(The following article is from the August 1-31, 2007 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St. Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)
PV Health Reporter
The United States of America is the most powerful and wealthy nation in the world - but its citizens are dying as medical bills bankrupt families, insurance corporations swindle their patients, and those who can't pay are just dumped in skid row. Other countries have embraced an alternative vision: solidarity and humanity through public Health Care. Why can't the USA?
This is the question Michael Moore asks in Sicko, a devastating documentary on the systemic (but avoidable) crisis in the US health care. In a politically astute more, Moore focuses on the problems faced by people who are insured - taking it right to the "middle class." The film begins with the agonizing stories of families fighting insurance companies, then travels to Canada, Britain, France, and Cuba look at alternative models of "socialized medicare."
People's Voice readers should organize viewings of Sicko as soon as it hits DVD. Described as "adrenaline for health care activists," the movie shows how public health care is an incredibly important victory. Actor Shirley Douglas and the Canadian Health Coalition have already called upon the Harper Conservatives act on the film's message by enforcing the Canada Health Act and stopping those who are trying to make billions by destroying single?tier health care for the American model.
Sicko is not supposed to be a balanced portrayal of the Canadian health system. "That's for a Canadian director," Moore said in a recent interview. "My job was to show Americans one basic truth about your system ? if you need health care, you'll get it." But for a multi-million dollar budget production coming out of the US, Moore points the finger boldly close towards the capitalist system. In Britain, Moore actually visits Marx's grave, and hears "old Labour" leader Tony Benn's musings about democracy, reform and revolution (all of which could be an good kick-off for discussion after the movie). Moore has said his film is his strongest critique yet about the US economic system.
Perhaps the hottest debate Moore takes on is the anti-communism in the debate about public health care in the US - first by exposing the claim that public Medicare will lead to the collapse of American values, and then by taking 9/11 victims to get health care in socialist Cuba, where the drugs they need cost a fraction of their price in the US.
Moore's humanitarian act has landed him in hot water back in the US, where he is being investigated for travelling to Cuba in violation of the trade embargo. Sicko, which grossed over $5 million by the beginning of July, has also become part of a hot battle for single payer health care that may make history.
Promoters of the film have already organized a march on the headquarters of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association in Chicago, and sent Moore into New Hampshire, the first primary state, to demand pledges of support from presidential candidates. The film joins with a broad labour-led coalition movement that is uniting more and more people behind the demand for single payer medicare in the US.
"It's being run like a war," Moore said in a TV interview. "We're in a battle with these corporations who want to maintain their position. They don't want to give an inch on this, and we're out to upset the apple cart."
The stakes are high. Let's wish them early victory.