I would like to see it sometime, but I don’t have time to go to movies these days (I have two small kids…a 3-year-old and a 3-month-old…and I just started back to work full-time…I would LOVE to go to a movie now and again, but it’s tough to get out). As I said, I’m not trying to be contentious, I’m just trying to get an understanding of the film from folks who have had a chance to see it. From all the discussion I’ve seen around here & from Moore’s website, I have a pretty good idea of what he is trying to say in general, I just don’t get the Cuba part. And frankly, no one has really been able to explain to me exactly what he was trying to get at with it. Some people who are in full agreement with Moore’s message in general seem to be sort of 
when it comes to that last part of the movie.
Thanks, I appreciate it. As I was saying in my previous post, I’d like to get out to see the film, but I think it’ll have to wait until it comes to cable. In the meantime, I’m trying to figure out if anyone gets his point to that segment.
Alright, as best I can, I will attempt to explain the Cuba part of Sicko.
There are several interviews throughout the movie with rescue workers who were at ground zero and injured during the rescue efforts. They filed medical claims with different organizations that were intended to help injured rescue workers, and were subsequently denied for various reasons.
Cut to:
Amidst charges of human rights violations, the White House issues several statements about how well the prisoners at Guantanamo are being treated there. Top doctors, regular dental checkups, preventative medicine, top notch equipment. The absolutely best care in the world.
And then:
Michael Moore decides to make a big show of this and piles all the 9/11 rescue workers on a boat and decides to take them to Gitmo to receive the same care that suspected terrorists are receiving. Obviously they don’t get in, and instead land in Cuba to receive treatment at a Cuban hospital.
They go to a pharmacy and are informed that their very costly medications (in the US) are comparatively dirt cheap in Cuba, and they visit a hospital and are treated free of charge. Moore goes on to explain that one of the poorest countries can still afford to provide competent care to everyone, while the US is providing top notch healthcare to enemy combatants and denying claims to rescue workers who were providing aid at sites the combatants are accused of attacking.
It’s a bit of a stretch, and frankly I found it a little corny, but the point was not to illustrate that Cuba has a fantastic healthcare system, only that they have a free one that will treat people who had been denied at every venue in the US.
At least that’s what I got out of it.
Ladyfoxfire is on target with her explanation. I saw the movie twice, and I loved it and the message but I too feel that Moore sort of “jumped the shark” at this part of the movie.
You have to think a little deeper about his mission to Cuba to get to where he was going with it. The pomp and circumstance was way too much.
Like **lff **said, he made two points with the trip to Cuba:
- The “enemy combatants” at Gitmo get better health care than your average Joe American (even one of the soldiers stationed there laughed and said “yeah, they get better care than us!”)
- The American government paints Cuba to be the pit of hell with Castro as their Satan. All Cubans hate America and want us to die. Even there, in Hell, people get free health care and very very affordable drugs. And they don’t want us to die, they willingly give us free health care too if we land on their shores all sick-like.
A third point would be that there are 9/11 workers who can’t afford to get the treatment they need for maladies suffered directly because of 9/11, and the American government isn’t throwing them a bone…but that’s actually sort of a precursor to the Cuba story.
Granted, this whole scene can pretty much be deemed a wonderful propaganda vehicle for Castro and it’s quite possible that a normal American trying to get the same things done for them as Moore’s group got done might not even be able to make it to Cuba without a movie crew…but still, it happened. Highly planned and edited I’m sure but the underlying points are there.
Thanks, ladyfoxfyre and ZipperJJ, for both the descriptions and your personal takes on it…very helpful! I didn’t get that they planned to go to Gitmo first, and then ended up at the Cuban hospital. Makes more sense now.
The Cuba segment works a little bit better if you look at it as an attempt to shame the US medical system instead of an attempt to laud Cuba’s. “Look,” it says, “our little supposedly backward neighbor will provide the care that the US won’t.”
The problem there is that if these patients had shown up at my clinic* with Moore and his cameras in tow, they almost certainly would have received the same treatment at no cost. Does that mean patients would get better care in the hills of eastern KY than anywhere else? No, it just means my employers know what that kind of PR is worth, and what a negative portrait by Moore would look like. (At least, they’d know after I told them.)
It also gives people who want to be against Moore and his movie a point to focus on and a reason to ignore it. Then again, I’m sure they’d find something else if it weren’t there.
