Slicko

I like Michael Moore, really I do, or at least I appreciate what he does. The country needs a loud, strident spokesman for the left, to counterbalance all the horrendous blowhards like Limbaugh and Hannity and Coulter, who have done so much harm to our nation. I thought Moore made compelling cases in his last two advocate-documentaries ("advomentaries?"), "Bowling for Columbine" and "Fahrenheit 911," even if neither achieved its respective goal, a reconsideration of our gun-control laws, or the removal of the asshole Bush from office.

But with "Sicko," his latest inquiry, Moore is even less likely to initiate the reform he advocates, which is to overhaul the health-delivery system in America and replace it with a nationalized system of free health care, as exists in Canada and Europe. His methodology in this film is to show anecdotal evidence of the abuses of the American health-care system, mostly perpetrated by profiteering insurance companies, and compare them to the ease of accessibility of citizens in Canada, France and Cuba.

Now this is laudable, and certainly health care is high on the priorities of the American citizenry and the politicians trying to guide us. Hillary, Barack, Schwarzeneggar and maybe some of the Republican midgets are all trying to seek some consensus solution. None of them is strong enough to fight the insurance industry, whose deep pockets they need to help finance their campaigns. That is one of the problems whose solutions are skirted by Moore.

Another is his selective editing. Sure there are nightmare scenarios of people whose legitimate needs are denied by heartless insurance bureaucrats. Moore specifically solicited horror stories on the Internet. But he could just as easily have solicited stories of compassion and medical success in our country, and found incidents of horrendous malfeasance across the Atlantic and around Havana. I have a relative who found herself in a Cuban hospital after spraining her ankle, and they didn't have sufficient ice to keep the swelling down. Moore never mentions that. On the other hand, I had a terrible allergy attack once while visiting London, and received free medical evaluation and prescription drugs, and was enchanted. Everyone has a different story.

After a laudatory tour of a French hospital, Moore shoehorns into his narration the Great Problem--how do they finance universally free health care? Well, "The French are awash in taxes." Then the subject is dropped. Well, duh. Yeah. So how do we establish free health-care delivery in this country? Why, we'd have to Raise Taxes. A lot. Try to get a Democrat to the right of John Edwards to suggest anything like that, much less a Republican, to the taxophobic public in America who thinks it is already overtaxed, although its rate is half what it would be in Euro-land. Moore needed to elaborate on how that awareness could bring about the transition he espouses. Without dealing with the 800-pound gorilla in the room, his essay is idealistic and not practical.

Who knows? Perhaps a tax revision as simple as eliminating the medical deduction may produce enough extra tax revenue to finance this kind of massive health reform. That, though, would be taxing the rich to finance everybody, an Apostasy during the Republican era, and one that even the Democrats would eschew, since they need Rich People's campaign contributions. Of course, if our campaigns were publically sponsored to the extent that ads on TV were gratis, this would negate the need for massive campaign contributions and the corruption that underlies that. I guess that this could be an appropriate subject for Moore's next documentary, one that will ultimately be as fruitless as this one.