Sicko

In his typically emotionally charged style, Michael Moore brings his spotlight onto the American Health System. Or lack of.

First off we are shown how bad the American way is, how insurance companies pay doctors to find ways to deny treatment, or postpone treatments until the patient is deceased.

Then he shows us examples of countries that have free health care as a minimum. Of these countries France surprisingly comes off as being the best place to live. Cuba isn’t too bad either, at least for health care.

Michael Moore – either love him or hate him – has a way with words. If you love him, you’ll love his humour, deep sarcastic, yet sometimes verging on subtle, humour. If you hate him, you’ll feel he’s being anti American, or you’ll be looking for all the things he isn’t saying.

And there’s a lot he doesn’t say. In one documentary that runs ten minutes shy of two hours you can’t really begin to cover all aspects of the American health system, let alone look at how others manage to supply free healthcare across the board.

But then Michael Moore isn’t trying to present all the facts, he’s using his confrontational style to try and get you thinking about the issues. This is where Sicko is brilliant. It doesn’t matter if you love Michael Moore or hate him, if you watch Sicko with an open mind, you’ll agree that something isn’t right about the American health system, the thing you’ll disagree on is how it can be fixed.

Being kiwis of course, none of this matters to us, because we aren’t likely to follow the American way, are we… What matters to us is that Michael Moore (if you love him) makes some of the most entertaining documentaries around.

Food for thought
One of the repeated themes shown of countries that do have free, across the board health care, is an attitude of wanting to help one another. It’s a system build on we, not me. Kinda like the story of that Samaritan dude.

Reviewed by: Jonathan Read.
Rating: PG – Contains Low Level Offensive Language.
Duration: 110 mins.
Genre: Documentary.
Director: Michael Moore.
Distributor: Roadshow.
Release Date: Available Now.