"Sicko" -- Michael Moore's next flick about U.S. Healthcare & HMOs

What about the BBC version? Does that count?

Less tasteless than just not funny and really weird.

They was a season on NBC.. then there was a season on Fox (yes, it's true)... the Comedy Central resyndicated moments from those shows. I have to admit, I don't really go back to those tapes... and the presentation was pretty annoying. But Crackers, the anti-corporate crime fighting chicken was funny only in that his followers were even funnier.

http://www.p2pnet.net/images/sicko.jpg

http://www.firstshowing.net/img/sicko-poster-2.jpg

This hits the last weekend in June in the US. Rated PG-13 so far.

and the Trailer is out

(warning: contains Stones)

fox news gives it a good review?!?!? http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,273875,00.html

so this is going to be of even less interest to an international audience than farenheit 911 then?

i suppose we can get some lols out of pointing at a country with no proper healthcare system being too stupid to introduce one?

Laughing at Americans is fine sport where I'm from. Bring it on.

The obligatory "stunt" involving Gitmo looks stupid. You'd think he'd just rely on the overflowing wealth of things that are wrong with American health care and let the material speak for itself. For the finale just boat some sick people to Havana straight away. That's what he was planning to do anyway. See, that's a good stunt already.

I'll see this, of course.

I'm hoping M Moore succeeds with this, mostly because my dad's insurer won't pay for cancer pills which are $8K per month. Also because of a lifetime of seeing insurers prove themselves to be protection-collecting playground bullies rather than holders of emergency funds. My uninsured sister managed to get the government to pay for her care for viral encephalitis, which included being in a coma for a week, but thousands don't because possibly their mom's best friend is not a former welfare officer who rustled up the funding through knowing bureaucracy. My mom smashed her ankle a couple of years ago and after 10 years of paying $500 a month (I think) had $5,000 deductible and had shitty, lackadaisical care in her hospital stay.

I'll have to ask my mom how they paid for my whole episode of being the first kid ever given surgery, radiation and chemotherapy for cancer treatment. I doubt they would be able to do so now.

The reviews have been pretty awesome right across the board for this movie.

Yeah but worried about herd mentality of Americans who have been inculcated to haaaaaaaaate M Moore despite being sensible in other ways.

some reviews here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6673039.stm

xpost. A lot of that can be attributed to the polarising nature of his work. When it comes to bums on seats, there will be no problem. And that's what it's all about really.

That glove poster is terrifying. Plz stick to skeletons in waiting room or I'll have gynecology nightmares for years.

um, as mentioned in cannes thread, i have no idea why this is getting good reviews. it's taken away all the most entertaining aspects of a moore documentary (ala uncomfortable and confrontational situations) and keeps all the sad weaknesses (ala arguments built around anecdotes / simplifying the reality of health care until good and bad lose all meaning entirely).

leaked fyi

how's the quality?

still downloading - but i guess its some internal mirmax screener so probably good

quality is great. As good as can be.

And the movie is pretty damn good, too. Manipulative? Well, I guess, sure, but it's damn hard to take the side of the health care industry in America.

ok, the shot of Moore standing at Karl Marx's grave was a bit much.

You probably think I'm kidding. No.

Well, I guess, sure, but it's damn hard to take the side of the health care industry in America.

Not if you go to YouTube and check out the reactions. People seem to already know Moore's points and are eager to disprove the shit out of them. No surprise they are the inculcated herd mentioned above.

ok, the shot of Moore standing at Karl Marx's grave was a bit much.

but see this is how come hes so lovable. people could focus less on his politics/manipulations and notice what delightful movies he makes.

fuck all that. This movie did its job. It made me ANGRY.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9006414844032752909

I'm sick of michael moore

um, as mentioned in cannes thread, i have no idea why this is getting good reviews. it's taken away all the most entertaining aspects of a moore documentary (ala uncomfortable and confrontational situations) and keeps all the sad weaknesses (ala arguments built around anecdotes / simplifying the reality of health care until good and bad lose all meaning entirely).

After watching about two-thirds of this movie (will probably watch the ending tonight) I have to say... "Whaaat?"

Yeah, there are anecdotes. Anecdotes about people dying because they were denied care by an insurance company! Anyone who watches this movie and isn't moved needs to have a cynicism-ectomy. Sorry it wasn't entertaining enough for you!

