Crossposted from Left Toon Lane & My Left Wing
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My wife and I went to see SiCKO this past Sunday at the 1:30 matinée. The crowd was thin, but it was just as crowded as the theater showing Die Hard.
The film was different from other Michael Moore works as it focused on an issue without a single-person focus such as Roger Smith, George Bush or Charlton Heston – this film had a lot of stars and a lot of sad stories and all of them were tear jerkers. Moore targeted an industry and did it well while managing to crucify both Democrats and Republicans for taking bribes (I call them that) from the health care titans of industry.
My favorite guy was the philosophical older British gentleman who spoke on the power of democracy and I think he made one of the greatest points of the film. Democracy moves the power of government from the rich to the poor and if the poor ever feel disenfranchised, they stop voting – so it is in the interest of the rich to disenfranchise. Leave it to the British to sum up our voting problems here in the former colonies.
Two of the most emotional moments for me were both scenes from Cuba. One of the women who worked on The Pile had severe respiratory problems resulting from her exposure to Ground Zero. Her disability check was about $1000 a month and just one of her inhalers ran close to $100 each – in Cuba, she learned the inhalers were five cents. You could see the pain and elation on her face when she learned the price difference. The other was a woman who had cancer and lost her house due to medical bills. Once she was in her hospital bed, she expressed her gratitude and her utter disbelief over the cost of her treatment – free. You could see her relief of being helped and her frustration of her American health car experience – murder-by-spreadsheet.
What the fuck is wrong with us?
If you haven’t seen this movie, go see it this week and drag all your friends along with you.
And lastly, in the beginning of the film, where the parents had to move in with their daughter – would it have KILLED the daughter to at least clean up with room where she stuffed her parents? After all, her Dad has had THREE hear attacks and her mother had cancer (mentioned previously). Hadn’t they been through enough without you dumping then in your cramped, junk-filled storeroom?
