Rating of
3/4
"Sicko" by Yojimbo
Yojimbo - wrote on 02/12/12
Once more Michael Moore takes on the stealth dictatorship of corporate America, this time in the arena of healthcare. The thing that surprised me about this film is that I assumed it would be about the disenfranchised poor who were forced to live without health insurance. But it isn't. It's mainly telling the stories of productive working families who were paying for their insurance, just to have the companies who represent them use every means necessary to wriggle out of paying out when they were needed, sometimes resulting in eventual bankruptcy or tragedy for those involved. It's difficult to stomach the fact that a regime that constantly bangs on about "family values" supports a system that lets little girls die because they went to the "wrong" hospital or leaves old ladies still in their hospital gowns out on the roadside by drop out centres when their insurance runs out. The root of the system can be seen in the kind of corporate sponsored propaganda that claimed that universal healthcare was the first stepping stone to a communist state (did Margaret Thatcher seem like a communist to you?!) and I must admit seeing Tony Benn, an old school Labour politician himself vilified by the right wing press as the "loony left", putting the concept of the welfare state so eloquently left me with a lump in my throat. This in turns moving and funny film should be required viewing for the American public, especially those people who have been inexplicably protesting against president Obama's plans for universal healthcare. As for those who complain that Moore is biased, well I'm sure that the hundreds of lobbyists who spend millions of dollars buying off "your" representatives are TOTALLY objective...
