your new health care system will provide you with all medical, dental, and nursing care. Everyone, rich or poor, man, women or child can use it or any part of it. There are no charges, except for a few special items. There are no insurance qualifications. But it is not a charity. You are paying for it mainly as taxpayers. And it will relieve your money worries in times of illness.
How's it working for them? Moore cites a report that "even the poorest people in England with all the environmental factors that give them the worst health in the country, live longer than the wealthiest people in America".

To demonstrate that doctors need not suffer under Britain's National Healthcare System, he interviews one young doctor in his million dollar home in London who earns $200,000 per year with bonus incentives for lowering his patients blood pressure, getting them to quit smoking, etc..

Next stop -- France, where in addition to no billing they also deliver. That's right, doctors make house calls. Day care is $1 an hour. There is no tuition for College. Work weeks are 35 hours. Paid vacations are a minimum of 5 weeks - even for part-timers. If you get married, you get an additional paid week for your honeymoon. You also get a paid day if you need to move. If you have a newborn, the government will send someone to your house to help with laundry, cooking, cleaning, etc..

Impossible you say? One American women now living in France touches upon what I'd say is the key to this movie, this issue, and virtually every issue society faces. She says, "One of the things that keeps everything running here is that, here, the government is afraid of the people, they are afraid of protests, they're afraid of reactions from the people. Whereas in the states, people are afraid of the government, they're afraid of acting up. They're afraid of protesting. They're afraid of getting out. In France that's what people do". (continued...)

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Moore points out that back in America, our college graduates are so deep in college loan debt that they become slaves to their employers and the health care benefits they provide. In a taped town meeting, when a women mentions she works three jobs, Bush proudly comments that, "that's uniquely American isn't it? I mean that's fantastic that you are doing that."

Meanwhile our hospitals are finding a new way of dealing with people who can't pay their bill. Moore shows a videotape of a cab dumping off a disoriented patient from one hospital, on the street in front of another hospital. Ultimately, one of 50 such patients unloaded there, still in their hospital gowns, some with IV's still in their arms.

In the next segment, Moore demonstrates that even our heroes can be treated like 2nd class citizens in our "for profit" health system. Apparently, there were hundreds of rescue workers that helped out on 9/11 that were not city employees and now suffer from serious respiratory disabilities. Many are now in a battle for their own lives, trying to receive benefits.

In the ultimate irony, Moore claims that while we are denying treatment to those 9-11 heroes we have terrorists who had a direct role in that attack receiving comprehensive, state of the art health care at our naval base in Guantanamo Bay (at the end of Cuba). So he packs up 3 of our injured heroes and takes them there by boat to see if they can get "the same universal healthcare as Al-Queda is getting". Of course, he's turned away at the base, but in another irony, it is our enemy Cuba, that agrees to give them all the health care they need, just as they do their own citizens. One of the former 9-11 workers was given a new set of teeth to replace the ones he had worn down from 3 years of teeth grinding due to post-traumatic stress disorder. For the Cuban equivalent of .05 cents, they pick up medicine another one needs that costs $120 in the U.S.. Before they leave, they stop by a Cuban Firehouse because their firefighting "hermanos" want to salute them.

The last irony in the film is that, when the person who runs the biggest anti-Michael Moore website was posting on his site that he may have to close it down because his wife was ill and they couldn't afford to pay for her health insurance, Michael Moore anonymously sends him a check for the $12,000 he needed.

The main point of the film is that if other countries can make universal health care work to reasonable degrees of efficiency, why can't we make it work -- even better. Sure there are slobs that will take advantage of the benefits that our higher taxes will pay for. But SO WHAT! If we can find 8 billion dollars per month for Iraq (with many millions unaccounted for) then we can redirect our taxes to helping all of our sick -- and our hypochondriacs as well.

It is not allegedly scary concepts like Socialism or Communism that is the tool, it is our very own Democracy. Citizens powering and empowering their government to work for their best interests, rather than corporations and the very few at the top of the economic scale. Big business can still make big profits on products and services, but not basic needs like education and HEALTH CARE. And if it leads to other new paradigms in American society like 35 hour work weeks and 5 week vacations, even better -- much better!

For anyone who finds SICKO offensive to their distorted sense of patriotism, I can recommend another video I saw a few minutes of on cable this week. Donald Trump's "You Too Can Be A Millionaire" program. To summarize what I heard, for xxx dollars Trump will tell you, you should be born smart and beautiful, be prepared to crush your critics and competition, and love working 7 days a week. I'm sure Bush would agree that that is "uniquely American" too. Fortunately, I do have my middle fingers intact so that I can respond to both Bush and Trump at the same time.