Anyone who watches this movie and isn't moved needs to have a cynicism-ectomy

Michael Moore's got his new tagline, folks.

i enjoyed this but its so damn heavy handed

the scene near the end where he shows up at Guantanamo w/ 9/11 refugees and yells stuff about treating our workers worse than evildoers is relentlessly corny.

That is balanced out by him sending the dude from the michael moore hate site a check to cover the cost of website maintenance. Good zing

any mention of lack of treatment for u.s. vets? i'm dealing with that right now. well, my dad is.

Anyone who watches this movie and isn't moved needs to have a cynicism-ectomy

I don't think that's covered by my H-EMO.

I haven't got to the Guantanamo bit - sounds a little unnecessary. I think he actually sent that anti-MM guy a check to cover the guy's wife's health costs.

Yesterday I talked to my step-mom who lives in Toronto about this movie. She said that the only negative that they have run into is that if you have a low-level health issue, it can take a few months to get in to see a specialist. Here (in the USA), if you have a fancy PPO, you can get in to see a specialist pretty quickly. Of course, if you DON'T have a fancy PPO, you're screwed.

ILXors who didn't know that insurance companies are evil and American health care is completely fucked, raise your hand.

Who is this aimed at? Who, among Moore's audience, doesn't understand the issue? What's the point?

i ran into my landlord a self described conservative the other day and he'd just gotten back from greece where thanks to his mother in law having some minor issue he had a run in w/their health care system and his mind was blown - it was an easy practically free experience. then told me abt how him and his wife are paying out the ass for all their various ailments and insurances. he seem genuinely shocked that things didnt have to be this way.

but the point is he just didn't know before going to greece how awful our system is compared to all other wealthy countries in the world.

if this movie can educate get the discussion flowing it will be doing us a valuable service.

(x-post)
Americans who aren't ILXors raise your hands... This movie is for you!

You missed the line about 'Moore's audience,' schwantz.

Seriously, who do you think this is going to reach that wasn't already a convert?

Did Fahrenheit 9/11 cost George Bush in Nov. 2004? Did Bowling For Columbine turn America against firearms? Did Roger & Me incite a groundswell of unionizing or help save American manufacturing jobs?

Fuck you're right.
He should do a movie about how awesome the U.S. health care system is then.

Yes, that's clearly the conclusion to draw.

did those movies generate discussion?

Moore's film focuses on Canada, England, France and Cuba. So, why are they talking about Sweden?

it's not about taxes:

http://www.gladwell.com/2005/2005_08_29_a_hazard.html

it's about this:

http://www.thelocal.se/7650/

the same way authoritarian social conservatives believe that using education and free condoms to prevent the spread of STDs, or giving girls vaccinations against HPV, is the same as authorizing everyone to become a dionysian slut-hippie and will tear apart the very fabric of society.

In many ways, the neocon agenda strikes me closer to socialism and communism than it does capitalism. Average conservatives I meet with around the dinner table simply view it as "Capitalism is great!" and "Democracy is great!" and "we're spreading democracy to Iraq!" Well, democracy is not the American way. Democracy is 51% of the people being free and 49% not being free. That's why we have a democratic republic and that is what makes Capitalism "good." The problem with the neocon agenda is that its not really Capitalism. It's a monopoly that divvies out the funds. The only reason the people in charge don't want universal healthcare is because they're greedy fucks. The people in the middle are left with a bunch of propaganda about why it would be so bad. As far as the healthcare PROVIDERS, well, yes, of course, if doctors start making less money, they will not be happy. That's obvious. It kind of seems to go against the American dream to suggest that if you're a doctor you can only make so much money, but does it really? As Moore points out in the movie: are our firemen, police, teachers and librarians not living the American dream. My goodness, these are socialist programs!

Actually I think universal healthcare is an utter certainty, since social security and medicare are both apparently broken, and about half the population of the country is about to retire and start voting every tuesday in earnest until they get us kids to pay for their goddamn erection pills.

the rest of your post seems to overgeneralize a great deal about the neocon's grip on the american electorate and I'm not sure I want to converse too much more with you based on that thread wherein two out of three countries that call their currency the dollar all of a sudden switch over to something called an "amero" by shortening a process that took europe decades into the space of three years

I understand your points. I am overgeneralizing and I am even shifting blame to neocons that doesn't even really fall there. But, that is because I don't really have a problem with conservativism or capitalism.

