SICKO sneak preview sells out in Randolph

[Ian David]

by: Jan A
Sun Jun 24, 2007 at 01:25:11 AM EDT

There was a full house tonight at the Showcase Cinemas in Randolph, one of 50 theaters screening sneak previews of Michael Moore's latest documentary Sicko. The film will open nationwide next Friday, June 29th.

WARNING: There are parts of this film that will break your heart.

Focusing on the U.S. health care system, or lack thereof, the film offers harrowing stories of denied coverage, absurd bills, needless deaths, callous care and more. It is a horror film in the truest sense. Watch a guy stitching up his own knee. See a man decide which finger he wants to keep because he can't afford to pay to reattach both. Hear from a mother who begs a nearby hospital to care for her dying child after her insurance company refused to authorize coverage there.

But the really scary part is just how much the pharmaceutical and insurance companies have paid politicians (both through contributions and, later, through high paying jobs) to sell out the American public. Saw II, eat your heart out.

Moore offers more than just individual stories of heartbreak, bankruptcy and stress. He shows the historic and systemic propaganda that perpetuate the mess we find ourselves caught up in. The oft-repeated phrase that the U.S. has the "best health care in the world," will ring hollow after Moore's whirlwind tour of health care in Canada, France, Great Britain, and Cuba and statistics that reveal that we have one of the highest infant mortality and shortest life expectancy rates in the industrialized world.

More:
http://www.soapblox.net/belowboston/showDiary.do?diaryId=919

[AllieB]

1. My husband and I drove from the burbs to to the Kendall Square in Cambridge

It also sold out.

[TaleWgnDg]

2. Huh? This Moore flick is about the American healthcare industry?

The one where corporate America is the go-between medical patients and the delivery of healthcare all while answering to stockholders, profit lines, and taking a skim off the top and elsewhere? THAT healthcare system delivered to us (or more correctly not delivered to us) by the Grand Old Party (G.O.P.)? THAT healthcare system? The worst in the industrialized world? The most costly too? Oh, THAT healthcare system.

The healthcare system that we are told needs corporations to deliver us our necessary healthcare? On the other hand, ironically, we are taught that those lazy French know nothing, but unbeknown to the average Joe American, France has one of the best healthcare systems on the planet? As does Italy, the Scandinavian countries, etc.

Is this the healthcare system where our esteemed Senator Edward Moore Kennedy has been screaming for years that it really stinks? THAT healthcare system? Oh.

What does this say about America and our form of government? If you cannot inform the American public with research writing backed-up with factual information that they are being *had* -- seriously, deeply, repeatedly and in their face for decades -- thus must resort to a "movie" to push factual information, again, what does THAT say?

In any event, hats off to Michael Moore . . . indeed. I sure hope that his healthcare flick hits a homerun. We need universal healthcare and we sure n hell need no longer subsidize prescription medications to other countries who pay 1/4 and sometimes less for the very same "free marketplace" prescription medications that are paid in the U.S.

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