by rick grant rickgrant01@comcast.net
A PG-13 113 min
In this shocking documentary, Michael Moore has, in his trademark satiric way, exposed the festering boil of our broken health care system as a corporate fraud–set up to deny as many claims as possible. By presenting real life HMO horror stories, Moore overcomes his tendency to grandstand with pomposity.
The individual patients’ stories are eye-opening, but most viewers will understand because almost everyone has been through this Machiavellian system. I’m still paying for my cancer treatment from back in 2005, when the insurance only covered 80% and my share was thousands of dollars.
In true documentary style, Moore lets his subjects tell their own tragic stories. One man had to decide between reattaching one finger out of two, because the ring finger cost $12,000 as opposed to the middle finger, which cost $20 grand. Even though he had insurance, it wouldn’t cover both fingers.
Then Moore features a widow whose husband had a rare type of cancer. He was denied coverage, and they couldn’t afford the treatment, which was deemed experimental (a typical excuse for denial) and he died. In effect, the HMO killed him. Moore presents other cases which are equally tragic and he shows the HMOs only care is reducing costs, not the patients’ well being.
Moving on, Moore spotlighted the former employees of the HMOs who could no longer live with themselves, so they quit and testified before Congress about their jobs of denying patients coverage. One woman said she got a bonus for denying so many patients. One guy, known as a “hit man,” would search through the forms looking for a minor mistake that would result in denial of the coverage. In other words, the HMOs’ mission is strictly profit motivated.
Moore traces the origins of the HMO system back to the Nixon administration. Thanks to those famous tapes from February of 1971, when Edgar Kaiser and his profit-rigged system became the first HMO–Kaiser Permanente, which was set up in the beginning to minimize patient expenditure to maximize profit. As the HMOs grew into a powerful Jabba the Hutt, the companies began lining the pockets of the politicians insuring their business would profit at the expense of compassionate patient care.
One of the most interesting segments in the film is when Moore presents footage during Bill Clinton’s first term, when Hillary Clinton tried to introduce universal health care to Congress. She was met with a wall of resistance. One by one the Senators and Congressmen gave the typical anti-socialized medicine speeches, which have always tied socialized medicine with communism. Hillary was beaten-up badly for her righteous effort to change the system.
To show that our leaders’ opposition to socialized medicine was profit-motivated propaganda, Moore traveled to countries that have thriving universal healthcare–Canada, Britain, France, and Cuba, where he discovered fully viable, top-rate healthcare systems that are completely free–even the drugs. He was amazed by what he found.
Moore delved deeply into these countries’ medical systems, interviewing doctors, patients, and the Americans living in these countries. Contrary to what we have always been told, in each country that has universal health care subsidized by the government, the quality of care has not suffered because it is free.
In France, doctors earn from $160,000 to $200,000 a year and live very well indeed. Since they don’t have to worry about money, they concentrate on their patients’ health. If you get sick in France, you go to a clinic or a doctor and whatever it takes to get you well they will use, including MRIs and other high tech methods, that are deemed too expensive here. And it’s all free. The most interesting segment is when Moore takes a group of chronically ill 9/11 rescue workers to Cuba (he inexplicably got into the country). They went to the Havana hospital, the Cuban doctors treated the patients, and they were able to get their medication either free or at a fraction of the price in America.
On the down side, Moore did not present the fact that under Castro, Cuba has degenerated into a dirt poor third world nation where everyone wallows in poverty except Castro and his family. However, Moore was making a point that even in this banana republic, people get free, first-class healthcare.
Finally, Moore’s documentary asks the pertinent question: If socialized medicine works well without sacrificing quality care in many other countries, why have we been so against adopting a system that is proven effective? Moore’s film exposes blatant HMO fraud, so we can conclude that many legislators are getting filthy rich from the HMO payoffs while the American people suffer. Perhaps this film will cause people to wake up and help change the system.
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EU Critic’s Choice Awards
