Michael Moore's latest documentary "SICKO" is partly a diatribe against health insurance companies and drug makers. It recalls outrageous examples of treatments denied.
The film also page homage to government-run systems that offer, in Moore's words, "free medical care for everyone."
In lauding Canada, Great Britain, France and Cuba, it largely avoids mention of the long lines and high taxes that accompany most government-run systems.
In Canada, even the anti-privatization Canadian Health Coalition laments long lines. The tax burden in France is 42 percent and is 27 percent in Britain as opposed to 12 percent in the United States, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In Cuba, equipment and drugs are scarce.
The film tells the truth about many of the U.S. health-care system's problems. Are there really 18,000 deaths each year because people lack health insurance? The Institute of Medicine says so.
Moore says that for all its health-care spending, the United States' life expectancy rates are lower than the other four countries.
The World Health Organization says U.S. males at birth are expected to live to age 75, compared with 77 in Britain and France and 78 in Canada. Females have a life expectancy of 80 here, 81 in Britain, 83 in Canada and 84 in France. Cuba is virtually tied with the U.S.
The film says there are nearly 50 million Americans without health insurance; there were 44.8 million uninsured in the U.S. in 2005, including noncitizens, the Census Bureau says.
The film says health-care costs $7,000 a person each year; the World Health Organization says it costs $6,100.
Moore reaches back more than a decade for stories of health care denied by insurers and HMOs. He cites the 1987 case of a man who was denied health coverage for a heart transplant, and the subsequent congressional testimony in 1996 by a woman who says her job at health insurance company Humana was to deny as many claims as possible.
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