Michael Moore at it Again – This Time His Camera Takes Aim at Health Insurance

First it was the auto industry, then gun control, and then the war in Iraq, now controversial film director Michael Moore takes aim at the Healthcare industry and the problems of the 47 million without access to affordable health coverage in America. His next film, the soon to be released “Sicko” promises to in the film makers own words” tear down the last shred of resistance to Universal Healthcare”.

In a recent pre-screening of the film in San Francisco, people on both sides of universal health coverage as a means of creating affordable health insurance for all, said the film was well done, and could not be easily dismissed simply as “left wing propaganda” as many of Moore’s films have been.

“Sicko” speaks from the universal heart on the need for universal coverage. In Moore’s straight forward story telling style using real people with real stories, he captures people with their true emotions, like the tearful medical director of a major insurance company who confesses in shame that she had caused the deaths of people by denying coverage strictly to boost company profits.

“Sicko” goes on to explode many of the myths surrounding Universal Coverage and so called socialized medicine when it comes to delivering low cost healthcare insurance. The film asks the tough questions like why should an asthma inhaler cost five dollars in poverty stricken countries like Cuba, where Americans without affordable medical coverage are forced to pay one-hundred and twenty dollars for the same inhaler? The film also shows that contrary to popular belief, in France, England and Canada doctors are paid very well, and are happy with the healthcare systems in those countries.

In perhaps one of the film’s most chilling and telling moments, in and audiotape Richard Nixon, is heard to say just prior to setting in motion the wheels that started the managed care health insurance system in this country “It increases profits by reducing care – I like that”.

Moore himself recently testified in Sacramento where the California State Senate is locked in debate over how to provide affordable health insurance for all citizens of California. And while the film would seem to say that the answer is to do away with insurance companies all together; not even the current affordable health insurance reform plans proposed by Democrats in California, or those running for the White House, propose that. Instead they see the answer to affordable health insurance and low cost medical plan premiums to be by enacting a cooperative plan of coverage for all through much better regulated insurance companies. The film apparently lambastes Senator Hillary Clinton, as much as it does former president Nixon.

In actuality the film follows the tragedies not of people without affordable health insurance, but those who had health insurance coverage but where in some way denied healthcare by their insurance company. Always controversial, Moore hopes that the film opens the eyes of more people to the problems of the system of healthcare and health insurance in this country of which those without affordable medical insurance are only a part.