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Movie Review | 'Sicko'

Open Wide and Say ‘Shame’

By A. O. SCOTT

• June 22, 2007

It has become a journalistic cliché and therefore an inevitable part of the prerelease discussion of “Sicko” to refer to Michael Moore as a controversial, polarizing figure. While that description is not necessarily wrong, it strikes me as self-fulfilling (since the controversy usually originates in media reports on how controversial Mr. Moore is) and trivial. Any filmmaker, politically outspoken or not, whose work is worth discussing will be argued about. But in Mr. Moore’s case the arguments are more often about him than about the subjects of his movies.

Some of this is undoubtedly his fault, or at least a byproduct of his style. His regular-guy, happy-warrior personality plays a large part in the movies and in their publicity campaigns, and he has no use for neutrality, balance or objectivity. More than that, his polemical, left-populist manner seems calculated to drive guardians of conventional wisdom bananas. That is because conventional wisdom seems to hold, against much available evidence, that liberalism is an elite ideology, and that the authentic vox populi always comes from the right. Mr. Moore, therefore, must be an oxymoron or a hypocrite of some kind.

So the table has been set for a big brouhaha over “Sicko,” which contends that the American system of private medical insurance is a disaster, and that a state-run system, such as exists nearly everywhere else in the industrialized world, would be better. This argument is illustrated with anecdotes and statistics — terrible stories about Americans denied medical care or forced into bankruptcy to pay for it; grim actuarial data about life expectancy and infant mortality; damning tallies of dollars donated to political campaigns — but it is grounded in a basic philosophical assumption about the proper relationship between a government and its citizens.

Mr. Moore has hardly been shy about sharing his political beliefs, but he has never before made a film that stated his bedrock ideological principles so clearly and accessibly. His earlier films have been morality tales, populated by victims and villains, with himself as the dogged go-between, nodding in sympathy with the downtrodden and then marching off to beard the bad guys in their dens of power and privilege. This method can pay off in prankish comedy or emotional intensity — like any showman, Mr. Moore wants you to laugh and cry — but it can also feel manipulative and simplistic.

In “Sicko,” however, he refrains from hunting down the C.E.O.’s of insurance companies, or from hinting at dark conspiracies against the sick. Concentrating on Americans who have insurance (after a witty, troubling acknowledgment of the millions who don’t), Mr. Moore talks to people who have been ensnared, sometimes fatally, in a for-profit bureaucracy and also to people who have made their livings within the system. The testimony is poignant and also infuriating, and none of it is likely to be surprising to anyone, Republican or Democrat, who has tried to see an out-of-plan specialist or dispute a payment.

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If you listen to what the leaders of both political parties are saying, it seems unlikely that the diagnosis offered by “Sicko” will be contested. I haven’t heard many speeches lately boasting about how well our health care system works. In this sense “Sicko” is the least controversial and most broadly appealing of Mr. Moore’s movies. (It is also, perhaps improbably, the funniest and the most tightly edited.) The argument it inspires will mainly be about the nature of the cure, and it is here that Mr. Moore’s contribution will be most provocative and also, therefore, most useful.

“Sicko” is not a fine-grained analysis of policy alternatives. (You can find some of those in a recently published book called “Sick,” by Jonathan Cohn, and also in the wonkier precincts of the political blogosphere.) This film presents, instead, a simple compare-and-contrast exercise. Here is our way, and here is another way, variously applied in Canada, France, Britain and yes, Cuba. The salient difference is that, in those countries, where much of the second half of “Sicko” takes place, the state provides free medical care.

With evident glee (and a bit of theatrical faux-naïveté) Mr. Moore sets out to challenge some widely held American notions about socialized medicine. He finds that British doctors are happy and well paid, that Canadians don’t have to wait very long in emergency rooms, and that the French are not taxed into penury. “What’s your biggest expense after the house and the car?” he asks an upper-middle-class French couple. “Ze feesh,” replies the wife. “Also vegetables.”

Yes, the utopian picture of France in “Sicko” may be overstated, but show me the filmmaker — especially a two-time Cannes prizewinner — who isn’t a Francophile of one kind or another. Mr. Moore’s funny valentine to a country where the government will send someone to a new mother’s house to do laundry and make carrot soup turns out to be as central to his purpose as his chat with Tony Benn, an old lion of Old Labor in Britain. Mr. Benn reads from a pamphlet announcing the creation of the British National Health Service in 1948, and explains it not as an instance of state paternalism but as a triumph of democracy.

