Michael Moore takes on healthcare

Even though this movie isn't yet in general release, it is more or less available through clips on Youtube and other video services. You probably have to search to find all the nessecary clips in their proper order, but they are out there.

"Sicko" (IMDB listing) is going to help ensure that universal health care is a major issue in the next election cycle.

The state of health care in the US is bad and getting worse. The trend is moving towards increasing the number of illnesses that aren't covered, and adding co-pays and deductables to the point that if a middle-class family member suffers a serious illness, it can bankrupt them. Even WITH insurance.

Sadly, our lawmakers are easily bought off by the huge insurance companies. And to be honest, it's only a tiny drop in the bucket for these billion-dollar corporations. Apparently, politicians are as easily pleased as elephants...it only takes peanuts.

It doesn't have to be this way. It's a wonderful thing to see how doctors in other industrialized countries are free of the crushing burden of insurance approvals, and how they can simply treat their patients and be concerned solely with their well-being.

It'll be interesting to see how the paid-for politicians, neocon pundits and corporate shills try to spin this (let's be honest) American healthcare failure into something other than it is. I'm sure they'll accuse Michael Moore of anti-American tendencies, and insist that early death from lack of adaquate medical care is a unique American right that he's trying to take from us.

I only wish this movie had been available earlier this year, because if everyone who works in that building in Hartford with the big gold dome was asked to watch it, we'd have a universal health care program in place by now. You can't NOT be swayed by the evidence in this movie. Go see it for yourself and decide.