LA Weekly

By Mel Yiasemide

In its opening sequences at a packed Directors Guild Theatre last Monday, Michael Moore's Sicko had the crowd laughing with disbelief as a dumbfoundingly boyish President Bush lamented that "too many OB/GYN's aren't able to practice their love with women all across the country."

The laughter, and the tears, continued throughout, as Sicko's overriding point, that the world's wealthiest country must provide free, universal health care to its citizens – with Britain, France and Cuba as chief examples – was delivered with a potent mix of searing truth and comedic revelation.

Post-screening, a black-clad, baseball-capped Michael Moore took to the stage for a Q&A after being introduced by director Ron Howard, the evening's MC.

"We just came back from San Pedro Street in front of the Rescue Mission," Moore explained. He had set up a giant screen at Skid Row and broadcast Sicko to the homeless people there. "Our big L.A. press conference is... tomorrow night. But I wanted to have the first showing at Skid Row. It was really something.

"I've been really bothered by the security camera footage when I first saw it," he continued, referring to a scene in Sicko that shows a disoriented old homeless woman circling L.A.'s Skid Row sidewalk after being
dropped off there from a nearby hospital.

When director Howard opened the floor up to questions, it was clear that most of the audience loved this movie and strongly backed its cause. "What do we do?" asked one man. "Support SB 840," Moore answered quickly, referring to the California Universal Healthcare Act authored by Senator Sheila Kuehl. "And HR 676," its nationwide counterpart.

"We spent two and a half months reading more than 25,000 e-mails," he said of the overwhelming public response to his call for health care horror stories when he was researching this film. That's when Sicko's goal became clear: "Saving ten lives isn't gonna do it. Don't chase one company, but the system. We have to talk about who we are as a people. I can't understand why a society does this, why it allows nine million kids to have no health insurance."

"What's your answer going to be when people bring up the inevitable issue of treating illegal immigrants?" another audience member asked.

Moore's reply was simple: If a person needs medical attention in this country, we can – and should – give it, no questions asked. If America can afford to spend trillions fighting a war in Iraq, and an embargoed, impoverished Cuba can provide citizens and noncitizens alike with some of the most renowned medical care in the world without charge, so can we. "Maybe we should ask ourselves, what would Jesus do?"

He talked about the time he staged a health care Olympics on his NBC show TV Nation: He had dispatched film crews to hospitals in Florida, Canada and Cuba, in a real-time experiment to see which country's medical team could fix a broken bone fastest and cheapest. "Bob Costas and Ahmad Rashad did a play-by-play. Cuba won. She set the bone correctly, charged nothing. Canada almost won, but she charged the guy $15 for crutches. She came in second. We got a call from standards and practices: 'Cuba can't win.' 'They did.' 'Not on NBC. We can't show it.' We actually switched it on the show – Canada won.

"I can't believe I actually took a boat to Cuba," said Moore, about the trip – documented in Sicko – in which he travels to the Communist state with three insured Americans whose own country has let them down in their search for adequate, affordable treatment of ailments they developed after volunteering at Ground Zero. "Now here I am in trouble with the government because I went to Cuba. I'm under some kind of investigation with criminal penalties for violating the embargo act or something."

Moore recalled the time a set worker at the 2003 Academy Awards called him an asshole, just after he'd won an Oscar for Bowling for Columbine, then denounced Bush for declaring war on Iraq, an act of unabashed honesty that got him booed off the stage. Years later, that same man ran into Moore again on a different film set. He approached Moore to tell him he was profusely sorry for what he had done, and for ruining his Oscar moment.

"It's okay, I told him. You believed your president. You should be able to believe your president."

Moore implored Republicans and Democrats to come together to build a universal health care plan that does away with insurance companies and other middlemen: "I really want to reach out to people who don't necessarily share my political views. All Americans should be able to see a doctor and not have to
worry about paying for it."

Sicko will undoubtedly build the kinds of bridges between America and other countries that so many U.S. films and media outlets have failed – or refused – to do.

Says Moore: "Fox News called it brilliant and uplifting last week, and I thought, 'Are they trying to ruin me?' "
Also read Ella Taylor's review of Sicko.

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