More precisely, of social democracy, a phrase that has long seemed foreign to the American political lexicon. Why this has been so is the subject of much scholarship and speculation, but Mr. Moore is less interested in tracing the history of American exceptionalism than in opposing it. He wants us to be more like everybody else. When he plaintively asks, “Who are we?,” he is not really wondering why our traditions of neighborliness and generosity have not found political expression in an expansive system of social welfare. He is insisting that such a system should exist, and also, rather ingeniously, daring his critics to explain why it shouldn’t.

Opens today in Manhattan.

Written and directed by Michael Moore; edited by Christopher Seward, Dan Sweitlik and Geoffrey Richman; produced by Mr. Moore and Meghan O’Hara; released by Lionsgate and the Weinstein Company. At the Lincoln Square, 1998 Broadway, at 68th Street. Running time: 123 minutes.

Sicko (United States, 2007)

For his fifth full-length "documentary," Michael Moore turns his attention to another hot-button issue: health care in the United States. The points he makes - that the health care system is badly broken and other countries accomplish what we have trouble doing - aren't revolutionary, but they are presented in a compelling manner. For those living in the United States, watching Sicko isn't an uplifting experience. Moore, as has been adequately reported over the years, isn't a hard-hitting journalist or a documentarian in the traditional sense of the job description. He's more of a rabble rouser and a button pusher. His ego often gets in the way of his making a point (as happens on several occasions during Sicko ), but he knows how to edit and spin in such a way that even the driest of topics can become compulsively watchable. As a documentary, this movie has the same problems as all of those in Moore's oeuvre; as a polemic or a visual op-ed piece, it's an effective piece of filmmaking.

Moore's thesis and approach in Sicko is straightforward, and the film hangs together a lot better than his previous rant, Fahrenheit 9/11 , which lacked focus. Moore starts by cherry-picking horror stories from the American health care system in which people die because they are denied treatment or referrals, lose fingers because they can't pay the hospital to have them re-attached after an accident, and are prematurely discharged from hospitals because of cost issues. While the cases Moore documents are extremes, anyone who has battled an HMO or sat in an emergency room understands that when it comes to medical coverage in the United States, greed trumps need.

Having illustrated some of the most glaring failings of the U.S. system, Moore takes his viewers to four other countries where the concept of "universal health care" has changed the way people view disease and disability: Canada, England, France, and Cuba. Moore arguably goes overboard in praising the systems of these countries, but his central question is valid: if they can do it, why can't we? Curiously, it's a question he doesn't pursue with much vigor, perhaps because the answer is obvious. He touches on the political power of drug companies and insurance companies, but is surprisingly restrained in attacking them.

Moore weakens his case by occasionally lobbing politically motivated smoke bombs into the proceedings. Health care isn't a political issue, since many Republicans and Democrats have been bought and paid for by corporations who have a vested interest in the status quo. The anti-Bush/pro-Clinton scenes make Moore appear petty and distract from the importance of his overall message. But that's Moore - his stated goal with Fahrenheit 9/11 was to present an expose of the Bush administration that would force the President out of office after one term. Moore's ego also looms larger here than in any of his previous films. Toward the end of Sicko , he recounts a tale of his "generosity" (sending an anonymous check of $12,000 to the webmaster of an anti-Moore site who couldn't pay for his wife's health care). What could have been a kind gesture is turned into an example of self-aggrandizement by its inclusion here.

There is a sequence in Sicko in which Moore takes a group of ill 9/11 volunteers to Cuba to receive the health care they have been denied in the United States. The government is allegedly pursuing possible charges against Moore for breaking a trade embargo with the communist country; however, considering the context, any such action is frivolous and treading close to violating Moore's First Amendment rights. On the other hand, news stories about this are bringing Sicko a lot of publicity, making one wonder whether a master spin doctor like Moore might be using this to his advantage.

In some ways, Moore is his own worst enemy. In the past, he has twisted facts and distorted statistics to such an egregious degree that supposedly hard data in Sicko deserve to be placed under the microscope of skepticism until they are proven one way or the other. For the most part, however, Sicko stays away from figures and numbers and concentrates on first-person accounts, a few of which are heart-wrenching. That's not to say that Moore always plays fair, but that has never been part of his agenda.

Whether Moore is preaching to the converted and whether there are flaws in his sermon doesn't detract from the import of the message. As is his trademark, he does what he can to impart a degree of entertainment to a serious subject. The movie is well put together, if a little long (the sequences in Canada, England, and France could be shortened), but there's a good mix of humor and pathos. Sicko is flawed but effective. Most importantly, regardless of its overall veracity, it provides an opportunity for open and frank dialogue about an issue that has been politicized and ignored for far too long in this country. Whatever anyone's feelings may be about Michael Moore, it's hard to disagree with his argument that health care in the United States is broken and needs to be fixed.

