Health News

Moore's 'Sicko' Comes to Washington

June 20, 2007 -- Michael Moore's new film attacking the U.S. health care industry is premiering in the city where it may mean the most: Washington, D.C.

And the Oscar-winning documentary maker is hoping his movie will spark more than outrage among politicians. He wants the film to spark vast changes in the country's health care system.

All members of Congress are invited to attend a showing of Sicko at Washington's historic Uptown Theater Wednesday evening.

Those who do will see Moore's frontal assault on the nation's health care system: why it leaves 50 million citizens without coverage, why those who have coverage wind up paying anyway, and why costs keep marching upward for everyone.

"I called it Sicko because I thought that our broken health care system is exactly that. It's the biggest sicko we've got in this country," Moore said at a Capitol Hill news conference with a dozen or so Democratic members of Congress.

Single-Payer Coverage

Moore used the conference to give a boost to legislation that would bring single-payer health coverage to the U.S. That means the government would provide health coverage to all citizens for free -- or at least at a very deep discount. It would also put the health insurance industry effectively out of business.

Moore's basic argument goes like this: Health insurance companies (as well as pharmaceutical companies and private hospital companies) have a responsibility to Wall Street to drive up profits. The only way to maximize profits is to keep revenue high and payouts low.

In the case of insurers, Moore argues, that means "price gouging" and "denial of care."

To make his point in the film, Moore escorts several 9/11 emergency responders to Cuba for medical care, ostensibly because they could not get it at home.

Moore's allies in Congress would like to replace the health care system with one closer to Canada's. There, the federal government and provinces share the cost of guaranteeing insurance to all citizens.

A High Hurdle

The bill is unlikely to get far in Congress. Capitol Hill has shown little appetite for vastly expanding government-sponsored health care.

And critics are already on the attack. They point to the long waiting lists for care in Canada and to the fact that a lack of profit potential means that that country -- and the more than 35 other industrialized countries with government health care -- rely on the U.S. for innovative new treatments.

"Moore is promoting the myth that government-run health care is a magic bullet," says Stuart Browning, a fellow at the Motion Picture Institute, a conservative group that is producing its own films to rebut Sicko.

"People need to have a rounded understanding of the issues. Only then can we hope to have a meaningful debate about what kinds of reforms will actually work," he says.