SICKO: touching and moving (+ who's the $12,000 check beneficiary?)
Monday, June 25, 2007 at 08:38AM Sunday June 25, Loews Lincoln theater, Upper West Side, NYC
This was definitely a moving movie...
I got tensed, I cried, I laughed, I was moved, ashamed, shocked, cried, laughed again.
An intense succession of emotions.
I know all this doesn't tell you much about this documentary, and how Michael Moore takes us from US, to Canada, England, France and Cuba exploring the different healthcare systems. I think Sicko is doing its job well of raising awareness and making each of us wanting to do something about this 'broken system' (once you're passed the shock phase).
Mr. Moore also points our attention to a few parenthesized topics such as Iraq, 9/11, education, debts, depression... a demoralized nation is easier to govern...
Throughout the film, he highlights middle-class Americans having lost someone they love due to DENIED care, people being kicked out of hospitals and dropped by cab on the side walk with their wrist band still on and thin hospital robe.
Michael Moore also take a few minutes to focus on the case of one of his online detractors. The site owner's wife being very sick, this man was faced with the heart-breaking decision of putting his site down in order to pay for his wife's medical bills. Mr. Moore sent them a $12,000 check anonymously. Although Sicko doesn't disclose any web address or name, I was able to find it. Here is an excerpt of a post blogged by 'the wife', found on MooreWatch:
But before I write word one on any subject, I have something extremely important to say. To Michael Moore… thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the generous gift you gave to my husband and me anonymously last year. The $12,000 you anonymously sent us paid for our health insurance premiums and gave us the financial breathing room to both deal with our debts and also relieve the ever mounting stress with which we struggled daily. Since we received that check I have silently thanked my anonymous “guardian angel” countless numbers of times, and it is good to now finally be able to have a real name to go with that title. Though you and I may not agree on many intellectual or political issues, I have always been and will always be thankful for your gracious gift. I hope that you will see any debates I may have with you or your work on this site to be mere intellectual criticisms that have no reflection whatsoever on my gratitude to you as an individual. >>> DonnaK
I must first start this post by mentioning quickly my father. Most of you knows he's a psychic (that his job, yes) and that when he came here last year, I was in the midst of redefining my next professional steps... I had been working in tech/new media for 9 years but for some reason, he was obsessed with this one idea (actually 2 ideas - the other one being that I should be a psychic too): Free universal healthcare for America (my dad doesn't speak English by the way) I don't know where he got that idea from (tarot cards?), but he bugged me and my friends with this during his entire stay in NY (fyi, he had never come to America before), and that I should create a big PR event that would take me in front of Mayor Bloomberg to pitch him about turning NY into the first American city to provide universal healthcare coverage to its residents! That was his vision then. I had started to slowly gather information about the topic not really knowing where to start but it didn't really lead to any concrete actions...
(P.S.: When I was 14, he was telling me about setting up my "startop"...).
Sicko is like a booster shot to me... It's like esoterism, once unveiled, once initiated, there is no turning back...
I guess the next steps for each of us would be to get together and figure out how Canada, UK, France and other free-world places like Scandinavia and Taiwan set up their healthcare system, what to basically copy and what not to do and make it happen. Easier said than done... But for people like me who cannot vote in this country, we must find alternative yet efficient ways to make things evolve. Who's in?!
Michael Moore, Moore, Sicko, USA, documentary, healthcare, movie