It had to happen, but it took so long-indeed, too long, for a courageous filmmaker to rise up and put the abysmal U.S. healthcare system under a microscope in order to reveal how utterly pathological it has become. On one level, Moore repeated a blatant flaw in his craft so obvious in "Bowling For Columbine" and "Fahrenheit 911" in that he almost always fails to fully connect the dots and take his work to the next level, and "Sicko" was no exception. Nevertheless, the film left me laughing, cheering, and crying and particularly gleeful regarding memos sent by management throughout the Blue Cross system warning employees of the possible side-effects of "Sicko" on their company's image.
In the light of Moore's impressive research and documentation, after listening to the film's horror stories of patients raped by the "disease-care" system, after witnessing the confessions of former players in that system who have come clean and can only live with themselves by spilling their guts regarding the devious methods they used to keep the system intact and bloat its profits, after hearing the Oval Office conversation between Richard Nixon and John Ehrlichman in which the two salivated over the spoils guaranteed to the industry as a result of creating a sprawling network of HMO's, after the poignant scenes near the movie's end of real people-9/11 rescue workers, actually getting extraordinarily humane and completely free healthcare in Cuba, there is little left to say about the American system because one can only hold one's nose and gasp for fresh air in face of the overpowering, nauseating stench of the most brutal medical industry on earth. I do not hesitate to label it unequivocally, pure evil.
Not only is the American disease-care industry the biggest rip-off of any healthcare system on earth, but it is being used to prop up an expiring economy because it creates jobs, and without those jobs, the U.S. unemployment rate, already fudged with bogus statistics, would immediately spike. Not only is U.S. healthcare devastating the lives of Americans who use it, but it is being manipulated to give the appearance of economic health in a code-blue economy now in collapse.
Moreover, unlike the healthcare systems of many developed countries, the American system gives much lip service to preventive medicine, but only about 1% of the American healthcare dollar goes to prevention programs and for one simple reason: Sickness is profitable, and prevention is not.
But once again, Moore does not ask the deeper questions such as: What is inherent in the American capitalist system that propagates and rewards such carnage? In fact, he fails to notice that profit over people is at the core of Western civilization and the culture of empire. Ten thousand years of civilization which include the raping and overpopulating of the earth, the depletion of the planet's resources, the dizzying pace of global warming, and the extinction of hundreds of species per day, have brought us to exactly this point. How could the inhabitants of the belly of the beast have access to anything better than a disease-purveying medical system that facilitates the elimination of the middle and working classes while guaranteeing that the ruling elite will wax healthier and more affluent? Fortunately, "Sicko" does not spend much time suggesting that somehow this system can be reformed, improved, or streamlined which would be the proverbial band-aid for cancer. But neither has Moore yet diagnosed the malignancy at the core not only of the American healthcare system but of civilization itself.
To his credit, perhaps the most important line in "Sicko" was the
pivotal question: "What have we become that we have allowed this to
happen?" And so I sit with the first four words of that question-what
have we become? Until this question is explored, Moore and all other
well-intentioned progressives will miss the point.
Civilization is in an inexorable, cataclysmic downward spiral of
collapse. The American disease industry is only one of a plethora of
institutions and systems in a process of abject crumbling-education,
religion, economic systems, family, political systems, energy,
transportation, infrastructure, food production-the list is virtually
infinite. The tragic footage of the Minneapolis bridge collapse, now
burned by corporate news media into the American mind, is a ghastly metaphor for the failed fiasco of civilization,
as well as a ghoulish consequence of a rotting infrastructure that the
corporatocracy refuses to attend to in its frantic obsession with
global resource wars.
U.S. healthcare is a nightmare with few options. In order to receive
efficient, free care, it is almost necessary to move to another
country. Unfortunately, "Sicko" implies that moving to Canada is a
viable option, but in reality, emigrating to any country is not easy
and usually requires a long, mind-numbing process of bureaucratic red
tape-especially for Americans whose investments and government checks
are welcome in foreign banks, but whose quest for jobs is not.
