Don't get sick in America

Just got back from a matinee of Michael Moore's new documentary, Sicko, which I actually quite enjoyed. As usual, Moore makes a more emotional than intellectual film. He personalizes the horrors of our healthcare system by allowing a few individuals to share their extreme but true stories. Also, it doesn't take a genius to realize that the idealized states of healthcare that he shows in Canada, England, France, and (especially) Cuba are surely not as pitch perfect as he'd have us believe. Nothing run by the government can be quite as easy, paper-work free, and convenient as the footage here suggests. Still, my first-hand experience with the American healthchare system and limited knowledge of how socialized medicine can work certainly is in line with his thesis that America's for-profit system has truly missed the boat.

Moore is more restrained in Sicko than he was in previous films, both in terms of how much he's on screen and his antics. If you've found his sense of humor funny before, though, you won't be disappointed here. Though I doubt anything can ever live up to the Ashcroft musical number in Fahrenheit 9/11, we do get a few choice moments of Bush saying things so stupid only he could actually have said them.