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2007, Documentary, 1h 53m

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Critics Consensus

Driven by Michael Moore's sincere humanism, Sicko is a devastating, convincing, and very entertaining documentary about the state of America's health care. Read critic reviews

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Sicko   photos.

Filmmaker Michael Moore examines America's health-care crisis and why millions of citizens are without coverage. Moore spotlights the cases of several ordinary citizens whose lives have been shattered by bureaucratic red tape, refusal of payment, and other health-care catastrophes. He explains how the system has become so problematic, and he visits countries where citizens receive free health care, as in Canada, France and the U.K..

Rating: PG-13 (Brief Strong Language)

Genre: Documentary

Original Language: English

Director: Michael Moore

Producer: Michael Moore , Meghan O'Hara

Writer: Michael Moore

Release Date (Theaters): Jun 29, 2007  wide

Release Date (Streaming): Aug 10, 2016

Box Office (Gross USA): $24.5M

Runtime: 1h 53m

Distributor: Weinstein Co.

Production Co: Dog Eat Dog Films

Sound Mix: Dolby SRD, DTS, SDDS

Aspect Ratio: Flat (1.85:1)

Cast & Crew

Michael Moore

Tucker Albrizzi

Aleida Guevara

Reggie Cervantes

Patrick Pedraja

Linda Peeno

William Maher

Meghan O'Hara

Chris Seward

Film Editing

Dan Sweitlik

Geoffrey Richman

News & Interviews for Sicko

Juno , No Country for Old Men Among Writers Guild Award Nominees

No Country for Old Men , Juno , There Will Be Blood Lead Critics’ Choice Winners

There Will Be Blood , No Country For Old Men Top Critics’ Awards

Critic Reviews for Sicko

Audience reviews for sicko.

Your opinion on the topic will depend heavily on your stance on healthcare in the United States. Nevertheless, Sicko is still a well-made, funny and insightful look into a controversial system.

Of all the documentaries directed by Michael Moore, I felt that Sicko was one of his more lazy efforts. Though the film tackles another important subject matter, I really didn't think that much about the film. I thought it was entertaining, but compared other documentaries that Michael Moore has directed, Sicko is my least favorite. I enjoyed the film, but I also felt that Michael Moore was showing signs of running out of things to say with his documentaries. I felt Sicko navigated the usual territory that Michael Moore travels through. The film definitely is entertaining and exposes yet another important issue, however compared to Fahrenheit 9/11 or Bowling for Columbine, this documentary isn't that great. I much preferred Moore's other documentaries. Sicko tackles the American health care system, and though it's an interesting documentary, I felt there was something missing. The film definitely showed us the realities of the American health care system.Sicko is entertaining, funny and sad at times. The film criticizes the health care system of America, and Moore outlines his points perfectly. However at the same time, it's clear that Michael Moore is running out of ideas How far can you take the criticism that everything that is the USA? I personally feel Moore has explored every bit of the subject matter. Sicko is worth watching, but is not as engaging as his previous works.

Very interesting look into the world of the American health care. Michael Moore is very convincing but that's kind of the problem as if he stating his opinion or is what he's saying true?

Not a Michael Moore fan but this is a great documentary

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Sicko and Bowling for Columbine Movies Review

How it works

Academy-Award winning filmmaker and best-selling author, Michael Moore is a filmmaker, newsmaker and a cultural icon for his highly controversial documentaries. Throughout his work, he has used film as a platform for activism making him viewed as a highly controversial director and person overall. Arguably, Moore is seen by society as a representative of the people, or as a public disturbance, expressing the views of an ‘average American’ to the rest of the world, whether it is in film, text, rallies or interviews.

There are many reasons tied to Moore’s unity and discord among his fans and critics, which all stem from his beliefs and incorporated into his work. His views and work are controversial, but he knows how to strike up a conversation when important topics are problems are buried in mainstream mediums. Some of his words are found controversial, others argue pure factual and some statements are stretched far out of context. Many of Moore’s ideas run through his film, his multiple press/film conferences and award ceremonies and many interviews with highly ranked people. Focusing on his work, many issues and themes are present from this director. Moore raises such issues in his films including but not limited to: violence, gun laws, corporate profits, American health care, social policies and more.

