Sicko - Michael Moore's Next

[MacGuffin]

Michael Moore's "Sicko" confronts American public over health care
The filmmaker compares our health care system to models of superior, government-provided care in France, Canada and Cuba.
Source: Los Angeles Times

CANNES, France - Michael Moore and his movies have always been hard to miss. But with "Sicko," his acidic new documentary about health care, there's suddenly less of the filmmaker and his usual methods to be found.

Not wanting the limelight, Moore is forgoing the competition at this year's Cannes Film Festival, where he won the top prize with 2004's "Fahrenheit 9/11." In "Sicko," he isn't chasing down insurance and pharmaceutical executives for confrontational interviews. The famously outsized filmmaker, having spent several years studying health care, even has lost 25 pounds-"One way to fight the system," he says, "is to take better care of yourself." But what's most striking about "Sicko" is that Moore's current target is much harder to pinpoint.

While the foils of his earlier films were obvious -- General Motors in "Roger & Me," the gun industry in "Bowling for Columbine," the Bush administration in "Fahrenheit 9/11" -- the ultimate protagonist in "Sicko," opening June 29, is American indifference.

"When people say there is no confrontation in this movie, to me there is a big confrontation in this movie," Moore said in an interview here. "Because I am confronting the American audience with a question: 'Who are we, and what has happened to our soul?' To me, that's maybe more confrontation than going after the CEO of Aetna or the CEO of Pfizer." The reason Moore feels compelled to ask this "Sicko" question is because, he feels, the country unthinkingly settles for substandard and ruinously expensive medical treatment, especially when compared to countries with universal health care.

Although the film is filled with terrible medical outcomes -- the movie opens with an uninsured carpenter with severed digits who must decide if he wants doctors to reattach his ring finger for $12,000 or his middle finger for $60,000 -- "Sicko's" central thrust is to hold up models of superior, government-provided care in France, Canada and (in a twist that has landed Moore in hot water with the U.S. Treasury Department) Cuba.

"I don't have to convince the American public that there is something wrong with our health care system. I think most American people already feel that way," said Moore, who enjoys great coverage himself through the Directors Guild of America. "That's why I don't spend a lot of time in the film on the health care horror stories. I wanted to propose that there's a different way we can go with this. I'm hoping that the American people, when they see this film, will say, 'You know, there is a better way, and maybe we should look at what they are doing in some of these other countries..."

In a choice that certainly endeared "Sicko" to the local audience, Moore spends much of the film focusing on France's socialized medicine. Doctors lead comfortable lives, patients receive attentive care, employers grant extended health-related leaves -- all reasons the World Health Organization ranked France tops in its global 2000 survey of the best health care countries.

That the United States ranked only 37th on the WHO list, just two slots ahead of Cuba, particularly infuriates Moore: With more wealth and technology than any other country, we nevertheless have 50 million citizens without insurance, 9 million of them children. As "Sicko" anecdotally documents, many Americans eligible for insurance can't afford it, and a long inventory of preexisting conditions limits the insurability of those who can.

Among "Sicko's" villains are politicians who pocket millions from HMOs and pharmaceuticals while denouncing universal care as little better than a Communist plot. The film is particularly tough on Sen. Hillary Clinton, once an advocate for universal care and now among the health care industry's biggest money recipients. (Moore says "Sicko" distributor Harvey Weinstein, a longtime friend and supporter of the Clintons, asked him to cut the sequence, but he refused.) To highlight the shortcomings of U.S. health care, Moore at one point in his film focuses on the plight of several chronically ill Sept. 11 rescue volunteers. Convinced that enemy combatant detainees receive better care in Guantanamo Bay than these national heroes do in the United States, Moore and the volunteers take a boat to Cuba. Despite its poverty, Moore says, Cuba's health care system is a model for the third world.

