You get a better view with socialist resistance SOCIALIST RESISTANCE is a monthly marxist • Please put me in touch with the nearest Michael Moore's fifth featurelength film, Sicko, is a devastating exposé of the US health care system, and the way in which the misurance companies systematically dupe and rip off their subscribers, risking their lives in the pursuit of profit.
It is compelling viewing, both for the depiction of the horrors and omissions of the American system, which consumes one dollar in six in the national economy, but leaves one American in six without even the most basic insurance cover, and for its unfavourable comparison of the US with other health care systems in ST CKO Canada, Britain, France and finally Cuba.
The plight of the uninsured is strongly teatured at the beginning, and later in the film, where CCTV footage provides gripping evidence to support the claim that private hospitals resort to putting patients who cannot pay their bills into taxis and dumping them - still in hospital gowns but with identifying tags cut off, distressed and disorientated -outside homeless shelters.
But the movie is clearly made first and foremost for a US audience, and challenges the false sense of security of millions of Americans who pay loyally into insurance schemes convinced (often wrongly) that they will be able to claim cover for the costs incurred if they face serious illness.
Moore teases out the systematic way in which insurance companies contrive to seek any pretext to avoid paying out: one women denied treatment for a life-threatening condition on the laughable grounds that she failed to disclose an (unrelated) teenage yeast infection more than a decade earlier; a father who died because his insurance company
branded the treatment that could have saved him "experimental". Among the big name insurance companies identified by Moore as guilty of exclusions and evasion of responsibility are some of those approved just last month by New Labour to work with Primary Care Trusts in Britain, advising them on "commissioning" services for their local population -UnitedHealth, which two months ago paid out £20m in fines for failing properly to process claims, Humana (whose medical reviewer is shown testifying to Congress that she had caused the death of a man by denying him care in order to save the company money), and Aetna (fined a staggering £120m in California for fraud).
Moore also makes use in this film of significantly better research, unearthing for example the White House tape recordings of the moment when Richard Nixon gave the go-ahead to the system of Health Maintenance
Organisations as a device to keep the private sector firmly in control of US health care. The contrasts with Canada, Britain and France are well drawn, with Moore voicing the blinkered and reactionary arguments of the Republican right against "socialised medicine", and turning himself into a figure of fun in London's Hammersmith Hospital asking patients how much they paid for their treatment, and doctors whether they turn patients away when they cannot pay. But this approach does miss any discussion of how expensive and inefficient the American system is compared with "socialised" medicine. The section exploring the Cuban health care system, shows 9/11 victims denied treatment in the US finding warmth and solidarity from Cuban health workers and also the Havana fire-fighters. Moore's angle on the Cuban system is to show how much better things can be done even in a much poorer society: but could have been better still in Cuba if not for over 40 years of US economic blockade. The film has wit and humour, light and shade: it should make us (and the US) even angrier at George Bush, but it should also remind some faint-hearts campaigning on the NHS in Britain that Gordon Brown has a very, very long way to go before he succeeds in introducing USstyle healthcare in this country. We still have a lot to defend, and Moore's film can help strengthen the fight. SUBSCRIBE! paper. Our subscription rate is 1 year for £12 (UK), £15 (Europe) or £20 (other overseas). For Name more details fill in this coupon, ticking the appropriate box and send to us at: PO Box 1109, London N4 2UU Please make cheques payable to RESISTANCE Saturday November 10, London Support Barnet Fremantle strikers. National protest called by Barnet UNISON. 11am at Burnt Oak. www.barnetunison.blogspot.com Lewisham Lewisham 77: 1pm to 5pm: Commemoration of 'Battle of Lewisham', great hall, Goldsmiths college, New Cross, Lewisham, London SE14. Speakers include Paul Gilroy, William Henry, Martin Lux, Les Back, Dave Landau. Admission free 07876 144535; [email protected]. School of Oriental and African Studies For African liberation 10am to 5pm: Trade union conference, , room V111, Vernon Square Campus, Kings Cross, London WC1. Organised by South-East Region TUC and African Liberation Support Campaign Network: 07984 405307; PO Box 21266, London W9 3YR. Wednesday November 14 Afghanistan - Britain's other war. With Jonathan Neale, Jane Shallis. 7.30pm Abney Public Hall, 73a Stoke Newington Church St, N16 [email protected]
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