What I do have a problem with is the way, in general, this government has run on the model of "capitalism" and "the American dream."

To get away from the overgeneralization, I'll get specific for a moment, but about money, in general. Consider our education: up to high school graduation, it's socialized and not the greatest. Then, to go onto college, you have various options, but unless you've saved up, you need to borrow money from a bank. It seems like the bank is lending you money, but in reality, they pull a switcheroo. They deposit your application for, say, $10,000 into the Fed which gives them the right to make between $100,000 and $300,000. Your debt has just made them rich. And you get to pay them back! At interest! This wouldn't be quite so bad if it was the government, but it's not. Our government is in debt to the Federal Reserve. We borrow money from them at interest, not just individually, but collectively as a nation. Of course, it's all tied together and what good is the Fed without a government, but why is it set up this way? This creates inflation that strangles our own citizens. Is this somehow preferable to other industrialized countries who provide free education and free healthcare?

well 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' has applied for a couple of generations in these cases and I don't think the tipping point where we're forced to consider becoming more european in these respects has happened yet. It will soon enough. We're fucked anyway, unless you're over 40.

I just kind of worry that by the time there's some sort of uprising or voted-in change that it will be too late. Like, maybe we will have lost all our power to do anything. I don't know that I feel these people in charge respect our voice too much. They seem to have gotten pretty good about manipulating issues and working according to their own agendas.

The fact that this thread has been almost exclusively a debate on Michael Moore, with almost no discussion of the US health care system, shows that the Fox/conservative agenda has made a tremendous impact, even on those who do not watch Fox or identify with right wing conservatism. The fact that so many people here have complained that Michael Moore (horrors!) manipulates The Truth shows how easy it is to manipulate the debate.

When you examine this claim, you will find that it always boils down to this: Moore did not say something he could have said and we think he should have said. It isn't Moore's job to say everything his opponents wish the public to hear. That is their job. But they frame it as if, by failing to include this or that argument in their favor, he lied. He's a liar. He is a shameless, baldfaced liar. And fat. And ugly, too.

So much of this is pure ad hominem argument. If you can persuade people to mistrust the messenger, it doesn't matter if the message is completely fatual and the conclusions to be drawn from those facts are inescapable; you've won.

I am constantly amazed that such trivialities as Moore's weight or appearance can be used to discredit him. But it works like a charm. It works because no one attack has to be 100% effective. All you have to do is cast enough aspersions of enough varieties that each pellet from your shotgun knocks out some potential members of Moore's audience. Most pellets will glance off most people, but only one has to find its mark.

You just keep firing until you've run out of ammo, and in the end you've whittled away at his effectiveness from every conceivable angle and never once had to address any of Moore's facts. Simply amazing.

Hey Aimless, did you know that Al Gore is fat, too? It's true! Also, he lives in a palatial C.M.Burns-style mansion powered by a monstrous smoke-belching incinerator burning coal and orphans, one that would put Battersea Power Station to shame! And he's fat! LOL

Was this posted yet? (Michael Moore's views on filesharing)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=OlAB0v8wHdc

It seems like this might shut up the criticism that he's just out to make money.

It seems like this might shut up the criticism that he's just out to make money.

haha, you sure about this? you're assuming that the volume of the criticism launched at the guy is from people arguing cogent, rational positions that can be countered by actual fact, reason, and evidence. Where have you been for the last 15 years?

yeah my bad

river wolf started a discussion of the health care system here:

healthcare thread

HEALTHCARE THREAD

that, rather. bbcode wasn't working for me.

didn't expect to like it, but i did. moore stays serious throughout; when he suddenly returns to his old prankster persona near the end of the movie, it's oddly moving.

hitchens' "takedown" of F911 - impressively comprehensive as it is - is hard to take seriously considering how much mendacious bullshit from rumsfeld et al he's obediently swallowed just because it fits his trotskyist take on the iraq war.