But what makes for one of "Sicko's" most memorable sequences also sparked the wrath of the treasury department, which said the visit violated the Trading With the Enemy Act. Moore said he had until Tuesday to respond to government requests for information about the trip, and that the penalties conceivably could include confiscation of the footage and criminal prosecution. "The lawyers are cautioning me to not treat this as a joke, which was my initial reaction."

If the Cuba inquiry put the spotlight back on Moore himself, the filmmaker says that wasn't his intention.

"I'm not going to be the one sticking my neck out here," he says. "People are going to have to come along. They are not going to be able to say, 'Let Mike go after this. We'll come along later when it looks safe.' And I don't need to convince the American public that there is something wrong here. I am hoping to inspire them in some way, to become active, and to do something."

[MacGuffin]

Sneak Peek:

[grand theft sparrow]

That's a very Apatow-esque poster.

The 40-Year-Old Surgeon?







God, I'm sorry about that.

[©brad]

kinda gross. i like the first one.

[Ravi]

The 40-Year-Old Surgeon?

Felt Up?

Freaked and Geeked?

God, I'm sorry about that.

[MacGuffin]

Film Offers New Talking Points in Health Care Debate
Source: New York Times

Few of them may become Michael Moore fans. But some insurance industry officials and health policy experts acknowledged yesterday that the film documentary "Sicko," Mr. Moore's indictment of health care in this country, taps into widespread public concern that the system does not work for millions of Americans.

The movie, which had its first showing at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday and received many favorable reviews, presents a series of heart-rending anecdotes meant to illustrate systemic failures and foul-ups under the nation's insurance industry — even if many of the major pieces of evidence are ones that have been widely reported elsewhere and in some cases date back 20 years.

The film, which will be released in this country on June 29 after a well-calculated publicity campaign by Mr. Moore, is arriving as health care has become the leading domestic policy concern in many national polls, second only to the Iraq war. Although they have not had a chance to see the film yet, many American health care and insurance industry experts have been tracking it intently, based on media reports.

Without commenting on the movie's central criticisms of the insurance system, the head of America's Health Insurance Plans, a trade group in Washington, suggested that discussion of the movie could advance the industry's interest in obtaining more government money for people who do not have insurance.

"If the movie results in members of Congress and governors putting this issue squarely on the table as the No. 1 priority, we will be part of that discussion and will welcome it," said Karen Ignagni, president of the health plans group.

Uwe E. Reinhardt, a health economist at Princeton, said that based on reviews, the movie is "exaggerated, biting, unfair," but he added that a number of recent books and reports by academic experts had been at least as critical.

He cited "Redefining Health Care," a book by Michael E. Porter, a Harvard Business School professor, and Elizabeth Teisberg, a Stanford University economist, along with "Who Killed Health Care?" by Regina Herzlinger, also at the Harvard Business School.

"My point is we are on the verge of a populist reaction to the health system," Professor Reinhardt said. "The American people are on the point of being fed up."

Perhaps not coincidentally on Sunday, "60 Minutes," the CBS television magazine show, took up a scandal that is part of Mr. Moore's film — and has been well chronicled in The Los Angeles Times — about the abandonment by Los Angeles hospitals of homeless patients after they have received medical treatment.

Last week, Kaiser Permanente, the nation's largest nonprofit health insurer, settled criminal and civil lawsuits, agreeing to establish new rules for discharging such patients, and to pay $55,000 in fines and to cover the city attorney's investigative costs. Kaiser will also contribute $500,000 to help the homeless with follow-up care and other services.

Another scene in "Sicko" shows a clip of Congressional testimony given in 1996 by Dr. Linda Peeno, a former medical reviewer for the health insurer Humana, who said that her job was to save the company money. "I denied a man a necessary operation," she testified, referring to a ruling she had made in 1987. Ms. Peeno's testimony has been widely recounted over the years.

A Humana spokesman, Thomas Noland, said that the cased cited by Dr. Peeno involved whether a man in a hospital in Las Vegas had coverage that would pay for a heart transplant. Dr. Peeno had said "correctly that it did not cover heart transplants," Mr. Noland said.

