Demob Happy

In sickness and in health

7/10

The thoroughly unloveable documentary maker’s latest sets its sights on the American healthcare system - and a large and easy target it is. With Sicko’s polemic evidently intended for American audiences, Moore is typically selective or misreprentative when making comparisons to healthcare in Europe. Britian is portrayed as some kind of healthcare nirvana, with Moore repeating a very unfunny gag about looking for the cashier in a British hospital five or six times (yes, we get it Michael, free healthcare. Can you imagine? Ha ha). Although the situation in the UK isn’t comparable to that in the United States - at least basic care is open to everybody free of a finanical imperative - British viewers may be amused by his totally unobjective analysis of the NHS. Had he consulted any real patients he might have unearthed some interesting facts: waiting lists, bed shortages, MRSA super-bugs etc.

Likewise, Moore’s summary account of the healthcare system in France is also laughably selective. Albeit one of the best health systems in the world it certainly is not entirely free, although most costs are covered by high social security contributions. Most people who can afford to pay the 30-euro monthly ‘Mutuelle’ health insurance (and that’s not everybody, with unemployment standing at around 10% at the time of writing) do so. Furthermore, his interviews of the ‘typical’ French families are laughably misguided. I live in France, and the cinema audience was in hysterics at the obviously well-off and totally unrepresentative families who were only too happy to explain what a great standard of life they had and how much available income. We get Moore’s point, socialised medicine is no bad thing; the US needs to drop its hysteria and paranoia towards it. But he lays it on too thick, especially when claiming that France’s frequent demonstrations and strikes are an exemplary model of democracy in action. Yes, the French people are not afraid of their government, but to suggest that their utter antipathy towards any kind of social reform is something other nations should aspire to is completely demented.

The film is strongest when Moore sticks to what he knows best (i.e., the US) and there are some powerful ‘case studies’ of people failed by health insurance. One part, for example, focuses on an African American man who was denied a bone marrow transplant from his brother because his insurance company claimed the procedure was ‘experimental’. It was, of course, his only chance of life and the rejection killed him. There are several other very moving moments including the CCTV footage of a woman staggering, dazed, around the street in a hospital gown because she’d had her treatment rejected by a hospital. Moments like this are so devestating that you wish Moore let his subjects do more of the talking and keep the self-aggrandising stunts to a minimum. He does for almost half the film, before rounding up sick 911 volunteers for a trip to Cuba on a mission to obtain free healthcare. It felt a little too staged, a little too exploitative to really move me.

Moreover, Moore’s decision to anonymously pay for his Moorewatch.com adversary’s wife’s crippling healthcare bills smacks less of an act of goodwill and more of ruthless opportunism. His nememis was facing the closure of his anti-Moore website and the film’s inclusion of this previously anonymous gesture transforms it into an act of humiliation. Nevertheless, Moore - like the subjects of his movies - is an easy target. Assuming that you are intelligent enough to distinguish Moore’s films from genunine high-quality documentary filmmaking, then this can be taken (with a handfull of salt) as an engaging hour and a half in the cinema. Like him or not, his films speak clearly to the majority on important issues. Whether anyone will do anything about these issues or not is an entirely different matter.

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