If you’re coming here from Nursing Link and you’ve already read this article, click here to read my personal review of the movie!

“Ladies and gentlemen, I think we can agree on two things: The American health-care system is busted and Michael Moore is not the guy to fix it.”

And thus begins a rather scathing review of “SiCKO” by Stephen Hunter at the Washington Post.

According to Peter Barry Chowka at American Thinker, “The lead up to Sicko’s June 29 national roll out was a genuine phenomenon. Prior to its opening, with only a small number of reviews actually published, Sicko had already become the most hyped, and written about, movie of 2007, and possibly of the past decade.”

The past decade??

Is the actual film worthy of the hype that was created before its release? That depends on who you ask, of course. Hospital Impact has a very thorough Roundup of SiCKO reviews. As said in the comments, “My doctor recommends tests and procedures and medications, but ultimately, a healthcare insurance pencil-pusher decides what is “medically necessary” and reimburses accordingly.” Moore’s film reveals that the “pencil-pushers” are not necessarily your average Joe off the street, but instead are physicians who are paid handsomely for their expert opinions in denying your care - oops, I mean denying payment for your care.

Moore wasn’t necessarily interested in presenting both sides of the story, either:

“But one aspect missing from the film is the defense. Do not expect to hear anyone speak well of the care they received in the U.S. On the other hand, patients and doctors from Canada, Britain, France and Cuba marvel at their health care.”

‘Course, Moore’s missive doesn’t need to include a defense when you can simply get your information biased to the other side from websites such as Free Market Cure. As you can guess, this website is not exactly dedicated to the idea of socialized medicine, but instead puts forth ideas relating to consumer-directed healthcare. And what’s wrong with our system anyway? Here’s a theory:

“… Americans - whether privately insured or publicly covered - tend to be over-insured, and thus less sensitive to prices. And so we come to a paradox: American health care is so expensive because it’s so cheap. That is, with Americans paying just 14 cents out-of-pocket for every health dollar, they have little incentive to economize on health expenses. Americans have access to the most technologically sophisticated system in human history - yet pay pennies on the dollar out of their own pockets. The upshot? A health care system that is heavy in cost but not necessarily strong in satisfaction and uneven in quality.”

Several controversial issues are raised in this movie, including personal accounts of insurance companies denying payment for life-saving procedures and 9/11 workers having problems getting adequate health care for conditions they contracted due to working at ground zero. Moore also tackles the incident that happened last year when Kaiser dumped a confused and disoriented homeless patient in the middle of Skid Row. Slate Magazine’s Austin Goolsbee doesn’t disagree with Moore’s assertion that America’s healthcare system is broken, but does take issue with his “policy prescription”:

“For Moore, though, the answer is not reform of the current system. It is having the government run it all. He sets out on a worldwide tour to show us how great a single-payer system is in countries that have it. And here’s where his policy prescription goes into overdrive.”

Yes, there are many people flinging their opinions about this movie around the internet, and employees at Google are no exception. A blogger for Google’s Health Advertising Blog suggested that the healthcare industry fight back. How, you ask? With ads, of course: “Moore attacks health insurers, health providers, and pharmaceutical companies by connecting them to isolated and emotional stories of the system at its worst. Moore’s film portrays the industry as money and marketing driven, and fails to show healthcare’s interest in patient well-being and care.”

The entry knocked Google off of its firmly neutral stance, and the blogger in question apologized, saying that she was expressing her own opinion, which did not represent the opinion of her employer.

And hey - if you’re the kind of person who likes to stay in the thick of it all, consider joining this coalition: “Calling it the “Scrubs for SiCKO” campaign, organizers will recruit registered nurses and doctors to every theater in the nation where “SiCKO” opens to ensure that caregivers - in SiCKO scrubs-are in the audience.

The caregivers will distribute information and urge moviegoers to join the drive for a fundamental overhaul of the nation’s dysfunctional healthcare system - as is so brilliantly described in “Sicko.” They will urge the audience to help pass single-payer/Medicare-for-all-type legislation such as HR 676 now pending in Congress and several states, and make it a central focus of the presidential campaign.”

Whatever your opinion of Moore’s movie may be, whether you consider it to be brilliant, misguided, or blatantly inaccurate - even if it doesn’t reveal the perfect solution, realize that at the very least, it is creating a national dialogue about the quagmire that is healthcare in America. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

And what did I think of SiCKO? I found it interesting. I certainly wasn’t fond of the one-sidedness. I want to know what the downsides of universal healthcare are. Don’t most people go into a major decision weighing the risks and benefits? Maybe people would keep an open mind to Moore’s solution if he had also included some of the cons instead of painting socialized healthcare with only rosy colors.

Some of the stories profiled are heartbreaking. You get a sense of the hopelessness these people feel. Take the woman who works for an insurance company call center - even she feels despair for the people her company denies coverage for, so much so that she readily admits to being a “bitch” to the callers in an attempt to distance herself.

I want to know how the socialized healthcare system deals with drug-seekers - those who repeatedly present to the ER with bogus complaints and end up with thousands of dollars worth of workups. I’m curious as to how end-of-life care is administered. What happens to the 88 year old woman with a list of chronic diseases a mile long who needs life support? What if it’s abundantly clear that she’s not going to live regardless of what medical care she gets? In America, we usually fight to the bitter end, money be damned. I’ve always wondered how far people would be willing to go with these terminal patients if they had to pay for the treatment. Not that they pay for that sort of treatment in a universal system. I read about how health care is rationed in those systems and wonder how far they go; how it’s done.

As I said above, I don’t think Moore does a good job in selling his solution, but he does do a good job in describing the problems that the everyday person has in obtaining reimbursement from insurance companies for treatments that they’ve paid premiums for. I don’t know if overhauling the American system will be possible or what it will take to do so - but getting America to focus on the issue is well worth the inaccuracies of this movie.