As mentioned, Moore’s beliefs and background play a huge role in the way that he creates his work. Best known for his work in globalization and capitalism, Michael Moore had to start from somewhere. According to his biography, Moore was born in Flint, Michigan and raised in the suburbs of Davison, Michigan. He graduated from Davison High School and pursued a journalism career at the University of Michigan-Flint with a focus in print journalism. He wrote for the school’s newspaper, The Michigan Times, before dropping out. In 1986, when Moore became the editor of Mother Jones, a liberal political magazine, but after four months of reporting there, Moore refused to print an article by Paul Berman that was “[c]ritical of the Sandinista human rights record in Nicaragua,” according to The Nation and was fired. “Moore refused to run the article, believing it to be inaccurate. ‘The article was flatly wrong and the worst kind of patronizing bullshit. You would scarcely know from it that the United States had been at war with Nicaragua for the last five years.’” Moore’s father was an automotive assembly-line worker at General Motors. During this time, Flint was a city full of promise and the birth place of GM before shutting-down its factories and putting thousands of workers out of jobs. Today, Moore is an activist for the current situation due to environmental racism in Flint, Michigan.

Intertwining journalism and film, Moore presents information to people in an amusing way. Moore strongly believes in the truth no matter how it is presented or pried from people in his films. Moore is constantly being found mercilessly using tricks and taunting to lure out important pieces of information from his interviewees, and often, making fools of them. For this reason of many, Moore is viewed as a highly controversial filmmaker. With many different groups having their own opinions and agenda, Moore still believes himself to be informing the people about issues he himself would like to know about completely disregarding how the information is obtained. And no matter how this information is drawn out, Moore is presents it. Throughout his movie Bowling for Columbine (2002), Moore uses a variety of images to present information to the viewers in shocking and satirical ways to convey his message.

Moore’s documentary Bowling for Columbine reiterates that with determination and persistence that not only him, but patriots can create change. According to “Presentation and Representation in Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine” by Peter Wilshire, “Bowling for Columbine centres around the Columbine High School massacre, America’s worst ever high school shooting. On the morning of 20 April 1999, two seniors, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, pulled out loaded weapons and began shooting their fellow schoolmates.” Wilshire also makes note of Moore’s title significance and shines light on the overall movie footage:

“Bowling for Columbine (the title of the film refers to the claim made by Moore that Harris and Klebold went bowling at 6am on the morning of the massacre) is certainly a compelling and ambitious documentary. Every screen medium is skillfully used, including 1950s television stock footage, digital cartons, archival war footage, cowboy snippets, vintage toy ads and bizzare promotional videos. Moore jolts the viewer by cleverly combining frenetic editing techniques with zooming close-ups, often over-laid with a pounding and abrasive soundtrack. In one disturbing and horrifying sequence, the Columbine massacre is relived with the use of actual split screen security camera video footage of terrified students diving for cover as Harris and Klebold open fire, overlaid with the logged voices of terrified 911 callers.”

In his film, Moore interviewed some of the surviving victims of the Columbine shootings along with Charlton Heston, the NRA president. He makes a point to show the horrifying effects of allowing guns and bullets to be easily accessible. Moore attacked the big-box store company Kmart and took it upon himself to face the major corporate food chain. Moore makes it a point that although persuading big companies to stop selling bullets doesn’t prevent people from buying it elsewhere, it is a start. He argues that you have to start somewhere.

Moving on, in Moore’s documentary Fahrenheit 911 (2004), Moore shows his political stance while presenting serious issues in a rather humorous way. He opens people’s eyes to scandals and corruption within the government. He shows how imperative it is to vote and how involved the country has to get in their government. According to “Fahrenheit 9/11: Michael Moore Heats It Up” by Ron Briley, Filmmaker Michael Moore is “both idolized and demonized.” Although Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 established box office records for a documentary film, some critics accused Moore of “producing a piece of propaganda comparable to Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1934).” Briley states. Briley argues that the comparison is overwrought:

“If one accepts the definition of propaganda as the systematic propagation of a given allegiance or value system, then Moore may qualify as a propagandist. On the other hand, if we are going to pin the propaganda label on Moore, then it would seem only fair to place a similar description on Pentagon press conferences, the reporting of embedded journalists, and what passes for ‘fair and balanced’ reporting on such news networks as Fox. While Moore insists that he wants to make films that entertain people while they are munching their popcorn, he made it no secret that the intention of Fahrenheit 9/11 was to assure the electoral defeat of President Bush.”

