Sicko review

I saw Sicko last night - and stayed up till 4am watching YouTube videos of Michael Moore butting heads with Dr Sanjay Gupta on CNN.

I’m a fan of what Moore is doing. We’re overwhelmed with right wing propaganda in the mainstream media (and in popular cinema), so I like the fact that his movies tip the scales back a little in the other direction. I’m discerning enough to know that what he says isn’t the whole truth. The “truth” is something we should all be cross-referencing from different sources, anyway - not passively expecting one source to feed us.

I know he oversimplifies the health care situation here in Canada. Of course, we Canadians have problems with health care. The biggest issue we face is probably wait times. And a lot of Canadians are ready to sell our system out - into a two-tiered system - just to reduce wait times.

But I’d rather wait for treatment than not have access to it at all - which is the situation 49 million Americans are in, with 18,000 Americans dying every year due to lack of access to health care. Steve, from Los Angeles, writes on IMDB:

I’m a self employed carpenter with no health insurance. None. I can’t afford it. I go to work everyday knowing that one slip of the saw, and I could be choosing my fingers or sewing up my own leg. That’s my reality. Everyday I go to work and listen to the cartilage in my knee CRUNCH when I climb a ladder, and the only thing I can do is pray it holds out for just a couple more years. Everyday, I am one misstep away from bankruptcy.

Come live in our world for a while… then talk to me about “wait-time”.

Every time I hear someone arguing about universal vs. privatized health care, all I can think of is this Adam Gopnik quote: “For me it’s a no-brainer: I would rather pay the extra money and know that everyone I looked at on the subway was not going to worry about how they were going to pay for their kid’s illness.”

Anyway, Sicko is great. Watch it if you get the chance.