Admiral Afterworld
24 Jun 2007, 02:13
Moore's 'Sicko' Lands Blows on U.S. Health Care
Director Michael Moore has found critical and popular success with documentaries that blend comedy and pathos to attack powerful interest groups. But those films are nearly always challenged as misleading. His latest work, Sicko, is an indictment of the U.S. health care system, highlighting insurance horror stories and profiling countries with universal health care.
Melissa Block sizes up Sicko — as entertainment and expose — with film critic Bob Mondello and science correspondent Joanne Silberner, who covers the health industry for NPR.
Melissa Block: Michael Moore does what he does quite well, which is to mix tragedy and comedy, back to back.
BOB MONDELLO: At the very beginning, he starts out with a whole bunch of horror stories; they're absolutely grim, and you look at people who are deprived of care because they can't afford it. And he does a lot of clever things to make the reasons for this funny. For instance, he uses the Star Wars theme, and he shows all of the various reasons you can be denied coverage by your insurance company, rolling away on the screen — it's thousands of them. Then Moore starts suggesting that there are other places where health care works better, for instance, Canada, Britain and France, and even — this is the shocking one — Cuba. As he shows other systems, I think it is a very persuasively put-together picture of the health care problem, and it's also very, very funny.
I wonder if there is a moment in this movie that you thought worked especially well?
MONDELLO: The sequence when he goes to Britain. He talks to the people at the National Health Service hospital about the cost of the care they're getting. And you can see that as soon as he mentions money, their brows furrow, and they can't get their head around the questions. They have almost literally never thought about money and medicine in the same breath. I think that is so telling, because I know when I go to a doctor or to a hospital, it is almost the first thing I'm thinking of — "Oh my God, how much is this going to cost?"
Let's talk about some of the medical cases Michael Moore describes in this film. At the very beginning, there is one about an American man who loses the ends of two of his fingers in an accident with an electric saw. He did not have insurance. The man must choose between having his middle finger reattached for $60,000, or his ring finger for $12,000. The man chooses his ring finger. How can a man be put into the position of making that choice?
JOANNE SILBERNER: [In the U.S.,] the hospital doesn't have to give him care unless it's lifesaving care, and his life wasn't threatened by the loss of two digits. So the hospital was within its rights to say, "We can reattach your two digits, but it's going to cost you." The irony is that if he had insurance, the insurance company would have paid far less than $12,000 or $60,000. The insurers can negotiate rates with hospitals that individuals can't.
There are also a number of times in the movie where we hear from people who either work or used to work inside the health care system, either turning down applicants for insurance, denying claims…
SILBERNER: He had an insurance company employee who started crying when she described what she had to do in terms of talking with people who called in.
Moore contrasts the U.S. system with the systems in France, Britain and Cuba, where care is free. He claims there's no waiting, and you can choose your own doctor. And in France, he says, there are doctors who make house calls in the middle of the night. How accurate are those claims?
SILBERNER: I think some of the things that those countries are willing to pay for are things that we Americans would not be willing to pay for. There was also the remarkable revelation that in France, when you're a new mother, a government employee will come to your house and maybe even do your laundry and make you soup. That's not going to go over well in this country.
What about the notion that long lines for health care in other countries are a myth?
SILBERNER: Moore didn't really look at the other side of that. What happens in each of these countries is that they get near to crisis situations, where there are lines — this has happened in Canada, too. And then the government, under pressure, puts more money into the system, and the lines go away. But then they come back. It's a cyclical thing; those lines come and go.
One thing did bother me with presenting Cuba as a paragon of health care, while showing the 9/11 workers who couldn't get care in this country: Moore didn't point out that, on that famous chart where the U.S. comes out 37th in health care, Cuba comes out 39th. So I'm not sure that was the best comparison for him to make.
MONDELLO: On the other hand, that is not necessarily something we should be terribly proud of — being 37th in a chart where France is No. 1.
