View Michael Moore's SiCKO and then rip-o

[sqweels]

You can view Michael Moore’s latest film “SiCKO” here at freedocumentaries.org. It seems eerily relevant to issues that have been discussed in the past few weeks.

But then again, it is Michael Moore, after all. Demolishing his viewpoint should be like shooting fish in a barrel. Big, fat, scruffy-looking fish.

[MOIDALIZE]

Awesome thread.

[GIGObuster]

Yep, **sqweels **I think that you need to post some of the points of the movie so we can discuss.

But I have to mention at least one of my favorite bits from the movie:

From the interview of former British Labor Party Member of Parliament Tony Benn:

Well if you go back it all began with democracy. Before we had the vote, all the power is in the hands of rich people. If you had money you could get health care, education, look after yourself when you were old, and what democracy did was to give the poor the vote. And it moved power from the marketplace to the polling station, from the wallet to the ballot. If you can find money to kill people, you can find money to help people. I think democracy is the most revolutionary thing in the world. Far more revolutionary than socialist ideas or any body else’s ideas. If you have power, you use it! to meet the the needs of you and your community and this idea about choice which capitalism(?) talks about all the time, you’ve got to have a choice, choice depends upon the freedom to choose and if you are shackled with debt you don’t have the freedom to choose.

M. Moore> It seems like it benefits the system if the average working person is shackled in debt

Tony Benn> People in debt become hopeless, and hopeless people don’t vote. So they will say everyone should vote, but I think if the poor in Britain or the United States turned out and voted for people who represented their interests it would be a real democratic revolution. So they don’t want it to happen. So keeping people hopeless and pessimistic…see I think there are two ways in which people are controlled: first of all frighten people and secondly demoralize them. An educated healthy and confidant nation is harder to govern.

…

But, they’re poor, they’re demoralized, they’re frightened and therefore they think that perhaps the safest thing to do is take orders and hope for the best.

[sqweels]

@GIGObuster

Yep, **sqweels **I think that you need to post some of the points of the movie so we can discuss.

Well, I could summarize the events of the movie, but Moore is making his own points in his own way.

I basically started this thread because I’ve heard one viewpoint, now I want to hear the counterpoint (and also I want to share the film and that websire with the class).

If Moore’s critics want to single out some points that are false or misleading, that can be a starting point for debate.

If nobody can think anything, that would say something as well.

[athelas]

I haven’t seen the movie for myself but a brief perusal of wiki gives these three critiques.

[Blalron]

One of the most emotionally compelling points he makes in this movie (and he makes a lot of them) is that terrorists at Gitmo are getting good healthcare, while many 9/11 rescue workers are suffering and not getting any. It’s absolutely shameful. I think even the most hardened, conservative, free market defenders of the status quo should be taken aback by this state of affairs.

[Henrichek]

@Blalron

One of the most emotionally compelling points he makes in this movie (and he makes a lot of them) is that terrorists at Gitmo are getting good healthcare, while many 9/11 rescue workers are suffering and not getting any. It’s absolutely shameful. I think even the most hardened, conservative, free market defenders of the status quo should be taken aback by this state of affairs.

Wouldn’t their solution to that dilemma be to deny care to the terrists, instead of providing it to the people?

[GIGObuster]

@athelas

I haven’t seen the movie for myself but a brief perusal of wiki gives these three critiques.

What a disappointment, the common point in those criticisms is to not deal with the points of the movie but on what Moore allegedly omitted.

And even the first article still had to admit it:

Moore is right that American health care is in need of reform. But any reforms must maintain market incentives for medical innovation, and we shouldn’t accept policies that will inevitably result in rationing health care for the sickest and most vulnerable patients.

As the latest discussions and personal investigations have show me, we already ration the heath care for the sickest and most vulnerable, but one of the main points of the movie was virtually not touched at all by those critics: Even the people that already have health insurance can encounter bankruptcy or even death with the current system that we have.

[Blalron]

@Henrichek

Wouldn’t their solution to that dilemma be to deny care to the terrists, instead of providing it to the people?

Only problem is that pesky Eighth Amendment, which the courts have ruled require us to give medical care to prisoners. So resolving the paradox that way isn’t really plausible.

