Second Opinion: Meet Me in the Middle
Column
Written by Mike Sharkey   
Tuesday, 01 April 2008
Second Opinion: Meet Me in the Middle - Health Executive - Red Coat Publishing
Mike Sharkey
So I finally got around to watching Michael Moore’s healthcare opus, “Sicko.” I held out for so long because I’m familiar with Moore’s work and frustrated by his penchant for, shall we say, painting in broad strokes?

“Sicko” is classic Michael Moore, and that’s both a compliment and a criticism. It’s a compliment because Moore unflinchingly turns his camera on an issue that is truly tearing this country apart at the seams. It’s a criticism because Moore presents the issue as black and white: the universal healthcare systems in Canada, France, the UK, and even Cuba = Luke Skywalker; America’s privatized system = Darth Vader. For Moore, there is no gray area on this issue, and his equations are presented as mathematical certainties.

But there is a wide, wide world living and breathing all around Moore’s lens, a world that simply does not exist in “Sicko.” Take his portrayal of the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS). In the film, we see a number of hospital patients in England respond with quizzical looks and laughs when Moore, playing the bemused American to a T, asks questions like, “Are you worried your insurance won’t cover this?” or “What’s your co-pay?”

The NHS in “Sicko” is Nirvana—it covers everyone under the Union Jack like a warm blanket, allowing an entire nation to sleep without the distinctly American fear of the cost of getting sick. But in reality, the blanket is not without its holes. Just ask this magazine’s publisher, Mike Kelly.

A native of England, Kelly and his family have spent the last several years in the US, giving him something too few contemporary healthcare observers have: perspective. Not surprisingly, Kelly says there are positives and negatives about both systems, and he shared with me a personal story surrounding one of NHS’s biggest flaws—wait times.

After a doctor in the UK told Kelly’s father he suffered from an enlarged prostate which may be caused by cancer, he received some more terrifying news: there was a 14-month wait to see the specialist required to make a concrete diagnosis. Fourteen months! Imagine being told you might have a life threatening disease, and then being told you have to wait more than a year to find out for sure. Alfred Hitchcock never created a more harrowing scenario. Thankfully, Mr. Kelly ultimately learned he was cancer free.

The waiting list issue is one of the most commonly voiced criticisms of the NHS, but Moore failed to even acknowledge it. He took a similar tack when enshrining Canada’s government run universal healthcare system, which is also plagued by wait times. Both government systems are also criticized for healthcare rationing and limiting physicians when it comes to making medical decisions. But you’d never know it by watching “Sicko.”

Most curious was the film’s take on the healthcare system in France. Moore simply portrays it as another flawless government run system. In reality, the French widely dismiss the models in the UK and Canada as “socialized medicine.”

France does have a compulsory insurance program, Securite Sociale, which covers 85% of healthcare costs for every citizen, but it also relies on private, for-profit insurance providers. These companies play a critical role, administering the nation’s healthcare funds and offering supplemental insurance to bridge the gap—coverage an estimated 90% of the French purchase.

France’s system, which the World Health Organization ranked the best on Earth in 2001 (US 37th), is a compromise between taxpayers, healthcare providers, and private insurers—a model the US is far more likely to emulate than the strictly government run programs the film espouses.

But “Sicko” is not about compromise. It’s not about exploring options that blend black and white. It’s about picking one of two sides. And in that regard, Moore misses out on a golden opportunity. Instead of drawing a line in the sand, he could have created a meet-me-in-the-middle rallying cry, something this nation desperately needs in the finger-pointing debate on healthcare reform.
 
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