My wife, youngest daughter and I attended the Indianapolis “sneak preview” of “Sicko” Saturday evening. Inside the sold-out Keystone Art Cinema, which included several well-known citizen-activists, the atmosphere was electric as together we eagerly anticipated the first local showing of the latest Michael Moore documentary. No one left disappointed.

The film exposed the serious flaws in this nation’s insurance-driven, for-profit health care system with a devastating blend of pathos, sarcasm, empathy and humor. Moore chooses largely to remain in the background, focusing on the real-life Americans whom the system has so miserably failed. While his criticism is withering, Moore never allows despair to distract from his ironic humor. He believes that the American people can and will dismantle the corporate and insurance cabals that control healthcare in this country, but not until we undergo a major change of attitude. Moore’s didactic point is that America’s broken health care system is in many ways a mirror of our own failings as a people. Americans have become too self-absorbed and addicted to consumerism to give a damn about the plight of the 50 million uninsured in this country. All the while our dysfunctional health care system widens the divide between the haves and have-nots in our society, creating two nations out of what we used to proudly call “one nation, indivisible”.

Moore compares our profit-driven healthcare system to those in other nations with either single-payer or other forms of national healthcare systems such as Canada, England, France and, yes, even Cuba. (Note: Physicians for a National Health Program’s website contains excellent snapshots of the organization and financing of health systems in many of the larger industrialized democracies). In one particularly poignant segment, he contrasts post-9/11 America with post-World War II Great Britain. Whereas the U.S. sustained 3,000 casualties in the attack on the World Trade Towers, the Brits endured months of sustained bombardment by the Nazis, killing over 51,000 British civilians. Just three years after the war had ended, its people were still reeling from the staggering financial and human costs of the war, Britain in 1948 enacted universal health care to help the country unify and heal. In contrast, after 9/11 we invaded and still occupy Iraq, in the process squandering precious financial and human resources and dividing our nation more deeply than at any time since the Civil War.

Moore’s interview of the venerable British socialist Tony Benn is especially beguiling. Benn reflects that Britain’s post-war attitude was that if Britain could have full employment by killing Germans, “then why can’t you have full employment by building hospitals…If you can find money to kill people, you can find money to help people.” He also observes that part of what’s wrong with America is that for-profit healthcare and other instruments of the corporate state such as student loans and credit cards have created a nation of demoralized and dependent people enslaved by debt. Those same corporate royalists know that desperate and demoralized people don’t vote, much less take to the streets. Benn notes that in countries with strong traditions of government-run healthcare and strong social safety nets, such as Canada, Britain and France, “the government is afraid of the people, whereas in the States, the people are afraid of the government”.

“Sicko” is more than just a documentary about our dysfunctional healthcare system. It reminds us that too many in this country have become addicted to an unsustainable lifestyle that is more interested in self-gratification than working for political change and social justice. Unlike the French physician Moore interviews who is employed by the government-run health care program, who expresses contentment with his modest material possessions and quality of life, too many in this nation seem to have an insatiable appetite for material possessions, even while our indifference to the least among us leads to shorter life spans and higher infant mortality rates here than in some “third world” countries.

“Sicko” is by far Michael Moore’s finest film. It is not to be missed by anyone who loves this country but believes something is seriously awry with our both our health care and political systems.

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