Furthermore, Briley argues that Moore is “most consistent in persona, tone, and message with his cinematic work” as so:

“Did political conservatives expect Moore to embrace the administration’s case for war? Perhaps the problem is that some would define the documentary film as presenting a factual case. Of course, the question then is which facts and from whose perspective? Documentary films are hardly objective as simply the placing of a camera to record events tends to alter reality. Moore is what film scholars David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson would label a maker of rhetorical documentaries who seeks to convince an audience. So the real question is not whether Moore is partisan in his politics, but how strong is his case against the President?”

In Farenheight 9/11, Moore begins his film with the disputed election of 2000, a topic which the filmmaker explored in some depth with his best-selling book “Stupid White Men.” The film depicts a bumbling President whose legitimacy is tainted. However, as Briley puts it,

“[e]verything changed on the morning of September 11 as planes crashed into the Pentagon and World Trade Center. Moore does not contend, as some conspiracy theorists allege, that the Bush administration orchestrated the attacks. But Fahrenheit 9/11 does assert that the President and his advisers were negligent in their response to the Al Qaeda threat. While his conclusions here are in agreement with many of the reservations expressed by the 9/11 Commission and former terror czar Richard Clarke, Moore chooses to make his point visually through focusing upon the dazed expression on the President’s face as he continued to read along with Florida school children for ten minutes after being informed that the nation was under attack.”

In Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore is not afraid to stand up for what he believes in and is eager to expose issues that are needed to be addressed. In this film, he shows that President Bush should have done more to prevent and help Americans cope with 9/11. Ultimately, Moore argues that Bush knew more about vacationing than about hard work. This is common in Moore’s films. He gives alarming truths, facts, and statistics. Moore pushes the fact that the Bush administration allegedly used the catastrophic event to push its own agenda for unwarranted wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Within the footage and interviews, Moore illustrates how Bush has gotten America into more trouble than ever before.

Moving into the topic of healthcare in the United States, as well as universal healthcare, Sicko (2007) opens the curtains looking into the crooked multi-billion-dollar healthcare system. Moore explores the thoughts of people who have health insurance, who do not have health insurance, and countries that provide their citizens with universal healthcare. In the film, Moore explains that if people do not own health insurance and get sick in any way, then they are most likely bound for a life of overwhelming hospital bills. In Michael Tanner’s “Sicko: Michael Moore’s latest fantasy” article, he argues that Moore’s film doesn’t provide enough information or numbers.

“No-one would deny that there are serious problems with the American health care system, and Moore effectively dramatizes the suffering of people caught up in it.

Yet he frequently exaggerates those problems. For example, he often refers to the 47 million Americans without health insurance but fails to point out that most of those are uninsured for only brief periods, or that millions are already eligible for government programs but fail to apply. Moreover, he implies that people without health insurance don’t receive health care. In reality, most do. Hospitals are legally obligated to provide care, regardless of ability to pay, and while physicians do not face the same legal requirements, few are willing to deny treatment because a patient lacks insurance. Treatment for the uninsured may well mean financial hardship, but by and large they do receive care.”

But, Moore’s point argues that if people do have health insurance the insurance companies will search for anything to deny coverage, especially if it becomes a big expense. He argues that insurance companies have specific lawyers to go back into years of information about people to see if they can find anywhere that holders may have slipped up in misinforming the companies of minor health issues. Overall, Moore points out that insurance companies will deny a person for something as small as having a cured yeast infection if the patient failed to mention in their paperwork.

Moore talks about universal healthcare and hits on the topics of why most are against it. A lot of people say that universal healthcare will not be a good idea because there will be long lines, Doctors will be paid less, and the healthcare will be poor. All of these myths are brought to the light and contradicted. He decides to actually go to the hospitals in Canada and shows that the longest Canadians average wait time is 45 minutes. He goes to doctors that are practicing under the universal healthcare system and shows they make about $500,000 a year. He demonstrates that kind of income is enough to live more than comfortably on. He also shows us that we have plenty of things that are socialized already, such as teachers, mail, firemen, police, and libraries all of which are very successful.

It also talks about the incredibly long list of reasons of why they would deny health care to people applying to get it. Almost any pre-existing health issue no matter how small would be grounds to deny the request. Moore actually got people who worked inside the insurance companies to talk about why they needed to resign. Their conscience became too heavy to hold because they knew that they were responsible for many people’s deaths, despite the fact that in the insurance world it not only looked good to deny claims but was also rewarded by promotions depending on whether or not they were able to save the company money by having the most denials.