Stuart Altman, a health policy expert at Brandeis University, acknowledged that accounts of insurance companies denying care "make people furious." But he questioned whether "Sicko," even if it became a box-office hit, would have any true impact on health care policy.

"Most Americans never see these problems," said Professor Altman, who is dean of the Heller Graduate School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis. "Most are reasonably healthy to begin with," he said. "And even those that have some problems have this strong fear that they would be the loser" in a different system, run by the government, he said.

"They hate the system — it's too expensive — but we have been hearing about these things for 35 years," Professor Altman said. "Unless we have a meltdown which affects the middle class — that is nowhere near happening — we will not be willing to fundamentally restructure the system."

Meanwhile, in Cannes yesterday Mr. Moore discussed the next steps for "Sicko" in a meeting of nearly a dozen people. Participants included Harvey Weinstein, the movie executive whose company financed the film and will market and help distribute it, and Chris Lehane, a former political adviser in the Clinton White House who is serving as the movie's spokesman.

To ride the Cannes momentum ahead of the film's United States release, the team plans to start running newspaper advertisements superimposing health insurer logos on tombstones and to use the michaelmoore.com Web to solicit whistle-blowers from the ranks of insurance company employees.

In a half-joking conversation, it emerged that Mr. Weinstein, a supporter of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, had tried to persuade Mr. Moore to revise the film's depiction of Mrs. Clinton.

The early part of the film unrolls as a virtual love letter to Mrs. Clinton, chronicling her efforts as first lady to stage an overhaul of the health care system. But the tone changes as the film proceeds, lumping her among the members of Congress who, "Sicko" contends, are financially beholden to insurers.

Mr. Weinstein "just wanted me to leave in the bit where she was young and sexy," said Mr. Moore, referring to the scenes of Mrs. Clinton as first lady, making clear that he had declined to make the cuts.

"I just felt the film was over, you know, by about 30 seconds," Mr. Weinstein said, laughing. "It's not because I support her."

The conversation turned to whether Mr. Moore planned to back any of the current proposals for health care reform, or whether he would come up with his own plan. Some suggested that he stick to his position that the insurance companies be done away with, replaced by national universal health care system.

"Let's be honest, no one's going to support dismantling the private health care system," Mr. Moore replied. "I don't think the insurance companies are just going to give up the profit motivation."

[MacGuffin]

Any guess as to when we'll see a trailer for this? Seems like it should be soon.

How soon is now.



Trailer here.

[©brad]

awesome.

[72teeth]

  stop using "Brazil" in your trailers, you bastard trailer guys... the "Malkovich" trailer owned that song years ago...




...was "Brazil" used for the "Brazil" trailer?...


...in Brazil...

[Kal]

Great trailer... I cant wait to see this... I hate the fucking fat bastard but he makes me laugh.

"Laughter is not the best medicine, its the only one."

[modage]

ATTN: NYC

Sicko
Preview screening with Michael Moore in person
Thursday, June 28, 7:00 p.m.

2007, 120 mins. 35mm. Directed by Michael Moore. Direct from its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, the new documentary by Michael Moore (Fahrenheit 9/11, Bowling for Columbine) is a no-holds barred attack on the American health-care system, focusing on inequality and inefficiency. Manhattan theater to be announced.
Tickets $14 for Museum members/$20 for nonmembers/ free for Patron-level members and above. Call 718.784.4520 or click here to order online.

[MacGuffin]

Moore, distrib lash out at gov't 'Sicko' probe
Source: Hollywood Reporter

NEW YORK -- Michael Moore, Harvey Weinstein and attorney David Boies were the center of a three-man circus Monday as they faced a packed room of cameras and reporters to officially respond to a U.S. Treasury Department investigation of Moore's trip to Cuba shown in his upcoming health-care expose "Sicko."