One of the things he does that's very clever is to try to destroy the myth that socialized medicine is so terrifying. When you see what is probably the most impressive hospital I've ever seen, in Cuba, and it looks like a gigantic Hyatt hotel, it's simply not what you were picturing. We were joking when we came out of the film that it was probably the only MRI machine in all of Cuba, and it may very well have been. But the fact of the matter is that it was there and it was able to help a patient. The rooms there did not look decrepit and old, which is kind of what I expected.
SILBERNER: I think there's an issue of expectations. What do the Cubans expect? What do the French expect? What do the British expect? We expect to be able to get drugs like a recently approved drug for cancer that adds 13 days to life at a cost of $4,000 a month. I don't think people would expect that in France or Germany or Cuba. Thirteen days of added life with some side effects for $4,000 a month? We want it, and they don't. When we stop wanting things like that, I think we can move ahead.
In this movie, Moore advocates eliminating insurance companies entirely and going to a single-payer, government-funded system. This is not what any of the mainstream candidates this year are talking about.
SILBERNER: No, they're talking about various packages that would make insurance more affordable, give a little more government assistance, and in some cases, create a bit more regulation. They are talking about incremental changes, and this comes from the experience of '93 and '94, when attempts to change the system got nothing changed.
MONDELLO: We've had a lot of pictures recently about Iraq, and we had An Inconvenient Truth last year about climate change. These movies are not going to change policy. But it certainly does change the debate. If you think about the way the administration talked about climate change prior to An Inconvenient Truth, and the way it's talking about it now, I think it's clear that there was a major shift. I'm not sure if the movie is responsible for that, but certainly it changed the way the media dealt with it. It was a very persuasive case. And I think this will be a very persuasive case for a lot of people, too.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p...toryId=11285514 (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11285514)
Michael Moore's 'Sicko' Flogs U.S. Health Care
by Kim Masters
Director Michael Moore, whose upcoming film, Sicko attacks the American health care system, is scheduled to hold a news conference on Capitol Hill Wednesday. While Sicko does not open in most theaters until next week, it has already generated considerable attention.
A visit to Cuba to shoot part of the film might have violated a U.S. trade embargo; the Treasury Department is investigating. Moore has made a lot of noise in the media over the probe, saying he has stashed a copy of the film in Canada for fear it will be seized in the United States.
Some of that is due to Moore's knack for promotion. But he is also known for putting his finger on the public's pulse in such films as Roger & Me and Bowling for Columbine. To some, he is a kind of folk hero; others accuse him of manipulating the facts.
On a recent hot June afternoon, Moore preached to the choir in Sacramento, Calif.
First, he attended a legislative briefing in the Capitol building, cheered on by a crowd of health care workers. Then, he addressed a rally sponsored by the California Nurses Association.
Rose Ann DeMoro is executive director of the California Nurses Association. When her group had a rally in Sacramento a few weeks ago, the local media covered a frog-jumping contest instead. Moore, she said, "brings light" to the health care issue.
Sicko paints a sobering picture of health care in America. It shows sick patients being dumped on skid row in Los Angeles; an accident victim who has to choose which finger to have reattached because he can't afford to pay for both. Some of the worst stories involve those who have insurance but are denied coverage, or who are overwhelmed by high deductibles. In his film, Moore says the consequences are undeniable.
"And the United States slipped to 37 in health care around the world, just slightly ahead of Slovenia," Moore said.
In an interview the day before the Sacramento rally, Moore said he usually has been ahead of the times. But this is different.
"All the polls show that it's the No. 1 domestic issue — and it will be in the upcoming election," he said. "So, maybe this time I will have synced myself up on the same place where the American public is at."
Actually, independent polls, including one by Gallup, indicate that health care is not the No. 1 issue, but it does rank high on the list. Moore hopes Sicko will focus the looming election.
Certainly, some in the industry are concerned. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America issued a statement denouncing Moore's film, sight unseen. A spokesman declined to be interviewed by NPR.
