(2007) Employing his distinctive style of confrontation and humor, Michael Moore's documentary on the health-care industry argues that medical-insurance companies prioritize maximizing profits by making sure their patients receive as little care as possible. It's all about money, not medicine.

The film opens with a video clip of President George W. Bush saying: "Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country."

Next we see Adam, lacking health insurance, suturing up a wound in his knee; also without medical insurance, Rick, after cutting off the tips of two fingers on a table saw, having to decide whether to have his middle finger ($60,000) or ring finger ($12,000) saved; Larry and Donna Smith - a union machinist and newspaper editor, respectively, in their 50s - moving in with their daughter in Denver after going bankrupt and losing their home when their medical insurance ran out following treatment of heart attacks and cancer; Frank Cardile, 79, still working to cover medications for himself and his wife, saying: "If there are golden years, I can't find 'em."

Laura Burnham tells of her insurance company refusing to pay for ambulance service to the hospital after her being in an automobile accident and unconscious because she did not get pre-approval for the ambulance.

In February 2006 Moore says that he posted online a request for more horror stories such as these and received over 25,000 responses. One positive correspondent wrote of getting approval for a second cochlear implant for his daughter after threatening CIGNA with Michael Moore's cameras. Further, people within the health-care industry reported how the companies have long lists of pre-existing conditions for which applicants are not eligible for insurance.

Next Moore looked for happily insured people, but he found complaints of being denied treatment because the condition wasn't life-threatening (the patient died), was experimental (cancer spread), not necessary. Former medical reviewer Dr Linda Peeno testified to Congress of "the dirty work of managed care," about how she was paid bonuses for making denials, saving her former employer $500,000 while patients suffered and died for lack of care.

Insurance companies spend more time and effort searching for undisclosed or pre-existing conditions of their customers to recover costs than to provide treatment. Health care in the US has been designed to leave millions behind.

Using tapes from the White House, Moore let's us listen in on a conversation from February 1971 between President Nixon and John Erlichman during which Nixon initially expresses disapproval of a program for health insurance for "my fellow Americans" followed by delight at being assured that Kaiser's incentives would result in profits exceeding costs by reducing the amount of care provided to patients; Nixon signed into law the HMO Act of 1973.

Even Hillary Rodham Clinton seems to have been bought by the insurance industry with its billionaire CEOs and "obscene profits," which gave her more political contributions than all but one other recipient. President Bush's Medicare Prescription Plan has been a windfall for the pharmaceutical industry ("Ask your doctor") while being a confusing morass for the elderly to navigate. However, the program's chief supporter former Republican congressman Billy Tauzin soon after left Capitol Hill to earned a $2 million salary with a capitalist pill maker.

After allowing a litany of critics decrying the calamity that would befall if socialized medicine were allowed in the US, Moore visits Canada, Great Britain, and France: the comparison only makes America's health-care system look ill and crippled. Canadians relate horror stories of getting caught, while visiting the US, in its expensive, profit-driven system of medical care.

Tommy Douglas is a national hero in Canada for introducing universal health care, where one resident says proudly, "The least of us and the best of us are taken care of." (Interested in finding a mate in Canada to become a Canadian citizen? Check out hookacanuck.com.)

In the UK the National Health Service, begun in 1948, has no charges for medical care to every British citizen; taxes (though he doesn't reveal any tax rates for these countries) pay for everything, eliminating medical worries. Physicians are well paid, though not as extravagantly as some American doctors, and given bonuses if their patients' health improves.

Studies have shown that people who live in most industrial nations, as well as in many developing nations, have better health care, are healthier, and live longer lives than do Americans on average. Even Margaret Thatcher, a conservative, supported the NHS, unlike her counterpart in the US, President Ronald Reagan, with whom she was so often compared favorably.

France sounds even better with all its freedom-from-fees medical services (including house calls from doctors), even for foreign visitors and French employees of American firms in France. "They live in a world of 'we' and not 'me.'" (Norway - first among nations in per-capita income, literacy, education, and health care - as Moore shows in a bonus feature on the DVD, is even more generous to its citizens, plus it relies more on renewable energy.)

Moore points out that firemen, police officers, teachers, postal workers, librarians, and the military in the US are in effect members of socialized organizations. About half of all medical services - including Medicare, Medicaid, the Veterans Administration - already are government-provided medical care in the US.

Former British MP Tony Benn speaks of people in debt in America as shackled and without real choices for medical care; transforming patients into "customers" dehumanizes the poor. Video cameras in LA have caught taxi cabs dropping off indigent patients from hospitals onto city street corners, leaving them to further fend for themselves. Greed has turned medical services into a health industry in which cash takes precedence over human needs; justice must compete against profitability.

In a final insult to the US, Moore gathers together three volunteer rescue workers who spent time after 9/11 working at Ground Zero in New York City and another patient interviewed earlier for a boat trip to Guantánamo Bay where detainees are provided with better medical care than most ordinary Americans can expect to receive. When they are ignored by the American authorities, Moore leads them into Havana, Cuba, where they are welcomed and given, free of charge, since Castro's Cuba has universal health care for its citizens, expert medical attention and medications. (One woman is given a supply of medicine for the equivalent of a nickel that cost her $120 in the States.)

"Who are we?" Moore asks. "Is this what we've become?" If a society can be judged by how it treats its worst off, what does our medical system say about us as human beings?

(In another bonus feature, Moore urges us to support Representative John Conyers's HR 676 bill to make health care a basic right of all Americans.)

Click here for links to places to buy or rent this movie in video and/or DVD format, or to buy the soundtrack, posters, books, even used videos, games, electronics and lots of other stuff. I suggest you shop at least two of these places before buying anything. Prices seem to vary continuously. For more information on this film, click on this link to The Internet Movie Database. Type in the name of the movie in the search box and press enter. You will be able to find background information on the film, the actors, and links to much more information.

Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

Patrick Ivers can be reached via e-mail at .