"We're prepared to go to court to stop this discriminatory attack," Boies said in his Midtown Manhattan conference room. "We view the actions taken as a form of harassment."

In a letter dated May 2, Dale Thompson, chief of general investigations and field operations at the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, informed Moore that his trip to Cuba was under investigation for violating the trade embargo.

Alleging a Bush administration smear campaign that inadvertently appears to be giving a promotional boost to the film, Boies publicly released his response letter requesting "information regarding the person or persons who participated in making the decision to send Mr. Thompson's letter, the nature of the discussions that took place and the knowledge your office had of Mr. Moore and his trip to Cuba at the time the letter was sent."

Moore said he traveled by boat to a point just outside the Guantanamo Bay detention camp to make the point that suspected al-Qaida detainees were getting better health-care treatment than three ailing Sept. 11 rescue workers onboard with him. The director then decided to go to Cuba to seek treatment for the workers and to film Cuba's health-care system. Moore applied for an Office of Foreign Assets Control permit before his Cuba trip, but it wasn't issued before he went to the country.

Boies' letter cited the Cuban Assets Control Regulations allowing for "travel-related transactions directly incident to journalistic activities in Cuba." It did not address Moore's role in bringing the patients to Cuba, but Moore said that "subjects of the work of journalists are transported by (journalists) all the time. We were acting not just as journalists but as human beings (to help) rescue workers. ... Take off your journalistic hats for a moment -- does this upset anyone?"

Weinstein declined to specifically address a recent comment from a studio marketing executive who said that the co-head of the Weinstein Co. was "doing his Barnum & Bailey act" (HR 5/16). In his opening comments at the news conference, Weinstein said he asked a Bush administration official why they would launch an attack that would only serve to help promote the film and was told it was to show their key Florida constituency and its Cuban-American population that the administration was "kicking Michael's ass" over what could be perceived as a pro-Fidel Castro movie.

According to organizers, the news conference also was prompted by a New York Post article Sunday claiming that the Bush administration also was investigating the Sept. 11 workers on the Cuba trip.

"In my 25 years in the movie business I've never seen anything like this, where the government has tried to impact a movie like 'Sicko,' " Weinstein said. Moore added that a separate negative of the film, including the 15 minutes of Cuban footage, was sent to Canada in case the government attempts to seize it "like they could seize 10,000 Cuban cigars."

When asked whether he and Weinstein were capitalizing on the government's actions for promotional value, Moore sarcastically replied, "Bob (Weinstein) and Harvey did call Mr. Bush and ask them to investigate us." He added, "It's an odd thing to accuse us of. We were going to open this movie quietly, and then to receive a letter like that. ..."

A Treasury Department spokesperson chose not to respond to the allegations, saying, "We don't comment on investigations, including confirming or denying the existence of an investigation."

In the wake of a string of boxoffice disappointments, the Weinstein Co. is looking to strike a populist chord with "Sicko," which it is releasing through Lionsgate, the studio with which the Weinsteins collaborated on Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11."

"Sicko" is set to open June 29 in 600-1,000 theaters, possibly building to 1,200 in its second weekend and 1,400-1,500 in the third week, depending on its performance. Lionsgate will handle the booking of domestic theaters; the Weinstein Co. is shouldering all other responsibilities.

But while "Fahrenheit" bowed in 868 theaters to $23.9 million and went on to gross $119.2 million domestically, the Weinstein Co. is attempting to downplay the expectations surrounding "Sicko," with one source close to the company saying that Weinstein sees the $9 million docu emulating Moore's earlier film, "Bowling for Columbine," which grossed $21.6 million domestically.

[MacGuffin]

Moore hype of healthcare film hits fever pitch
The filmmaker makes the rounds in Sacramento to promote his documentary 'SiCKO.'
Source: Los Angeles Times

SACRAMENTO — Blending a movie premiere and a political rally with a savvy that even Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger might admire, documentary filmmaker and provocateur Michael Moore stormed through California's Capitol on Tuesday to promote his new film, "SiCKO," his indictment of the country's healthcare system.