Moore has been controversial from the time he made Roger & Me, his 1989 movie about the ravaging effects of General Motors layoffs on Moore's hometown of Flint, Mich. The film revolved around Moore's pursuit of GM's chief executive at the time.
"My mission was a simple one: to convince Roger Smith to spend a day with me in Flint and meet some of the people who were losing their jobs," Moore said in the film.
Instantly, critics attacked Moore for fudging facts to strengthen his case, or to make Roger & Me funnier. Film Comment magazine cited several examples, including a sequence in which displaced workers met in a pizza parlor with Ronald Reagan — then a presidential candidate — although that point wasn't made clear.
"None of Reagan's luncheon guests got back into the factory in the ensuing years," Moore narrated. "And the only bright spot to come out to the affair was the individual who 'borrowed' the restaurant's cash register on the way out of the door."
Actually, the cash register was stolen a day or so before Reagan's visit. Moore attributes the discrepancy to a misstatement by the restaurant's owner. But such glitches prompted Pauline Kael, the late New Yorker film critic, to label the film "a piece of Gonzo demagoguery."
Kael made Moore out to be a precursor to Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, exploiting dupes to make his point.
"She was just mad at me," Moore said.
He said that when the film came out, Kael wanted a copy to watch at her home. But he insisted that she attend a regular screening.
"Listen to me, you know, Mr. Guy from Flint making a hundred bucks a week. And I'm going, 'No, I don't care who she is, writing for the New Yorker, make her come down and watch the movie,' " Moore said.
Moore said he regretted that almost instantly. But he dismisses her challenges — and all others — to his films.
"I make sure that all of the facts in my movie are absolutely 100 percent true," Moore said. "And I'm very, very concerned about that, because I want people to listen to my opinion. And that opinion is based on these facts."
Jack Mathews, film critic for the New York Daily News, is not convinced. He said Moore is a brilliant filmmaker but has lowered the bar for documentaries.
"I share his politics, generally, but I don't like his style," Mathews said.
Mathews was appalled by Moore's confrontation with gun-rights advocate Charlton Heston in the 2002 film, Bowling for Columbine. The movie implies that Heston attended a rally in Flint just after a 6-year-old girl had been shot and killed.
In the film, Moore appears at Heston's house, snags an interview and asks the seemingly frail actor whether he felt insensitive because the community had "just" suffered the loss of the child. Eventually, Heston walks out on the interview.
"This is her. Please don't leave, Mr. Heston, please. Take a look at her. This is the girl," Moore said.
In fact, Heston attended a rally in Flint eight months after the child was killed. Moore is unapologetic.
"Yes, somebody should go knock on his door. And, yes, somebody should ask him some hard questions. He was the president of the NRA at that time," Moore said. "A year or so later, he came down with Alzheimer's and resigned. I feel very bad that he eventually got Alzheimer's. He didn't have Alzheimer's when I interviewed him."
The real fault, Moore said, lies with the mainstream media, which, he said, never hold his villains to account.
"I mean, it really is disgusting when a guy in a ball cap with a high school education is the one asking the tough questions," Moore said. "Criticize me? No. Somebody really should show up and say, 'Thanks.'"
Certainly, many health care workers are saying exactly that. But in Sicko, Moore has once again opened the door to critics — partly because he paints the systems in other countries in such glowing colors.
"Everyone, anyone can go to the hospital, can go to a doctor and never have to worry about paying a bill," Moore said. "And those countries – Britain, France, Canada — the people in those countries all live longer than we do."
Even, he insists, in Cuba.
"On average they live, in Cuba, a month longer than we do," he said.
Actually, NPR research suggests that Americans edge out Cubans, but not by much. Moore acknowledged he has heard complaints about supply shortages in Cuba, and that he has heard about long waits for treatment in Great Britain and Canada. But, he said, those reports are "anecdotal." And he is quick to take on those who question him.
"This is the typical NPR: afraid of being accused of having liberal bias — so, let's make sure we attack him enough in this piece," Moore said.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p...toryId=11208212 (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11208212)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/04/Sickoposter.jpg
Opens in Australia this Thursday (9th August).