- Note: I am an employee at my clinic, and I would not be involved in any of the relevant decisions. It’s also safe to say that the people who run it are not Moore fans.
That’s easy. If you’re supportive of Moore, it’s appropriate. Otherwise, it isn’t.
If there are hospitals in the US that will treat all comers without charging them a penny for it, they are vanishingly rare. I don’t know of any, personally.
Yes, all emergency rooms will treat all patients, but as others have pointed out, that doesn’t mean the patients aren’t billed. It just means that they don’t require any money up front and they can’t refuse to see you just because your account is in arrears.
Most hospitals have some sort of sliding scale or charitable program to cover hospital costs, but the qualifying income levels have to be set pretty low. Also, unless the doctors are hospital employees (which they rarely are), such programs won’t cover their bills.
See?
You know, you could get answers to these questions if you actually saw the movie.
I find it very unlikely that they would have landed in the base and crossed over to Cuba. From what the film showed it is pretty clear that they landed in Cuba, not the base.
If that’s the case there are very few people in this board who can understand and form an opinion about health care in Cuba, since the most they have experienced in what they saw in the film.
I saw the film, and the point of the movie obviously is that health care availability in the US is based on one’s ability to pay, either through insurance or cash. The Cuba portion, as others have mentioned, seems to be there to imply that one way to change US health care is to provide a Cuban-style system. In other words, one where low wages and absolute government control subsidize a government run health-care system.
With that in mind I must conclude that Michael Moore is an absolute idiot.
I Googled “charity hospitals” as someone up there suggested. Here’s some information for my own state, Texas.
“Charity hospital” is an old-fashioned term. Any hospital with an emergency room must give emergency care. You will be billed. If you don’t have insurance & can prove that you are indigent, you may not have to pay.
For non-emergency care, financial clearance comes first. Get your insurance company to agree. Or hand over cash. Or prove you have *no * money–in which case you can be treated in a Public Hospital (like Houston’s Ben Taub), or you may get into a “non-profit” hospital.
If you are uninsured or under-insured but are not totally indigent, you will not qualify for “charity” care. Drain your savings, sell your house & go broke, perhaps you will. Or you might get better. Or you might die.
Are you sure you saw the movie? Because the point of the movie was that even if you have insurance, the insurance company will look for novel ways to deny you coverage, particularly if you develop a chronic condition.
So people who think that they’re well-positioned because they have insurance…may have another think coming.
No, the Cuba segment is there (as DoctorJ pointed out) to shame the US system. Look; even this fucked-up little communist country can provide its people with good health care.
The positive examples we are invited to emulate were Canada, the UK and France.
I should reiterate a few things;
For one, the whole Cuba thing was not about emergent care. They didn’t go to Cuba on 9/12. These people had ongoing problems, for years, that they couldn’t get corrected in the US.
For another, this was not a film about the uninsured. It was an indictment of the insurance industry, which often (but not always) finds the most petty ways to deny coverage to people who have no way to pay for care other than insurance. This is not new news. Mike Wallace delivered pretty much the same story more than a decade ago. Rag on him, if you must.
Lastly, C K Dexter Haven is correct. I started this thread to cover a plot point, not start a Great Debate or flame war. It was directed to people who have actually seen the film. Funny how it has been hijacked by people who have not. Honestly, folks, if you merely want to rag on a movie that you’ve never seen, start your own thread in a forum other than CS.
“workman’s comp” is probably incorrect, on my part.
Or it may be that their job insureres told them, “We’re not covering you, due to the fact that you were’nt on the clock” and their private insurance told them “We’re not covering you because you were at work” and they were caught in a catch-22 situation.
I posted on my experiences and opinions on Cuban health care here…
Yes, that has been pointed out to me already. The thing is, this is a thread titled “Explain the plot of Sicko for me,” so I thought it might be appropriate to ask about the plot of Sicko. Apparently not.
I believe I have been very polite in my requests, I explained why I’m not in the position to go see movies right now, and a couple of people very nicely explained what happens in that part of them movie, which I thanked them for.
Damn, am I unreasonable.
I did see the movie, but my ability to follow spoken dialog in english is not so great. I accept your assessment of the point of the movie, I would usually get the DVD and see the movie again with spanish subtitles but this movie is not one I want to sit through again.
Thank you.