He's never parrotted any Rumsfeldian talking points, or fallen prey to ooh-we're-turning-the-corner jargon (I could be wrong; I haven't read every word etched by his prodigious pen). If anything, he's a victim of a touching, debilitating idealism: helping the Kurds is moral and just, destroying one maleovent branch of a monotheistic religion is moral and just, so we're fifth columnists if we don't applaud.

i'm reminded again of why "idealism" is the most overrated political trait ever.

i think there's a difference to be made between idealism and dogmatism; Hitchens tends to fall into the latter camp.

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=419182687849538532

My problem with Moore is never his politics, or even his idealism -- I quite like both of those. It's his tone, most of the time. His inability to successfully mix comedy and commentary, which is especially bad because it's what he pretends to do best. Mixing comedy and anything else at all takes a certain light touch, and Moore has anything but that. I get annoyed at his voiceovers, that heavy tone that always ends on a note of some kind of doom, like he's doing the trailer for some third-rate disaster movie. "But then... she got sick." DUM DUM DUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMM!

I still thought this movie was powerful, though, because I know first hand how fucked beyond belief the American health care system is. Anyone who's ever seen anyone in their family get sick knows that.

What do you do when you need a lazy-ass ad hominem attack and you don't have any game? why, send in Mark Steyn!

"'Would these be Doctors who work for the U.K. health care system so lavishly praised by Michael Moore? ...Perhaps they are not Jihadists at all but simply men driven insane by their employer? Maybe Michael Moore has spawned an entirely new breed of suicide bomber — the alienated UK health care worker'" Steyn quotes from one e-mail, after noting "I've been getting more than a few letters along these lines."

He also posted a second e-mail, and observed, "Now that Dr Mohammed Asha has been arrested in the Glasgow/London terrorist investigation, several readers have noticed that this artfully combines Michael Moore's two most recent enthusiasms, 'insurgents' and socialized health care." Steyn, however adds, "Mr Moore has yet to call these medico-jihadists 'Minutemen.'"

I just saw this. Wow. I mean, you hear about the state of the US system, and I thought that I understood - but it's simply unbelievable. Why do Americans let this continue? In a country as rich as the the United States, it is incomprehensible. Margaret Thatcher was a supporter of the NHS, so it's obviously no communist plot to sneak in the back door. The US could easily sort this out. I have a really hard time trying to understand why they wouldn't want to. The Canadian system is far from perfect, but I will never take it for granted again. What justifications are used for maintaining the status quo?

Wow.

Mixing comedy and anything else at all takes a certain light touch

hmmm, not sure I agree, tho Moore has his hamfisted moments. One of the funniest things on The Awful Truth was a bunch of Crucible-costumed zealots running after Ken Starr's car and yelling "UNCLEAN!" Hardly light of touch.

Margaret Thatcher was a supporter of the NHS

Who told you that?

What justifications are used for maintaining the status quo?

Where to begin?

If you consult the public relations machine, it will tell you "the US healthcare system is the most advanced in the world and the envy of all nations." No facts are ever provided to back this hilarious assertion.

It also spits out a lot of flak about how dismal "socialized medicine" is and how "market forces" are the only reliable way to ensure that the US healthcare system maintains its lead over the rest of the world. The fact that hundreds of billions of dollars of profits are being raked off the top and pocketed by stockholders each year instead of reinvested is immaterial to the quality or cost of the product.

Dig a bit deeper and you will find that the major form of reinvestment for these billions of dollars is to buy off the doctors, the media, and the US Congress, thus neutralizing most of the channels by which change might be implemented. The US Congress especially is wholly owned by the medical-industrial complex.

But, if you dig even deeper, you have to conclude that the root cause of this inertia is that the US citizenry is so beaten down, misinformed, distracted and fragmented that it literally cannot see how to use the political tools at its disposal to improve its lot.

Also, for the psychological reasoning:

His point with his trips abroad is that there's something fundamentally being done right there with health care that has not been discussed in the United States because we're so fucking scared of seeming worse off than other countries. Meanwhile, the truth is, as Moore shows, that we are.

One of the funniest things on The Awful Truth was a bunch of Crucible-costumed zealots running after Ken Starr's car and yelling "UNCLEAN!"

yeah, ok, that was hilarious.

