So, I saw Sicko this past weekend. I'm a fan of Michael Moore ever since I saw his campy movie about Flint Michigan, Roger & Me; I loved Bowling for Columbine, thought Fahrenheit 9/11 was entertaining, if a little underwhelming. However, I am not a fan of Sicko.
It's appropriate that I'm writing this semi-review on the eve of July 4th, because I found Sicko to be extremely anti-American. In Moore's other movies he pokes fun at America, pointing out various foibles and faults, but always with a sense of perspective, and even pride in the country he's making fun of. He's pointing these things out, you sense, because he loves America, he wants it to be a better place. You can tell he thinks America is under performing, it's not as good a place as it could be. America isn't all bad, it just needs a little fixing around the edges. That sense of pride is gone in Sicko. In Sicko, America is a rotten, rotten place. He points out some genuine problems with the American health care system, but there is no balance, no indication that there is anything good about America at all. It's this lack of perspective that I found trying. There's one scene where he's out to dinner with a group of Americans living in Paris and they're blabbering on about how great the French welfare state is, and how wonderful it is to live in Paris, and how lucky they are, and wondering what is wrong with America. France even has government funded laundry workers to help new mothers with housework, while American throws its old and sick out onto the street. At one point, one of the women said something to the effect, "I feel guilty that I have it so much better than my parents ever did." It was revolting. As was his stunt of bringing some patients to Cuba to get health care, including a few comments by Che Guevara's grand-daughter.
The health care system in this country needs some serious fixes, and Moore seems to think that all we have to do is vote to have a system like what they have in Canada, England or France, where health care is free. (Moore continuously uses the term free, which is a lie because someone obviously has to pay for it, but wouldn't want little facts like that spoil a good story.) In Moore's opinion, Americans don't have the guts to vote for a system of universal health care, we lack the wherewithal to demand a better system. At one point he shows some footage of French workers taking to the streets to protest a proposed reduction in the number of paid holidays and Moore asks why aren't Americans doing the same thing? Americans are so weak we can't even demand six weeks of vacation. What is wrong with us?
A lot has been written about the movie, so instead of repeating what others have said I thought I'd compile all the reviews I've stumbled across. The movie has generated a fair amount of buzz, with the general consensus being that the movie brings up some valid points, but leaves the viewer very empty when it comes to solutions. We can't all move to Paris or London.
Here are some reviews of Sicko:
- The Healthcare Economist
- Mtv.com (If even Kurt Loder isn't buying Moore's dogma, you've got to wonder...)
- Slate.com (written by U of Chicago Econ professor Austan Goolsbee)
- A critique of the above review on Econlog
- Reason magazine
- Matthew Yglesias
- A rebuttal to the above review
- American Council on Science and Health
- Cato
- Why universal coverage shouldn't be the main emphasis of health care reform
- Some comments about common health care beliefs that people have
- Are adverse selection and moral hazard the problem with health insurance markets?
- What some insurance companies are doing to increase profits (and it's not denying benefits or raising rates). To get a taste of the debate, notice the last paragraph.
So, Mr. Asa. First, cool site.
ReplyDeleteI didn't even know you had this.
I look forward to reading through your thinking on such a wide range of topics.
So, in response to your thinking above, let me pose a rhetorical question:
Is access to health care a Right or a privilege? I submit that it is a Right, based not on law but on the Hippocratic Oath and the ER. Since hospitals cannot turn people away, legally, we have to decide here:
1. If hospitals cannot turn people away, then we are saying that there is a Right to health care. It is an absolute.
2. If hospitals can turn people away for Emergency Care, then we are saying it is a privilege for those who have health insurance.
3. If the nature of the Health Insurance industry is to make profit first, all obligation to the shareholders, and not the providers/patients, then it is in their interest to limit care whenever possible. The pressure comes from limits of what they will provide, not from the pressure to take maximum care of as many people as possible.
4. Young people should be mandated to have at least catastrophic coverage because if they get in a horrible accident, we will pay for their care, whether they elect to have insurance or not. Or, we turn them away. What would that ethic look like, if we really enforced hospitals and health care providers to turn them away? If we don't, then we're saying: access to Health Care is a Right, it is only the extent to which we will care for everyone that is at issue. And, if health care is a Right, then why would we leave it to private interests to satisfy that right. Just like Fire-fighters, police, teachers, etc. There is such a thing as the Commons, and though somewhat paradoxical and difficult to manage, it is demonstrably (we're number 36 out of the top 40 health care systems in the world... a very unAmerican number) more functional that what we've got.
Thanks for visiting and commenting Brendan! The debate about whether or not health care is a right (or Right as you say) is an interesting one. When you say that there is a Right to health care, what do you mean by that? What level of care? Access to the latest (and most expensive) treatments and drugs? Or just basic emergency room care? Nobody (well, nobody whose opinion matters) advocates that emergency rooms should turn people away. But I think we have to be very careful asserting that there is a Right to health care when implementation of that Right could easily bankrupt our country if we say that everyone has a Right to any treatment that will extend or improve one's condition, regardless of cost. So, I agree that there is a general right to help from others (e.g., Fire protection, Police protection, etc.) when the cost of provision is low by those paying in proportion to the benefits received by the receiver. For example, we have a right to basic safety and protection (Police) but not a right to a personal body guard. Health care can be viewed in the same way, which as you point out, we're already providing in its basic form.
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