Sicko

Whatever you think you’re going to get from a Michael Moore movie about American health care, you probably will. Empathic bemusement, or a posture thereof. A clever, offhand style, or insufficient rigor. What needed to be said, or predictable preaching to the choir. Moore’s vision of the medical systems in other countries—France, England, Canada, Cuba—seems sometimes as willfully naïve as the opposing vision put forth by the greedy American bureaucrats he so impishly sends up. Why does it seem like he goes looking for poor black people in Los Angeles but tries to avoid them in Paris? How exactly did he get those boatloads of ailing 9/11 rescue workers past the Miami Coast Guard and into Cuba? Anyway, the priorities are humane by default, and he’s strong on testimony from people who’ve been chewed up and spit out by our system—and not just patients. “You’re not slipping through the cracks,” one reformed insurance administrator says. “Somebody made that crack and swept you toward it.” Strong stuff. On the other hand, well, duh.