I haven't seen Michael Moore's Sicko…but then I haven't been to any movie for quite some time. I doubt I'll catch up with that one before it catches up with me on HBO, but I am intrigued by the reaction to it among reviewers and bloggers. Some, who are predisposed to wish Moore would die a painful death, are having an awfully hard time faulting him for this one. It usually comes down to a slam on his "methods" with a few gratuitous jabs at his weight and wardrobe. I suspect they're overlooking that one of Moore's methods is to deliberately piss off people like them to generate controversy and, therefore, notoriety. Moore got a rave review from someone on Fox News and there's probably an element of truth in his jests about, "What are they trying to do? Ruin me?"
As longtime readers of this here blog are aware, I think health care is a disaster in this country. If a terrorist did that much damage to human life, we'd be on quadruple-red alert and never pass through any doorway without a metal detector and having our shoes x-rayed. As I understand it, the film speaks only briefly of people who have no health insurance at all and spends most of its time detailing how you can have health insurance and still not have your needs covered. A catastrophic illness or accident can still wipe out your savings, your home and your body. If that's his premise, great. Because that's my premise…and I haven't even seen his most outraged detractors do much to argue that point. Whether his solutions are the right ones, I don't know — but he's got people talking about an important problem, and that's about all you can expect a muckraking documentary to do. It's certainly more than most do.