There was another example that was explained in the movie of a man who had a choice because he had a freak accident resulting in two of his fingers being cut off, he could put one back on for $12,000 or he could put the second back on for $60,000. He took the $12,000 deal all because he had no health insurance. He goes to other countries that have universal health care such as Britain and shows that not only do they not charge you for health care they actually pay you for your transportation and any other expenses that may have set their citizens back. He showed that they get 6 months paid time off and 6 months non-paid, but their job is secure when they choose to come back. If after having a baby things get tough, they may call for a government employee to come help them with anything they need done, such as laundry, cleaning, bill paying, cooking, etc. Surprisingly, despite his Democratic Party affiliation, in another part of his movie he makes reference to Hillary Clinton being a huge supporter of universal healthcare for this country, but then being bought for her silence by the health care industry.

Moore saves the clincher for last. In the end of the movie he talks about how he has read up on the biggest anti-Michael Moore fan there is. He talks about how the man was being forced to shut down his website due to the fact that his wife became very ill and he was unable to pay for her insurance any longer. He was faced with the choice of either keep criticizing Michael Moore or pay for his wife’s health. Michael Moore didn’t understand why he couldn’t, in a free country, have health insurance and exercise his first amendment right to run Moore into the ground. Moore then wrote a $12,000 check that he needed to keep his wife insured and in treatment and sent it to him anonymously. His wife got better and his website is still going strong. Moore came to the realization that we are all in the same boat and that no matter our differences we sink or swim together. The movie Sicko is made to help push for the day when every American can go to the doctor or hospital and never be asked “what’s in your wallet?”.

Moore went on Oprah and exposed all of the extremist people who opposed his film and tried their hardest to not allow it for surface. He told her that insurance companies tried suing him, threatening him, and blocking him from any information they could. Many Film companies refused to play Moore’s film. He found a very small no-name company to support his documentary Sicko and allow it to air. Still, he secured his film with a company overseas just to insure that regardless if the United States film companies decided to not show the film, that it would still be executed in a different country for all to see.

Through his filmmaking, Michael Moore has not only been a success but an inspiration. He is known for having the guts to give his own opinion in public, which many people are not courageous enough to do, and for that many respect him. Michael Moore proves that one man can make a difference. He is a great example of exercising our right to free speech and questioning the government. If something doesn’t seem right he is a spokesperson for finding out the truth. Moore was a small-town boy who grew up to become one of the most influential documentary film makers of our time.

Works Cited

Bowling For Columbine. Dir. Michael Moore. 2002.

Fahrenheit 911. Dir. Michael Moore. 2004.

Penn, Sean. Time.com. 18 April 2005. 8 March 2012 .

Sicko. Dir. Michael Moore. 2007.

The Oprah Winfrey Show. Michael Moore’s Sicko. 1 January 2006. 8 March 2012 .

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Michael Moore’s Film, Sicko, Movie Review Example

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Michael Moore’s film, Sicko , is a documentary about the health care industry. It is a documentary because it discusses health care, including its good and bad qualities. The movie is a documentary because it discusses facts already known about the healthcare industry. Healthcare in the United States is expensive—paid for by those people who can afford it. In socialized countries such as Canada and England healthcare is paid for by taxing everybody, whether or not they actually use the healthcare system.

Sicko documents why healthcare in the United States has grown into a big, multifaceted business. The movie explains that the federal government plays a major role in this. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is a heavily-lobbied organization that tells American consumers that the only safe places to purchase drugs are from American drug manufacturers. Drug and healthcare interests are the largest lobbying groups of any organization in the United States. Most doctors support this belief, but in areas of poverty and/or fixed incomes, Sicko acknowledges that patients are told that usually the drugs available from foreign markets have been manufactured right here in the United States. Expensive drugs in the U.S. marketplace are often considerably less expensive in Canada or overseas.

Sicko also documents that American citizens don’t often pay outright for their drugs and medical care. Instead, they pay for insurance care. The single-most determinant in choosing a healthcare plan is cost. The greater the cost of health coverage, the more complete it usually is. Bargain plans give bargain protection. Sicko notes that the cost differential between premium and bargain plans is often negligible and needs to be evaluated in terms of patient-need instead of just “one plan fits all.”

Moore’s Sicko talks about the various health plans, most specifically the cost of drugs. He relates that the apothecary shop where drugs were individually produced as late as the end of the 19 th century is no longer in existence. Instead, drugs are produced on an assembly line. Whether producing drugs or other products, assembly-line production costs are greatly reduced. Sometimes drugs costing less than a dime to produce, drugs are marketed for as much as a dollar per tablet. According to the movie, production and manufacturing costs are 10%, meaning that 90% of each drug goes into profit.

