SiCKO….As threatened, I saw SiCKO this afternoon. Great film. Everybody is right: it’s Michael Moore’s best picture yet, a genuinely moving and effective piece of policy evangelism. The Cuba stuff at the end was hardly necessary since he’d already rammed his point home by then, and the film probably would have been better without it on both artistic and political grounds. Still, top marks. Go see it.
Interesting side note: I have a review of Jon Cohn’s book Sick in the Columbia Journalism Review this month (not online, sorry), and the nickel version is: great book, but too bad somebody can’t give Cohn a grant to head over to Europe and report on their healthcare system the same way he’s reported on ours. Moore’s movie really drives this point home, because its great strength comes from comparing our healthcare system directly to European and Canadian healthcare systems, which most Americans have been scared into believing are basically third-world hellholes. Needless to say, the truth is just the opposite. It would be nice to have a book version of that story in addition to the movie/polemic version.
