Home > Gwinnett > Rick Badie / My Opinion > Archives > 2007 > July > 19
Thursday, July 19, 2007
‘Sicko’ makes its distressing point
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Now I know the best time to catch a movie in Gwinnett. It’s midday in midweek.
Either Wednesday isn’t a popular movie-going day, or Michael Moore, the cinematic muckraker who enjoys exposing U.S. flaws, just isn’t that big of a draw in this unabashedly red county.
On Wednesday, I caught the 12:15 p.m. showing of “Sicko,” Moore’s latest exposé, at the AMC Colonial 18 off Duluth Highway. Only three other people saw it then besides me, including an Atlanta Journal-Constitution Gwinnett News freelance photographer who’d shown up to photograph the Badie Tour.
I loved the movie. It appealed to my empathy for the have-nots, and when it comes to health care coverage, America has nearly 50 million uninsured, according to the movie. Admittedly, that’s not groundbreaking news, but the way in which Moore selectively slices and dices facts and meshes and contrasts them with real people is a skill worthy of envy.
You may dislike Moore for a lot of things — his anti-establishment ways, his heft, shoddy dress and unbalanced documentaries.
But you can’t ignore the case he builds in his films, and in this one he’s on point to deliver a crystal-clear message: The U.S. health care system needs to change, for society’s good.
Of all the interviews in the movie with real-life victims, I identified most with the medically bankrupt couple who had to move into their daughter’s basement. The woman was a former newspaper columnist who contracted cancer; her husband was a machinist who’d suffered several strokes. Co-payments and medical expenses doomed them.
That, God forbid, could be me one day.
Or you.
Andrea Haff gave “Sicko” a thumbs up. She’s retired from the retail industry. At 62, she’s ineligible for Medicare and can’t afford coverage.
“Big business controls this country,” said Haff, whose late father was a doctor in eastern Pennsylvania for decades. “Until we can change that, nothing will happen.”
In typical Moore fashion, the movie avoids balance. He fails to get specific regarding tax rates in Canada and Great Britain, two industrialized societies he touts for their universal coverage.
All he says is that they are “drowning in taxes.” And there’s no hint of any problems regarding patient care in any of the models featured in the nearly two-hour flick.
Truth be told, a universal care system won’t fix all that ails the current U.S. system. Nothing’s perfect. That said, it shouldn’t be viewed as un-American or inherently wrong with cherry-picking the best that universal care has to offer, adding some Americanized flourishes, and molding a more efficient delivery system.
We live in the United States, the richest country on the planet. Yet millions of our people, including kids, go without proper health care, if any at all.
Now that’s sick.
Permalink | Comments (112) | Post your comment | Categories: Rick Badie
Services »
