The 2007 film "sicko" that I absolutely recommend for the year

Ashlynn 2022-01-04 08:01:38

It’s been a long time since I burst into tears because of a film, but I was really touched by it last night. It is the latest documentary film "SICKO" (Medical Insider/Neurosis) from the famous American documentary director MICHAEL MOORE. This documentary uses a variety of angles and real case data, with a satirical recording technique and an honest attitude to reveal the serious shortcomings of the U.S. healthcare industry and the national government in the medical system and many of the shady scenes, thus raising serious doubts. Condemned with conscience.


Among many Western countries, the United States, a big country that often boasts of all kinds of liberalism, is the only country without national health care. All U.S. citizens must be insured (medical insurance). If there is no medical insurance, the door of the hospital is always open when encountering various cases, but citizens who have no money and no insurance will be completely rejected. At present, there are still about 50 million people in the United States who have not taken out medical insurance due to economic factors and can only pray that they will not get sick every day. According to statistics this year, 18,000 patients will die because they did not purchase medical insurance. But the fact is that even if there are policyholders who have paid insurance premiums on time, they often fail to receive due medical compensation due to the deliberate difficulties of the insurance company and protect the company’s interests. Outside. According to rough statistics, these loyal people who paid the insurance but did not get the rights and interests of the indemnities amounted to millions of citizens. How the dark side behind all this came into being, this film sincerely leads the audience to reveal them one by one.


The film reveals the truth of the facts from more than a dozen real cases of ordinary citizens in the United States. It also interviews employees who have held important positions in insurance companies to reveal the shady scenes. It also cites many factual video records and visits to many western countries. Countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Cuba, and Norway, compare the health care systems among the countries and derive other social benefits. In the end, the director was very creative and personally led some people who were sick (including volunteers who had volunteered to participate in the 9/11 rescue operation and suffered from various long-term and serious diseases, but due to medical insurance and the state’s indifferent and ruthless aid payment terms. The patients who refused to get medical treatment) visited the “Guantanamo Concentration Camp” where the United States detained important terrorists at the Cuban border. The medical treatment for prisoners is free and even better than the average American citizen. The motivation behind the director’s move is to expose the ironic and ruthless fact that ordinary American citizens and even national heroes who voluntarily participated in the 9/11 rescue operation have received far less medical treatment after the incident for many years (even No medical treatment at all) Prisoners there!


This is a film asking where the human conscience is going. Many people in the film heard the sadness and tingling pain in my heart because of their sad and desperate crying. Among the cases, for example, a saw worker named Lectra had two fingertips cut off by a saw, and his first reaction was that he did not have medical insurance. How much did he need to pay for this? Two thousand? Three thousand or more? Does it mean that you can't buy a car? As a result, the hospital gave him two options, one is to reconnect the middle finger for $60,000, or to reconnect the ring finger for $12,000. In the end, Lectra could only choose the cheaper ring finger, and the fingertip of the middle finger was discarded in a garbage dump. However, the real irony of the film is not the people who cannot afford medical insurance like Lectra, but the people who are not protected even if they buy it, or the people who are denied insurance by insurance companies for ridiculous reasons, such as Because the height and weight are not up to the standard (whether it is underweight or overweight) and so on. The director even released news on the Internet, hoping to get more from the public about various unreasonable treatment cases from insurance companies. As a result, he received 25,000 different case stories in less than a week, not including Those civilians who haven't read this online news and haven't surfed the Internet. In other cases in the film, there are husbands who died because the insurance company refused to approve the money for bone marrow transplantation, some were delayed because of the incoordination between the insurance company and the hospital, and the daughter’s treatment was delayed. In court, confessed to the public that he had deliberately rejected a man’s application for surgery for protecting the company’s US$1.5 million interests and caused his death. There were also those who had to secretly pretend to move to Canada and seek medical treatment in the hospital because of the insurance company’s refusal to approve the money. (Because the Canadian medical system is comprehensive).


In order to verify the medical exemption system in some Western countries, the director learned from the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Cuba, etc., that the hospitals in these countries are paid by the state for medical care, no matter how serious the disease. And the medical equipment in these countries is not worse than that of the United States or even more complete. Especially in France, in addition to the free medical system, there are many social benefits that stun Americans, such as paid maternity leave for more than half a year, five weeks of paid working leave, and the government sends free hourly workers to newly born families, which are completely free. The professional education nursery and so on. The average life expectancy of all these countries is much higher than that of the United States. Or the government doctors in the UK not only have high-paying professional medical technology, and the government's new system is that if the better medical care can be provided to patients, the government will give more benefits to the medical staff, which encourages them. Of course, there may be hidden shady behind these systems, but what the film wants to disclose is that the United States, as a highly developed country, actually ignores and deprives the people of the basic rights and interests of the people in the medical system and enforces investment-based medical insurance. What's horrible is that the shady interests behind all this have caused many people to be unable to get treatment due to illness.


The irony in the latter part of the film is that the director reveals that the United States has always hated or even looked down upon neighboring Cuba. This small country with a dictatorship also implements the "universal free medical care" system, and even the Americans who are sick with him. They were able to get free medical care in Cuba, and they actually bought the same important treatment drugs as in the United States, but the price was 5 cents to 120 US dollars. Cried, the people cried, and the voluntary heroes of 9/11 cried too. What were they crying about? It is helplessness and disappointment, even hate. MICHAELMOORE’s recorded video uses plainly recorded shots but is also very skillful in interspersing and posting fragments from different real historical records or borrowing fragments from other movies in an eclectic way as a metaphor for satire. How to use the most persuasive and shocking real cases to impress the audience is also the director's successful skill, and the seemingly plain documentaries can actually be found in many of the director's creative and clever, keen and unique thinking perspectives. As for the many reflective questions raised by the film, although we are not American citizens, we should all reflect on our own environment and face the problems of self-reflection. Maybe I can't express the attraction of the film well in this article, but I sincerely recommend this documentary film, a personal annual recommendation of the best film, not from any movie, but a documentary film!

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Extended Reading

Sicko quotes

  • U.S Coast Guard officer: Are you trying to get by?

    Michael Moore: Which way to Guantanamo Bay? Can we go?

    [Officer signals "no"]

    Michael Moore: We're not going to Cuba! We're going to America! It's American soil!

  • Michael Moore: ...so, working for the goverment, you probably have to use public transportation?

    British Doctor: No, so, I have a car that I use...

    Michael Moore: An old beater?

    [cut to a frontal close take of the Doctor's HOT Audi parking]