There are numerous drugs available; many of them treat identical illnesses. Sometimes they are available only by prescription; other times they are readily available through over-the-counter sales. The success or failure of a particular brand is often determined by marketers who offer steep incentives to physicians who choose their brand over somebody else. The ever-increasing costs associated with health care and drugs are as much a responsibility of various physicians as it is drug manufacturers and service providers.

The political bodies which govern the United States, regardless of political persuasion, are also responsible for ever-increasing care. In additional to private carriers, trillions of dollars annually are poured into government benefits such as Medicare and Medicaid. When fiscally responsible politicians limit these benefits, they quickly become unpopular with the voters. Both individual voters and special interest groups working in tandem suggest that our government is trying to legally euthanize its citizens, even though the average citizen should be able to recognize how far-fetched that line of thinking is.

Sicko also addresses, although not as strongly, the health care provided to illegal aliens in the United States and also the care provided for the many hundreds of prisoners we have incarcerated. The movie covers these areas indiscreetly. The movie digresses from its documentary format, asking us, “Why do we bother?” Although the movie takes little initiative to answer the question, from a healthcare viewpoint, a country is only as strong as its weakest citizen. Thus, a strong country requires health care for all of its citizens, whether or not they can individually afford that care. In situations where somebody else needs to pick up the tab, that will remain the job of our more affluent citizens and of our government.

Canada, England, and a few other countries located around the world have a healthcare system centered on socialized medicine. Socialism, e.g. socialized medicine, is a method by which the government owns the healthcare industry (along with other industries deemed beneficial to the strength of those governments). But somebody has to pay for the healthcare industry. In socialized medicine, the costs of this healthcare are charged back equally to each citizen. While in the United States healthcare varies according to costs, in these foreign countries, health care is charge equally to each citizen whether or not that care is needed.

Socialism as a political entity also implies that, in addition to taxing citizens for “equal health costs” physicians and other health care professionals will also be limited in income. This is an extremely important point, especially in the areas of physicians’ incomes and the amounts of money available for both health care research and the costs of operating hospitals. In the United States the costs associated with hospital care varies from institution to institution; there are neighborhood health care facilities and there are major research hospitals. The medical professionals who staff these hospitals come from varying backgrounds. There are neighborhood physicians who treat common maladies and there are graduates of major institutions who spend their entire careers, not so much involved with patient care, but with the identification and treatments of major diseases, sometimes affecting not only patients in the United States, but in the worldwide marketplace of patient care. It is safe to assume that in civilized socialistic countries healthcare professionals may be paid greater sums of money than in other professions. However, it is also safe to assume that these healthcare professionals are simply not allowed to determine their own fees. The inability to determine one’s own fees may limit medical progress and healthcare in these countries. There is probably no reasonable answer to the question, “Why should a socialized healthcare professional put into his or her practice the same diligence that a healthcare professional will exert in a country where salaries are not determined by a third party—in this case the government?

Sicko has been examined as a documentary, a film based on fact. The movie has also been examined as a form of entertainment. In fact, Sicko contains facts but it is more so a persuasive film, one that helps its viewers determine in their own minds how much they agree or disagree with it. There is no single answer to that kind of expression is presented in Sicko. But in my opinion it is informational as is the style of any documentary. It allows the viewer to determine for himself what he accepts as reality and what he disregards as fiction.

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Sicko Movie Essay Example

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Topic: People , Insurance , Cinema , Medicine , Movies , America , Health , Company

Published: 07/16/2021

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Summary of the Movie “Sicko” and Some of the Unethical Behaviors Observed in the Video

“Sicko” is a documentary movie telling us about the health care system of the USA, its shortcomings and fates of people suffered from it. From the very first seconds of the action the movie captures you and takes to the country of freedom, to the same people from flesh and blood. These are real and sometimes even unimaginable in the modern world stories of people who have faced the problem of medical care, usually emergency without getting help.

According to the plot of the story, many Americans have no medical insurance and those who are insured often become victims of bureaucracy and paperwork of insurance companies. The movie contains a lot of interviews of people who according to their own opinion have had sufficient reasons for getting necessary medical help, though they received refuse. Former employees of some insurance companies explain their behavior in case of refusal in insurance by the fact that the company they work in strives to avoid additional expenditures. The main idea of such companies is to elude providing necessary medical help to the insured people while increasing the profitability of the insurance companies. The film director comes to know lives of common people, talks to them, finds out more about their level of living and incomes, etc. He also familiarizes us with some laws of the countries and shows how they act in reality. He makes it for the purpose to get Americans a reality check and show that some countries are not less or even more developed in the questions related to the level of life.