Furthermore, Canada will soon be inundated with immigrants as Americans move there in droves and as 4000 people per week leave the U.K. for destinations like Canada, South Africa, and Australia.
It behooves every American who takes collapse seriously and is
consciously preparing for it, to learn healthcare skills. An individual
can enroll in or audit almost any basic emergency lifesaving or first
aid course at local community colleges or hospitals around the country.
Health care professionals who are preparing for collapse can take their
preparation to the next level by offering informal workshops on various
aspects of healthcare for non-professionals. Moreover, a basic
knowledge of herbal remedies and a generous inventory of them is
essential, not only as access to traditional healthcare diminishes but
as herbal remedies themselves become more difficult to acquire in terms
of prices and the likelihood of government control or elimination of
them.
In addition, the Hesperian Foundation
offers a treasure-trove of books and DVD's for non-professionals such
as "Where There Is No Doctor", "Where There Is No Dentist", "Where
Women Have No Doctor", a "Handbook For Midwives", "Helping Health
Workers Learn", and a variety of related topics. People with access to
medical supplies may want to consider amassing a cache of them for
times when they may not have access to healthcare at all, even if they
have health insurance. Those who require specific medications for
survival may want to work with their physician or experts in chemistry
to stockpile medication or chemical ingredients necessary for the
medicines they need. A series of articles by Dan Bednarz such as Peak Oil and Healthcare
posted at the Energy Bulletin, offers detailed explanations of the
impact of Peak Oil and collapse on the American healthcare system which
is so energy and technology-dependent.
As I have written innumerable times, federal, state, and local
governments are not going to be able to provide basic services in the
throes of collapse-even if they want to. Katrina was nothing if not a
glaring example of this reality.
I for one am not interested in making American systems better but
instead, telling the truth about their irreversible demise. If I'm not
honest about that, then I will do silly and meaningless things like
vote in elections and believe that buying a Prius and converting to
non-incandescent light bulbs or the development of magic-bullet
technology will avert a catastrophic global energy crisis. In fact, if
I don't tell the truth about civilization's collapse I will become
seduced into the lie that we can keep the entire house of cards intact
and worse, that doing so is a really good idea.
I want not only Michael Moore but the entire progressive movement to
tell us the truth about what comes after the death of the American
healthcare system. I want all of them to break the indelicate news that
humanity is murdering the earth and all life forms on it-themselves and
the rest of the planet. I want them to stop tenaciously, naively,
delusionally hanging on to "hope" and other soporifics of consumerism
and the American way of life, or more truthfully, the American way of
death. I want them to stop calling me "dismal" because I say what is so
and refuse to ignore the flatulent neon elephant in the very small room
of planet earth which is growing smaller and more diseased by the
moment. I want the so-called physicians of
socio/political/ecological/and cultural well being to stop telling us
terminal patients that there are solutions, elixirs and potions of
political choice, actions to take, movements to marshal, candidates who
will save us. I want them to tell the truth about their own and earth's
prognosis and the sinking of the Titanic and focus instead on creating
lifeboats and look at the really, really big picture beyond myopic,
truly terminal optimism.
So thank you Michael Moore for your gutsy, funny, but very poignant
expose of the U.S. disease-care empire. Yet as much as I loved "Sicko",
I want a deeper diagnosis, one that will truly assess the vital signs
of a crumbling culture and a civilization that the progressive
community insists on keeping on life-support when the kindest and most
scrupulous act any of us can perform is to simply, swiftly pull the
plug and record time of death.
Writings 
It had to happen, but it took so long-indeed, too long, for a courageous filmmaker to rise up and put the abysmal U.S. healthcare system under a microscope in order to reveal how utterly pathological it has become. On one level, Moore repeated a blatant flaw in his craft so obvious in "Bowling For Columbine" and "Fahrenheit 911" in that he almost always fails to fully connect the dots and take his work to the next level, and "Sicko" was no exception. Nevertheless, the film left me laughing, cheering, and crying and particularly gleeful regarding 
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