Health Care for Dummies

A big ole fatty takes on America's health

You’d think I like Michael Moore, but I really don’t.

Probably like a lot of people, I sense something fundamentally untrustworthy about his persona. I watch his films and I see two things jockeying for position on screen: a carefully constructed framework for a political or ideological argument and Moore’s own raging ego. Now I have nothing wrong with a raging ego, per se. I myself have an ego with a gravitational pull only slightly smaller than a mid-sized asteroid zipping around the galaxy collecting debris and space dust.

Moore, however, presents himself as a humble commentator—a simple observer doomed to wander this mortal coil amongst scurrilous evildoers—when in fact, Moore’s mind and thus his films act as a cutthroat ideological scalpel, digging into America’s intestines with a keen surgical cool. Therefore, his movies, from Roger and Me through Fahrenheit 9/11, abound with disingenuousness, not so much with the facts (which are usually pretty dead on) but with his own schmaltzy, over-played sense of indignation. You listen to his nasal voice-over and sense a huckster; you take one look at his girth and imagine a hypocrite.

His latest film, Sicko, is no different. No one will walk away from this film liking Michael Moore one iota more than they previously loathed him. The difference with this film, however, is that the story he tells—that the state of health care in the United States is embarrassingly poor if not downright shameful—is a complete no-brainer for anyone who has ever thought about the subject beyond the typical Republican party talking point of “socialized medicine” (which, unfortunately is not as many of us as you’d think).

In his usual careful, slightly bombastic way, Moore lays out two simple arguments. The first is that health care in the United States is an utter nightmare. Here, he doesn’t simply stick to the millions of uninsured or those living under the totalitarian rule of HMOs. He makes a point of documenting people who thought they were well insured right up until the moment disaster struck. He shows how insurance companies act as useless middlemen with only a profit motive to guide them; how it is literally their jobs to treat as few people as possible, and the way they do this is breathtaking. Moore documents case after case, incident after incident, where people who thought they had reasonable health insurance like any other working American find themselves sick, dying, and dead because of insurance company loopholes. He shows footage of an insurance company doctor explaining (to congress no less) that she and her peers are financially rewarded for treating as few policy-holders as possible.

Secondly, Moore visits a few U.S. allies to see if their “socialized” health care systems are truly the disasters of inefficiency and bureaucracy that opponents claim. It has long been my stand-by argument that even if all the scare-tactics and unsubstantiated claims about free universal health care were true (long waits, no choice for patients, doctors going uncompensated for years and years of hard work in med school) this system would still look better to the average American than the one we have in place today. After all, our current system is one where the government has to pick up the tab (through Medicaid and Medicare) for a large chunk of the population anyway; where employers are punished because they have to provide health and dental benefits to their workers, whereas their competition in other countries does not; where even the insured middle class must often do battle with enormous corporations staffed with endless lawyers whose only job is to deny coverage as often as possible.

When on top of all this, Moore documents several different government-funded health care systems in Canada, Great Britain, and France that work just fine, even the most stanch Moore-hater must cede some ground. More important than the systems, Moore interviews citizen after citizen who not only seem more than satisfied with their countries’ “socialized” programs but frankly cannot even fathom what it would be like to live under the U.S. policy.

As the big fat bastard points out, the United States has plenty of socialized systems, but the one that offers the best comparison to health care is that of your local firefighting squad. There was once a time when firefighters operated on an insurance-based policy as well. If you could not afford to pay the local firemen than you had the wonderful opportunity to burn to death in your own home while people looked on in pity. Naturally, this was an awful idea—just as awful as letting people die if they cannot afford a certain procedure that their insurance won’t cover.

Of course, by the end of the film, Moore’s penchant for entertaining argument gives way to his even greater penchant for entertaining pathos. Taking a group of 9/11 rescue workers suffering from debilitating conditions to Cuba, a third-world country with a health system only slightly worse (but at least free) than that of the United States is, in it’s own twisted way, hilarious. However, by the time you’ve gotten past the woman buying her medicine for roughly $124.95 less than it costs her in the U.S. (five cents in Cuba), which is genuinely heartbreaking, and reached the hokey “Firefighters of the World Unite!” scene, you remember why Moore manages to instigate a gag reflex even among those of us who agree with him.

As a proponent of a healthcare system that allows anyone to get treatment regardless of their financial circumstances, that invests taxpayer money in something that actually contributes to the common good, and grabs by the balls the sick crooks who make a fortune profiting from other peoples’ misery, I cannot deny that I enjoyed Sicko. However given Moore’s track record, I’m not sure I hold out much hope for change. Roger and Me did not stifle the flight of American jobs overseas, Bowling for Columbine did not lead to sane gun policies anywhere, and Fahrenheit 9/11 did not cost the Bush administration the 2004 election.

Our only hope is that health care is finally becoming an issue so very, very duh that even we Americans can get our act together and start punishing candidates and parties who believe that a man, woman, or child’s life and well-being belongs on the free market along with cola products and thong underwear.