Sicko

last updated 8 January 2015

Michael Moore's harrowing, hilarious anatomy of America's dysfunctional health-care system 'œwill arouse surprise, outrage, sadness, and heated discussion,' said Claudia Puig in USA Today. You'd expect no less from the documentarian behind Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine. But you might not anticipate that Sicko would be 'œMoore's biggest, best, and most impassioned work.' Moore recounts patients' ordeals obtaining treatment for everything from cancer to severed fingers, calculating the human toll in terms of pain, poverty, and unnecessary death. Passing the blame around to both Republicans and Democrats, he mounts a 'œhighly effective' case for reform. I only wish it were highly accurate, said Jonathan Cohn in The New Republic. Though Moore gets 'œmost of the big things right,' he gets many details wrong. Howlers include ill-advised advocacy of dangerous experimental treatments and a ludicrous field trip with seriously ill individuals to obtain free medical treatment in Cuba'”'œan awfully poor way to counter the generations-old slander that universal health care is tantamount to socialism.' Such facile explorations of foreign health-care systems mar Sicko's second half, said Stephanie Zacharek in Salon.com. I believe many of the ills Moore chronicles in America could be cured by nationalized health care, but the systems in Canada and Europe are far from perfect. By glossing over their defects, Moore may be 'œinadvertently setting up expectations that we could never hope to meet at home.'

Rating: PG-13