Dan's Papers - July 13, 2007

Just a few weeks ago, on June 22nd, Michael Moore came to East Hampton for a private screening of SiCKO in the United Artists Theatre on Main Street. Harvery Weinstein, Ronald Perelman, Mort Zuckerman and Sandy Gallin are just some of the Hamptons executives who sent out private invitations to the screening of SiCKO and the guest list of local East End A-listers included Tommy Hilfiger, Chevy Chase, Donna Karen, Leelee Sobieski, Georgina Chapman, Heather Graham, Rosanna Scotto, Roy Scheider, Rachel Hunter, Candace Bergen, Arden Wohl, Christie Brinkley, Jane Rosenthal, Rob Marshall, Steve Gaines and Anthony Costanzo. The screening was following by an after party at Prime 103 in East Hampton.

SiCKO also arrives on the scene just three years after Moore's highly political and controversial documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11, which examined America in the shadow and aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center as well as the alleged links between the Bush Administration and Osama Bin Laden. To date, this documentary remains the highest-grossing documentary of all time, taking in close to $200 million worldwide. This also was preceded by the Oscar-winning documentary, Bowling For Columbine, which probed the American culture of guns and violence.

Although the words healthcare and comedy are not typically found in the same sentence, in SiCKO they go rubber glove and rubber glove.

The documentary unfolds with a few profiles of Americans whose lives have changed and in many ways have been devastated and broken by health care catastrophes, which Moore, who narrates the film makes clear is not only about them, but also about the tens of thousands of other Americans who pay the premiums and have insurance but often become tangled in the spiderweb of deceit. Moore and his documentary crew visited countries that receive free medical benefits such as Great Britain, France and our friendly neighboring countries, Canada and Cuba.

His segmented unveiling of the health care proprietors covers big-time care companies such as Aetna, Kaiser, Capital Blue Cross and Pzfizer. One of the more edifying moments is when Moore cites the conversation between President Nixon and top aide John Erlichman in 1971 about health maintenance organizations (HMOs).

Ehrlichman: I had Edgar Kaiser come in and talk to me about this and I went into it in some depth. All the incentives are toward less medical care, because the less care they give them, the more money they make.

President Nixon: Fine. Moore trailblazes through the dark sides of the health care industry yet somehow finds a way to make light of it by using his comedic side, for example by showing us an uninsured carpenter with severed digits who must decide if he wants doctors to reattach his middle finger for $60,000 or his ring finger for $12,000. Go see the movie and to see which one he picks.

The film's climax comes when he does just that and gets on a boat in Miami with three 9/11 rescue workers who haven't been able to acquire the necessary treatment for ailments supposedly caused by their exposure to debris at Ground Zero. Moore goes to Cuba with them to the Guatanamo Bay detention facility, where detainees typically get medical treatment. Moore states that Guantanomo Bay is "the only place on American soil with free universal health care."

Besides the fact that the United States is ranked only 37th out of 191 countries on the World Health Organization list, just two slots ahead of Cuba, is alarming. According to Michael Moore's website, www.michaelmoore.com, a confidential memo circulated in the Capital Blue Cross office, which was sent to Moore by an employee explaining that it was someone's job to go see SiCKO and observe the audience's reaction to suggest a plan of action for how to deal with the impact the film will have on the industry. It's no surprise that they would want the movie to flop, any business publicly made out to be a villain would too. This might be one of the only times that the phrase "there's no such thing as bad press" doesn't apply -- Britney Spears may have also helped in defecting this adage.

Whether or not you are a Conservative gone Republican, Democrat gone Independent or are from Dallas, Texas, the Teton mountain range in Wyoming or New York City, health care should not be a political issue. Moore further comments on how he hopes people will react stating, "I can't imagine anyone that doesn't believe that every American has the human right to see a doctor when they get sick and not have to worry about whether or not they can afford it. There should be no profit in curing disease."

If you aren't curious enough by now to go on and spend the nine dollars and change to go watch SiCKO, I guess you could just go to the beach instead. The medical industry will be happy.