Discuss!
Director Michael Moore has found critical and popular success with documentaries that blend comedy and pathos to attack powerful interest groups. But those films are nearly always challenged as misleading. His latest work, Sicko, is an indictment of the U.S. health care system, highlighting insurance horror stories and profiling countries with universal health care.
Melissa Block sizes up Sicko — as entertainment and expose — with film critic Bob Mondello and science correspondent Joanne Silberner, who covers the health industry for NPR.
Melissa Block: Michael Moore does what he does quite well, which is to mix tragedy and comedy, back to back.
BOB MONDELLO: At the very beginning, he starts out with a whole bunch of horror stories; they're absolutely grim, and you look at people who are deprived of care because they can't afford it. And he does a lot of clever things to make the reasons for this funny. For instance, he uses the Star Wars theme, and he shows all of the various reasons you can be denied coverage by your insurance company, rolling away on the screen — it's thousands of them. Then Moore starts suggesting that there are other places where health care works better, for instance, Canada, Britain and France, and even — this is the shocking one — Cuba. As he shows other systems, I think it is a very persuasively put-together picture of the health care problem, and it's also very, very funny.
I wonder if there is a moment in this movie that you thought worked especially well?
MONDELLO: The sequence when he goes to Britain. He talks to the people at the National Health Service hospital about the cost of the care they're getting. And you can see that as soon as he mentions money, their brows furrow, and they can't get their head around the questions. They have almost literally never thought about money and medicine in the same breath. I think that is so telling, because I know when I go to a doctor or to a hospital, it is almost the first thing I'm thinking of — "Oh my God, how much is this going to cost?"
Let's talk about some of the medical cases Michael Moore describes in this film. At the very beginning, there is one about an American man who loses the ends of two of his fingers in an accident with an electric saw. He did not have insurance. The man must choose between having his middle finger reattached for $60,000, or his ring finger for $12,000. The man chooses his ring finger. How can a man be put into the position of making that choice?
JOANNE SILBERNER: [In the U.S.,] the hospital doesn't have to give him care unless it's lifesaving care, and his life wasn't threatened by the loss of two digits. So the hospital was within its rights to say, "We can reattach your two digits, but it's going to cost you." The irony is that if he had insurance, the insurance company would have paid far less than $12,000 or $60,000. The insurers can negotiate rates with hospitals that individuals can't.
There are also a number of times in the movie where we hear from people who either work or used to work inside the health care system, either turning down applicants for insurance, denying claims…
SILBERNER: He had an insurance company employee who started crying when she described what she had to do in terms of talking with people who called in.
Moore contrasts the U.S. system with the systems in France, Britain and Cuba, where care is free. He claims there's no waiting, and you can choose your own doctor. And in France, he says, there are doctors who make house calls in the middle of the night. How accurate are those claims?
SILBERNER: I think some of the things that those countries are willing to pay for are things that we Americans would not be willing to pay for. There was also the remarkable revelation that in France, when you're a new mother, a government employee will come to your house and maybe even do your laundry and make you soup. That's not going to go over well in this country.
What about the notion that long lines for health care in other countries are a myth?
SILBERNER: Moore didn't really look at the other side of that. What happens in each of these countries is that they get near to crisis situations, where there are lines — this has happened in Canada, too. And then the government, under pressure, puts more money into the system, and the lines go away. But then they come back. It's a cyclical thing; those lines come and go.
One thing did bother me with presenting Cuba as a paragon of health care, while showing the 9/11 workers who couldn't get care in this country: Moore didn't point out that, on that famous chart where the U.S. comes out 37th in health care, Cuba comes out 39th. So I'm not sure that was the best comparison for him to make.
MONDELLO: On the other hand, that is not necessarily something we should be terribly proud of — being 37th in a chart where France is No. 1.