People of the USA live “in credit”. The whole system works on that and that is why people often work on several jobs. The film maker shows how doctors, irrespective to the oath of Hippocrates pursue their own ends. Even if they know how to help a person, they hardly would agree to help him/her in case of medical insurance absence. However, even insured people not always get help as the insurers follow their own interests and benefits. One more question is buying indispensable to life medicines for unbelievably high price while there is an opportunity of buying them at lower price but in another country.

The United States is a country of opportunities, on the one hand. At the same time, it is a country in which people make money on everything. Health care system of the USA experiences not the best times. Finally, the author of the movie makes a conclusion that the whole system is created solely to get money from patients. Thus, stories of real people are opposed to the words of dishonest doctors. One would better understand the situation and get clear image of difference, if he/she sees the way how some people are capable to make everything for the sake of the suffering people.

Works Cited

Moore, Michael. 2015. Sicko. Web. 25 June 2015 . <http://documentarystorm.com/sicko/>

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Niamh Chamberlain

Medical Ethics: “Sicko” Documentary by Michael Moore Essay (Movie Review)

I believe Michael Moore’s approach to the health care issue in his documentary, Sicko, is elusive and reactive rather than proactive.

It is argued in the documentary that over fifty million Americans are to insure their lives whereas the large percentage insure is unable to maintain its insurance costs owing to rules and regulations and company fraud.

Several interviews were conducted to ascertain the truth of the matter and it was found out that insurance companies play rackets with the lives of people in case of medical emergencies. The insurance companies would always find a reason not to compensate its policyholders.

This is usually aimed at maximizing the profits of the company. The movie compares the healthcare laws of Canada with those of the US. The actor singles out the efforts of one of the Canadian policy maker by the name Tommy Douglas, who worked tirelessly to improve the healthcare system in Canada (Callenbach, 2008).

The actor argues that anti-health care policy individuals claim that providing free healthcare services amounts to communism, which is not true. The then head of state, Ronald Reagan, advised people that universal healthcare services would lead to the loss of freedom and introduction of socialism into the financial system.

Moore answers the critics basing their arguments to Reagan’s allegations that American financial system had not been converted to socialism by the free police services, fire services and the postal services.

In my view, Moore employs both Kantian approach and virtue ethics approach. However, utilitarianism is not applied anywhere in the movie. As Kant observed, each individual in the world exists as an end in himself but not as a means to a particular end.

In everything that an individual undertakes in the world, it must be viewed as an end not a means to an end. People do not exist as a means to achieve particular tasks. In other words, we need to strive to achieve our own pleasure but not to exist to please something else.

Critics of the healthcare bill believed that people exist to fulfill the wishes and interests of capitalism, which, according to Kant, is unacceptable since we should not attempt to fulfill the wishes of something else and forget ourselves.

In this regard, we need to act as rational beings meaning that we need to apply reason in everything we do. Healthcare is a basic right to every American hence supporting it is rational and reasonable (DeGrazia, Mappes, & Brand-Ballard, 2011).

Virtue ethics is a framework that focuses on the personality of the ethical agent as opposed to the suitability of the act. Healthcare is an issue involving ethics and the legality of the action.

Ethically, it is pleasing to fund a policy aiming at improving the health standards of people in the country. It would however be unsuitable to force the population to fund a policy that would only help a section of the society that is, the poor.

Utilitarianism claims that each policy implemented should satisfy each person in society. In other words, it should aim at bringing happiness. The morality of an action in this regard can only be determined by its outcomes.

In the American society, healthcare bill is a controversial issue that does not have positive effects only. It affects a section of society negatively meaning that it has some side effects to the rich.

Callenbach, E. (2008). Sicko. Film Quarterly , 61(2), 64-88.

DeGrazia, D., Mappes, T., & Brand-Ballard, J. (2011). Biomedical Ethics (7th ed). New York: McGraw-Hill.

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IvyPanda. (2019, May 25). Medical Ethics: "Sicko" Documentary by Michael Moore. https://ivypanda.com/essays/medical-ethics-2/

"Medical Ethics: "Sicko" Documentary by Michael Moore." IvyPanda , 25 May 2019, ivypanda.com/essays/medical-ethics-2/.

IvyPanda . (2019) 'Medical Ethics: "Sicko" Documentary by Michael Moore'. 25 May.

IvyPanda . 2019. "Medical Ethics: "Sicko" Documentary by Michael Moore." May 25, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/medical-ethics-2/.

1. IvyPanda . "Medical Ethics: "Sicko" Documentary by Michael Moore." May 25, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/medical-ethics-2/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Medical Ethics: "Sicko" Documentary by Michael Moore." May 25, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/medical-ethics-2/.

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