[corp-focus] SiCKO, Part I: The Human Tragedy

[robert weissman]

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SiCKO, Part I: The Human Tragedy
By Robert Weissman
June 20, 2007

When word got out that Michael Moore was working on a movie with the 
working title SiCKO, about the U.S. healthcare industry, the industry 
went bananas.

Memos started shooting around, warning insurance and drug company 
executives and representatives to keep looking over their shoulders, to 
make sure they avoided being ambushed by Moore and a camera crew. 
Indeed, they had something to fear, for they have a great deal of 
needless misery and suffering to answer for.

But it turns out that Moore didn't need them after all.

Instead, he's made a movie driven by heart-breaking story after 
heart-breaking story. SiCKO presents a devastating indictment of the 
U.S. healthcare system by letting victimized patients speak for themselves.

When Moore announced on his web page that he was doing a movie about 
outrages in the U.S. healthcare system and was looking for examples, he 
was flooded with 25,000 responses.

He profiles Dawnelle, whose 18-month-old daughter Michelle died because 
her health plan, Kaiser, insisted Michelle not be treated at the 
hospital to which an ambulance had taken her, but instead be transferred 
to a Kaiser hospital. Fifteen minutes after arriving at the next 
hospital, Michelle died, probably from a bacterial infection that could 
have been treated with antibiotics.

Julie, who works at a hospital, explains how her insurance plan refused 
to authorize a bone marrow transplant recommended for her cancer-riven 
husband. He died quickly.

Larry and Donna, a late-middle-age couple, find that co-payments and 
deductibles for treatment after Donna has cancer add up to such a burden 
that they have to sell their house and move into a small room in their 
adult daughter's house. The day they move into their daughter's house, 
her husband leaves to work as a contractor in Iraq.

Moore's camera captures the pain, chaos and forced indignity imposed 
upon every day people who do their best to deal with an impossible 
situation.

Moore's web page announcement also attracted responses from hundreds of 
employees in the health insurance industry, explaining how their jobs 
forced them to do things of which they were ashamed.

Lee, a former industry employee whose job was to find ways to deny or 
rescind coverage for healthcare, explains how hard insurers work to deny 
care, searching for any pretense. About denials of care and coverage, he 
says, "It is not unintentional. It is not a mistake. It is not somebody 
slipping through the cracks. Somebody made that crack, and swept you to 
it."

Becky, another industry employee, says through tears that she's a 
"bitch" on the phone with clients because she doesn't want to know 
anything about their families or personal situations -- that knowledge 
makes the inevitable denial of care too hard to stomach.

And Dr. Linda Peeno, a former medical reviewer for Humana, testifies 
before a Congressional committee in 1996 that her denial of needed 
treatment to a patient led to the patient's death. "I am here," she told 
the committee, "primarily today to make a public confession. In the 
spring of 1987 as a physician, I denied a man a necessary operation that 
would have saved his life and thus caused his death. No person and no 
group has held me accountable for this. Because, in fact, what I did was 
I saved a company a half a million dollars with this."

With some exceptions, SiCKO's victims aren't people without insurance. 
As Moore narrates, the movie is instead about the travails of the 250 
million people in the United States with insurance.

There are some in the movie without insurance, however. A hospital 
places a destitute and disoriented woman in a taxicab, which drives away 
and literally dumps her on the street, near a shelter.

Rich, who has no insurance, has an accident in which he saws off the 
tips of two fingers. He is told sewing the ring fingertip back on will 
cost $12,000. The middle finger will cost $60,000. "Being a hopeless 
romantic," Moore narrates, Rich chooses the ring finger.

The publicity for SiCKO says the movie sticks to Michael Moore's 
"tried-and-true one-man approach" and "promises to be every bit as 
indicting as Moore's previous films."

This is actually somewhat misleading. The approach is a little 
different. There's humor, but there aren't many gimmicks in SiCKO. 
There's no effort by Moore to confront industry executives. Moore 
himself has a much smaller role than in previous films.

It is also a bit deceptive -- as an understatement -- to say SiCKO is as 
indicting as Moore's previous films. No matter how big a fan you may 
have been of Moore's earlier movies, you'll find that SiCKO cuts deeper 
and is more powerful and profound. SiCKO is, by far, his best movie.

This is, simply, a masterful work. It is deeply respectful of and 
compassionate towards the victims. It seethes with outrage, but its fury 
is conveyed by all of the horrifying stories it presents. The narrative 
is, by and large, understated. It overflows with raw emotion, but 
manages to explain clearly the systemic imperatives that lead the 
richest nation in the history of the world to fail so miserably at 
delivering healthcare to all.

Could things be different in the United States?

Yes.

The second half of SiCKO looks at other countries' healthcare systems, 
and finds that national, single-payer insurance delivers far better 
care. More on this in my next column.

Sneak previews for SiCKO are being shown around the United States on 
June 23. The movie opens nationally on June 29. Be ready to be driven to 
tears and rage.


Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational 
Monitor, <http://www.multinationalmonitor.org> and director of Essential 
Action <http://www.essentialaction.org>.

(c) Robert Weissman

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