[MovieMogul]

@Blalron

Only problem is that pesky Eighth Amendment, which the courts have ruled require us to give medical care to prisoners. So resolving the paradox that way isn’t really plausible.

So now we’re paying attention to the Constitution again when it comes to the treatment of detainees? I must have missed the memo…

[Henrichek]

@Blalron

Only problem is that pesky Eighth Amendment, which the courts have ruled require us to give medical care to prisoners. So resolving the paradox that way isn’t really plausible.

So in some roundabout emotional/ethical way your constitution supports universal healthcare?

[yojimbo]

Here’s a great clip. It’s an extended interview with Tony Benn. A shorter one is in the movie. A full on old fashioned socialist and proud of it, he is also a true democrat. I love the man.

Tony Benn - excellent bonus interview

Tony Benn - democracy and totalitarianism

[Blalron]

My favorite quote of all time when it comes to the UHC debate: “If we can find money to kill people, we can find money to help people.”

[R.P.McMurphy]

Coincidentally, Nicholas D. Kristof’s op-ed piece in the New York Times today specifically addresses the issue.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/opinion/27kristof.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Michael Moore is easy to dump on but that doesn’t mean he’s stupid or ill-informed. Heaven forbid that any of the screwballs on Fox News had his level of intelligence and comprehension.

Read Kristof’s piece even if you have to swallow hard and actually sign up for the NY Times. It’s worth it.

[Snag]

I found it interesting that Wendell Potter, former head of communications for Cigna insurance, now turned whistle blower stated that for the most part Moore was right on with Sicko; that he basically nailed it. The industry downplayed it by mostly keeping quiet in order to ignore it but he stated, in not so many words, that it scared the bejesus out of them. The industry couldn’t wait for it to go away.

They made sure that all the emails they circulated back and forth between each other about it were well enough coded that if Moore got hold of them that they were too nebulous for him to use.

[Argent_Towers]

Moore is a lying, underhanded, conniving, weaselling bastard. But he is an excellent filmmaker and a true propagandist, which is to me an excellent compliment.

[GIGObuster]

@Argent_Towers

Moore is a lying, underhanded, conniving, weaselling bastard. But he is an excellent filmmaker and a true propagandist, which is to me an excellent compliment.

Well, I have seen some examples of that in his other movies (very weak ones IMHO), but what are the lies in this movie?

Then in 2007 Mr. Potter attended a premiere of “Sicko,” Michael Moore’s excoriating film about the American health care system. Mr. Potter was taking notes so that he could prepare a propaganda counterblast — but he found himself agreeing with a great deal of the film.

A month later, Mr. Potter was back home in Tennessee, visiting his parents, and dropped in on a three-day charity program at a county fairgrounds to provide medical care for patients who could not afford doctors. Long lines of people were waiting in the rain, and patients were being examined and treated in public in stalls intended for livestock.

“It was a life-changing event to witness that,” he remembered. Increasingly, he found himself despising himself for helping block health reforms. “It sounds hokey, but I would look in the mirror and think, how did I get into this?”

Mr. Potter loved his office, his executive salary, his bonus, his stock options. “How can I walk away from a job that pays me so well?” he wondered. But at the age of 56, he announced his retirement and left Cigna last year.

This year, he went public with his concerns, testifying before a Senate committee investigating the insurance industry.

“I knew that once I did that my life would be different,” he said. “I wouldn’t be getting any more calls from recruiters for the health industry. It was the scariest thing I have done in my life. But it was the right thing to do.”

• From Spartydog’s cite.

[Argent_Towers]

I’m not sure. I’m only about 9 minutes into Sicko. It’s definitely better than his other films, but that may be because I’m more in agreement with his political message.

[gonzomax]

I saw it in a library last week. It was far better than I thought it would be. It should be on a prime time channel right now. It was actually an emotional movie. For some on this board a lie is a statement I disagree with. He told no lies. He gave his viewpoint which he is entitled to do. We are suckers in America.

[Maia_s_Well]

Oh, goodness. Just finished watching it, and I reckon that was the last little nudge for me.

I think I just became a liberal.