Sicko - Analysis

Sicko is a documentary about the American Health Care system as seen through the eyes of the filmmaker Michael Moore. It presents the health care system in America as being fragmented and inefficient by using anecdotes to illustrate the plight of the 46 million Americans without health insurance and also to address the wider concerns about the kind of care that the insured get. The film also compares the non-universal and for-profit U.S. system with publicly funded health systems of Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Cuba. The documentary begins with the narrative in which Moore states that sometime before filming the movie, he invited citizens to send in their health-care horror stories and within a week, his website was inundated with 25,000 mails. That huge number itself warrants notice and makes you want to hear what they have to say. In the first half of the film, he presents three cases representative of the plight of the roughly 46 million people that have no health insurance. The film also focuses on the state of the 250 million Americans who do have health insurance and who have become victims of insurance company fraud or red tape having being denied coverage for pre-existing conditions, experimental procedures or retrospectively denied coverage for pre-existing conditions they never knew about . It includes confessions from former insurance industry workers who are guilty or angry about their roles in denying drugs or treatments and describe cost-cutting initiatives that encourage bonuses for insurance company physicians to deny medical treatments for policyholders1, . In the second half of the movie, Moore goes on to different countries that offer socialized medicine like Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Cuba. Here he paints a rather wonderful picture of the socialized system working in these countries. He interviews patients, doctors, and a few other citizens of those countries who are very happy with the kind of care they receive. He