Michael Moore Gets Sick
[The familiar refrain on Michael Moore, from the corrupt right and sellout left, is getting so tired that it may start wearing fatigues. I'm sick of hearing it, especially when he's been shining the light for years on white-collar grifters who fuck over poor people and cash in. Can someone remind me why that is a bad thing? Wait, never mind. Keep your lame opinions to yourselves. Go see Sicko, and feel it in your stomach. Just like Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine, that's where you are going to feel it. In the pit of your stomach, like your doom beckoning. Thank the Big Bang for the fat-ass Michael Moore and his king-sized balls.]Michael Moore's Sicko
[by Cynthia Fuchs]
Michael Moore stands on the deck of a small boat he's motored from Florida to Cuba, the sea stretching behind him. Framed by three 9/11 rescue workers now suffering an array of health ailments, he puts bullhorn to mouth, as the camera cuts to a watchtower on Guantanamo Bay. Moore pleads, "They just want some medical attention, the same kind that Al Qaeda is getting. They don't want any more than you're giving the evildoers, just the same."
It's one of several slow-motion gonzo moments in Sicko, Moore's documentary on the business of US medical insurance. The bullhorn and faraway prison camp form an apt embellishment, as Moore stands opposed not only to the institutional neglect of ailing patients, but also, and again, to the Bush administration. His impatience with the government's ongoing ineptitude, ignorance, and iniquity -- expressed most vociferously in Fahrenheit 9/11 -- here finds a mini-perfect storm. Preceded by shots of orange-jump-suited detainees at Gitmo playing soccer inside their cages, and a tour of the hospital unit showing operating room, ample medicines, and doctors in white coats, the shout to the watchtower takes aim at the US war on terror, as well as border anxieties, military posturing, alarmism and imperialism.
Turned away from the rocky-beached, barbed-wired camp (or, as he explains, responding to the sound of a siren), Moore takes his passengers on to Cuba, where they find clean white facilities, attentive doctors, and affordable medications. It is this scene that has reportedly inspired the US Treasury Department to investigate possible violations of the US trade embargo restricting travel to Cuba," and incidentally, provide free publicity for the film. The quite literally feel-good sequence closes with a tribute to the US rescue workers by firefighters in Havana, a scene where tearful embraces are augmented by the fact that one of the US workers, medical technician Reggie Cervantes (currently suffering from "pulmonary and bronchial problems," according to the team of Cuban doctors who examine her), speaks Spanish. "Mi hermanos," they agree, all rescue workers a global family. Really, if only the US might learn not only to get along with its neighbors, but also take them as models for good behavior, the world would be a better place....
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2 Comments:
I believe the market failures Sicko addresses are not due to a failed government system but to an epidemic of unhealthy lifestyles that cannot be supported economically. Preventable illness comprises 80% of the burden of illness and 90% of all healthcare costs. Preventable illnesses account for eight of the nine leading categories of death. No medicine, surgery or treatment can reverse the damage caused by a lifetime of smoking, poor eating and lack of exercise. By simply increasing treatment that buys time, ignores the inevitable need to align patient's economic incentives toward healthy living. This is the innovation needed in the economic system of health care, not just more health care.
To coat tail on Damons comment -- And guess what Michael Moore - AIDS is a preventable disease upon which 14 million if not more per year is wasted is search of a "cure" for those who regret not having kept their pants on and caught a lethal dose of an incurable disease!! Moore is full of crap and Sicko is not a documentary - its Leftist liberal propaganda. He has never gotten his facts correct since Bowling. And you libs feel this guy is some saint. Moore is an ass!
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