Sacramento is not usually a first-choice locale for movie premieres — 2006's "Akeelah and the Bee" was the last. But the Capitol's current focus on overhauling California's healthcare system made it the ideal set for Moore, who built his reputation on such movies as "Roger and Me" and "Fahrenheit 9/11."

"SiCKO" is a compendium of horror tales about Americans stiffed by private insurers. Swarmed by hundreds of unionized nurses who embraced him with the enthusiasm of groupies, Moore championed a solution that is a political nonstarter here: abolishing private insurance in favor of a government-run, Medicare-like system.

"There is no room for the concept of profit when it comes to taking care of people who are sick," Moore thundered at an afternoon rally with members of the California Nurses Assn., which backs legislation that would create a "single-payer" state insurer.

Schwarzenegger has promised to veto it. Even if he were swayed in favor of it, Republican lawmakers would not provide the votes needed to enact $95 billion in taxes to pay for the program.

With Schwarzenegger and Democratic leaders proposing to expand the role of private insurers, single-payer advocates welcomed the attention Moore brought to their cause, including the 14 television cameras that trailed him Tuesday.

"I'm personally very grateful you made this film," said state Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica), sponsor of the single-payer legislation, SB 840. She spoke at a briefing where Moore addressed like-minded lawmakers.

"It's telling, finally, the American people that their healthcare system is very, very sick," Kuehl said.

Wearing a rumpled blazer and jeans that he later traded for shorts, Moore showed himself an adroit politician, calibrating his movie's message to each audience he addressed.

At a morning press conference with Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez (D-Los Angeles), Moore praised Schwarzenegger for breaking with Republican orthodoxy by acknowledging that the healthcare system was drastically broken. He chided the governor, however, for opposing single-payer insurance, saying that the governor owed his "very healthy body" to the state medical care provided by his Austrian homeland.

"I'm sure between all of you, you're going to find the right solution for California and act as a beacon of hope for the rest of this country," he told Nuñez and other Democratic legislators.

His briefing with legislators amounted to an extended trailer for his film, as he described stories he had incorporated about hospitals that dumped poor patients on Los Angeles' skid row and people who received inadequate healthcare even though they had insurance. Moore brought along several of the people he profiled in the film to retell their stories to the lawmakers.

The showmanship reached a crescendo at a sweltering rally with hundreds of nurses outside the Capitol, most wearing red "SiCKO" promotional shirts and enthusiastically chanting, "Hey ho, hey ho, private healthcare is sick-o," and "What do we want? Single payer! When do we want it? Now."

The iconoclastic union is the same group that celebrated its defeat of Schwarzenegger's special election agenda in 2005 by dancing in a conga line on election night and repeating, "We are the mighty, mighty nurses!"

Moore and the nurses then decamped for an afternoon screening of the movie, which was followed by the official premiere, hosted by Nuñez.

Other players in the healthcare industry, including the doctors' lobby and insurers, oppose a single-payer system. But they seemed content to keep relatively quiet Tuesday rather than become live targets.

Christopher Ohman, president of the California Assn. of Health Plans, emphasized the sliver of common ground his trade group shares with Moore: Both want everyone to have health insurance.

"We know the system isn't perfect," he told reporters. "No system serving 300 million people will be." But "bringing a huge new government bureaucracy is not the way to fix American's healthcare."

Moore predicted insurers would fight intensely to oppose any healthcare changes that call for the abolition of their product.

"They're going to fight this, and they're going to scare people," he told legislators. "Ooh, socialized medicine: bad. Really? Isn't that what our police departments are? Socialized? Run by the government? Free service? You think anybody would ever ask if the fire department should have to post a profit?"

[pete]

you know, if they made this movie non-profit, it would really be something.

[Pubrick]

you wish everything was non-profit, ya commie bastard.

and why is the "i" in lower case?