One of the things he does that's very clever is to try to destroy the myth that socialized medicine is so terrifying. When you see what is probably the most impressive hospital I've ever seen, in Cuba, and it looks like a gigantic Hyatt hotel, it's simply not what you were picturing. We were joking when we came out of the film that it was probably the only MRI machine in all of Cuba, and it may very well have been. But the fact of the matter is that it was there and it was able to help a patient. The rooms there did not look decrepit and old, which is kind of what I expected.
SILBERNER: I think there's an issue of expectations. What do the Cubans expect? What do the French expect? What do the British expect? We expect to be able to get drugs like a recently approved drug for cancer that adds 13 days to life at a cost of $4,000 a month. I don't think people would expect that in France or Germany or Cuba. Thirteen days of added life with some side effects for $4,000 a month? We want it, and they don't. When we stop wanting things like that, I think we can move ahead.
In this movie, Moore advocates eliminating insurance companies entirely and going to a single-payer, government-funded system. This is not what any of the mainstream candidates this year are talking about.
SILBERNER: No, they're talking about various packages that would make insurance more affordable, give a little more government assistance, and in some cases, create a bit more regulation. They are talking about incremental changes, and this comes from the experience of '93 and '94, when attempts to change the system got nothing changed.
MONDELLO: We've had a lot of pictures recently about Iraq, and we had An Inconvenient Truth last year about climate change. These movies are not going to change policy. But it certainly does change the debate. If you think about the way the administration talked about climate change prior to An Inconvenient Truth, and the way it's talking about it now, I think it's clear that there was a major shift. I'm not sure if the movie is responsible for that, but certainly it changed the way the media dealt with it. It was a very persuasive case. And I think this will be a very persuasive case for a lot of people, too.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p...toryId=11285514 (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11285514)
Michael Moore's 'Sicko' Flogs U.S. Health Care
by Kim Masters
Director Michael Moore, whose upcoming film, Sicko attacks the American health care system, is scheduled to hold a news conference on Capitol Hill Wednesday. While Sicko does not open in most theaters until next week, it has already generated considerable attention.
A visit to Cuba to shoot part of the film might have violated a U.S. trade embargo; the Treasury Department is investigating. Moore has made a lot of noise in the media over the probe, saying he has stashed a copy of the film in Canada for fear it will be seized in the United States.
Some of that is due to Moore's knack for promotion. But he is also known for putting his finger on the public's pulse in such films as Roger & Me and Bowling for Columbine. To some, he is a kind of folk hero; others accuse him of manipulating the facts.
On a recent hot June afternoon, Moore preached to the choir in Sacramento, Calif.
First, he attended a legislative briefing in the Capitol building, cheered on by a crowd of health care workers. Then, he addressed a rally sponsored by the California Nurses Association.
Rose Ann DeMoro is executive director of the California Nurses Association. When her group had a rally in Sacramento a few weeks ago, the local media covered a frog-jumping contest instead. Moore, she said, "brings light" to the health care issue.
Sicko paints a sobering picture of health care in America. It shows sick patients being dumped on skid row in Los Angeles; an accident victim who has to choose which finger to have reattached because he can't afford to pay for both. Some of the worst stories involve those who have insurance but are denied coverage, or who are overwhelmed by high deductibles. In his film, Moore says the consequences are undeniable.
"And the United States slipped to 37 in health care around the world, just slightly ahead of Slovenia," Moore said.
In an interview the day before the Sacramento rally, Moore said he usually has been ahead of the times. But this is different.
"All the polls show that it's the No. 1 domestic issue — and it will be in the upcoming election," he said. "So, maybe this time I will have synced myself up on the same place where the American public is at."
Actually, independent polls, including one by Gallup, indicate that health care is not the No. 1 issue, but it does rank high on the list. Moore hopes Sicko will focus the looming election.
Certainly, some in the industry are concerned. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America issued a statement denouncing Moore's film, sight unseen. A spokesman declined to be interviewed by NPR.
Moore has been controversial from the time he made Roger & Me, his 1989 movie about the ravaging effects of General Motors layoffs on Moore's hometown of Flint, Mich. The film revolved around Moore's pursuit of GM's chief executive at the time.