But yeah, a lot of it is either cluelessness on the public's part(as Joe Bageant says, we have a 6th-grader's understanding of economics) coupled with well-funded ideologues who dogmatically insist that the Way Things Are is the way they should be, and the fact that Medicare only has about 2-3% overhead vs the 25%+ of most huge private concerns is either a Good Thing or should be ignored. Market idolatry runs rampant.

short answer: money

but money's only part of it; free market cluelessness is more the problem.

the two are inextricable - the "free market cluelessness" is subscribed to because people want to believe the market's "natural" adjustments in regards to a healthcare system will be less painful than the government basically forcing the redistribution of wealth that a reshaping of the industry would entail.

And now, Kurt Loder

Gah. Thing about Kurt's review is that he does the standard response to this flick; he's gotta do the "but but BUT! look! a system run by humans has errors! " as if these other national systems are protrayed as perfect. They're not, but they are _better_, and maybe if we actually start wondering why they're better(and maybe actually acknowledge that fact), we might begin to figure out how to fix our own. What, Cuba's health system has problems? Holy shit, we'll have to completely reject it all out of hand and any examination of it would corrupt our freakin' ears.

It's like what was mentioned upthread; a way for people to rep for the status quo is to go "you think THIS is bad?" and proceed to rattle off anecdotes about other places and other systems, as if everything in America was the pinnacle of human design & development. The national dogmatic jingoism is such that we can't even allow for pragmatic eclectism, approaches that have worked before, to operate.

"Margaret Thatcher was a supporter of the NHS"

Sorry. That was based on her "The NHS is safe in our hands" quote. A bit of quick research indicates that she was not in fact a strong supporter. Still, she would never have dared, nor gotten away with dismantling it for a US style system.

Gah. Thing about Kurt's review is that he does the standard response to this flick; he's gotta do the "but but BUT! look! a system run by humans has errors! " as if these other national systems are protrayed as perfect

To be fair, kingfish, these are critics, not advocates.

Following your line of reasoning, we must accept F 9-11's fallacies and terrible jokes because the criticism of the Bush Iraq policy was legitimate.

Why am I paying for school? I don't have shorties!

It's a decent, entertaining film. Didn't care for the $12,000 check self-congratulatory bit re his Web enemy, but eh.

that, and the guantanamo groaner were the biggest wobbles ; actually all comedy not generated by interviewees was piss-poor (your previous movies called, they want their ironic 50's montages back...) but it was affecting overall.
I like that he's getting more Lakoff on your ass, cutting deep into the basic values/culture questions (encapsulated in the roffles that the britishes couple with the newborn give re: American health care, great). And some of the anecdotes are heartwrenching, if redundant. Not data-rich by any means and reeks of cherry-picking and coaching and thus sets back the progressive movement 30 years, makes me hate michael moore and life itself, etc.

reeks of cherry-picking and coaching

ie, filmmaking.

he's the Michigander Herzog!

the atul gawande response to this was pretty good

reeks of cherry-picking and coaching

ie, filmmaking.

yeah i mean not only can you see the strings but they're engorged and veiny. ie bad documentarymaking.

HE DON'T MAKE THOSE

i thought the $12,000 check was a pretty good zing actually

Were the guys who did that website the same ones who showed up in a Daily Show bit two years ago, when Samantha Bee asks them why they can't find michael moore?

those guys were doing a movie on him i think, probably not the same. website is a one-man operation apparently.

the check thing was classless and smug, full stop. he already wrung a bit of pub out of it in the press, should have left it at that.

god bless his carny blood though, i can't stay mad.

Okay, I was at my friend's house a few weeks ago. We were outside discussing that her husband has a porn on his computer of a three way between a man and these two twin women. "Incest yuck no oh boy nasty" was our conclusion. Then we went inside and she showed me some of the naked lady pics he had on his compy. She then opened up a movie file and said, "SICKO." "Why are you showing me the sick twins movie?" "No no no, Michael Moore's Sicko." Such was my introduction to this movie.

Okay, I was at my friend's house a few weeks ago. We were outside discussing that her husband has a porn on his computer of a three way between a man and these two twin women. "Incest yuck no oh boy nasty" was our conclusion. Then we went inside and she showed me some of the naked lady pics he had on his compy. She then opened up a movie file and said, "SICKO." "Why are you showing me the sick twins movie?" "No no no, Michael Moore's Sicko." Such was my introduction to this movie.

― Abbott, Monday, July 23, 2007 5:11 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

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