"My mission was a simple one: to convince Roger Smith to spend a day with me in Flint and meet some of the people who were losing their jobs," Moore said in the film.
Instantly, critics attacked Moore for fudging facts to strengthen his case, or to make Roger & Me funnier. Film Comment magazine cited several examples, including a sequence in which displaced workers met in a pizza parlor with Ronald Reagan — then a presidential candidate — although that point wasn't made clear.
"None of Reagan's luncheon guests got back into the factory in the ensuing years," Moore narrated. "And the only bright spot to come out to the affair was the individual who 'borrowed' the restaurant's cash register on the way out of the door."
Actually, the cash register was stolen a day or so before Reagan's visit. Moore attributes the discrepancy to a misstatement by the restaurant's owner. But such glitches prompted Pauline Kael, the late New Yorker film critic, to label the film "a piece of Gonzo demagoguery."
Kael made Moore out to be a precursor to Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, exploiting dupes to make his point.
"She was just mad at me," Moore said.
He said that when the film came out, Kael wanted a copy to watch at her home. But he insisted that she attend a regular screening.
"Listen to me, you know, Mr. Guy from Flint making a hundred bucks a week. And I'm going, 'No, I don't care who she is, writing for the New Yorker, make her come down and watch the movie,' " Moore said.
Moore said he regretted that almost instantly. But he dismisses her challenges — and all others — to his films.
"I make sure that all of the facts in my movie are absolutely 100 percent true," Moore said. "And I'm very, very concerned about that, because I want people to listen to my opinion. And that opinion is based on these facts."
Jack Mathews, film critic for the New York Daily News, is not convinced. He said Moore is a brilliant filmmaker but has lowered the bar for documentaries.
"I share his politics, generally, but I don't like his style," Mathews said.
Mathews was appalled by Moore's confrontation with gun-rights advocate Charlton Heston in the 2002 film, Bowling for Columbine. The movie implies that Heston attended a rally in Flint just after a 6-year-old girl had been shot and killed.
In the film, Moore appears at Heston's house, snags an interview and asks the seemingly frail actor whether he felt insensitive because the community had "just" suffered the loss of the child. Eventually, Heston walks out on the interview.
"This is her. Please don't leave, Mr. Heston, please. Take a look at her. This is the girl," Moore said.
In fact, Heston attended a rally in Flint eight months after the child was killed. Moore is unapologetic.
"Yes, somebody should go knock on his door. And, yes, somebody should ask him some hard questions. He was the president of the NRA at that time," Moore said. "A year or so later, he came down with Alzheimer's and resigned. I feel very bad that he eventually got Alzheimer's. He didn't have Alzheimer's when I interviewed him."
The real fault, Moore said, lies with the mainstream media, which, he said, never hold his villains to account.
"I mean, it really is disgusting when a guy in a ball cap with a high school education is the one asking the tough questions," Moore said. "Criticize me? No. Somebody really should show up and say, 'Thanks.'"
Certainly, many health care workers are saying exactly that. But in Sicko, Moore has once again opened the door to critics — partly because he paints the systems in other countries in such glowing colors.
"Everyone, anyone can go to the hospital, can go to a doctor and never have to worry about paying a bill," Moore said. "And those countries – Britain, France, Canada — the people in those countries all live longer than we do."
Even, he insists, in Cuba.
"On average they live, in Cuba, a month longer than we do," he said.
Actually, NPR research suggests that Americans edge out Cubans, but not by much. Moore acknowledged he has heard complaints about supply shortages in Cuba, and that he has heard about long waits for treatment in Great Britain and Canada. But, he said, those reports are "anecdotal." And he is quick to take on those who question him.
"This is the typical NPR: afraid of being accused of having liberal bias — so, let's make sure we attack him enough in this piece," Moore said.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p...toryId=11208212 (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11208212)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/04/Sickoposter.jpg
Opens in Australia this Thursday (9th August).
Discuss!