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2007-08-21 issue:

Sicko’s ups and downs

Mediaculture column

by Anna Groff

Print Article

I felt sick and covered my eyes when I watched the opening scene in Sicko, which zoomed in on a man stitching up his own hand after accidentally cutting it.



From then on, I rode the emotional roller-coaster of Michael Moore’s latest documentary. I laughed when Moore received blank stares from people in France after he asked them how much they paid to have their baby in the hospital. I teared up seeing a man working at a pharmacy at age 80 because he couldn’t afford his medication otherwise.

“If there are golden years, I can’t find them,” the elderly man tells Moore, who pushes for universal health care for the nearly 50 million uninsured people in the United States.

My first encounter with health care was when my next-door neighbors, and playmates, were forbidden by their mother from climbing in our tree house. I asked my mother why they weren’t allowed but we were. She said that perhaps my neighbor friend’s family didn’t have health insurance, so if she fell and hurt herself badly, only her emergency care would be covered.

Moore has learned the power of stories. Throughout the documentary he collects stories from people who live without health insurance and people who work or have worked within the health-insurance system. Moore asked people to send their stories to his Web site.

We can question how he selected the stories and how he presents them. We can be skeptical of the connections he has to the people he interviews in Europe and Canada. We can criticize that he only featured people living in urban areas in Canada.

But we can’t deny that somehow the health-insurance system in the United States needs to change and that universal health care makes a lot of sense. Or that the United States is the only western industrialized country without universal health care. In Sicko, Moore says the people in France and England, who have universal health care and are grateful for the system, “live in a world of ‘we,’ not ‘me.’ ”

Moore also depicts the healthier lives and lifestyles of Europeans versus Americans. The people he interviewed in France work fewer hours (while maintaining high productivity), have more vacation time and get paid time off when they have children. The church body can also model healthy living in how we find times for relaxation and retreat—both physically and spiritually. Especially when doing “church” or “service” work, we tend to overwork and overbook our lives, which can lead to illness, fatigue or burnout.

While interviewing Moore on The Tonight Show, Jay Leno said, “If you only believe half of what [Moore] says, it’s still unbelievable.” The publisher of Yes! magazine says it differently: “No matter how you feel about Michael Moore, bring friends and encourage everyone you know to see this film.” I would agree, especially as Mennonite Church USA moves forward with its health-care access initiative.

I celebrate that this kind of conversation is happening within Mennonite Church USA and that it started five years ago at the Atlanta 2003 assembly. How can Americans expect the United States to change this powerful, lucrative system of private health if churches do not model this mutual aid and help one another in times of need?

Toward the end of the film, Moore tells how he gave an anonymous check of $12,000 to the man who runs the biggest anti-Moore Web site on the Internet. The man was about to close it down because he could not afford the cost and time of running the site with his wife’s medical bills.

Moore certainly has the money to do this and knows how this can enhance public opinion about him. Still, it was difficult for me to consider funding a Web site aimed at bringing me down.

However, Moore said he believes no one in our country should suffer from not having health care, just as we all assume the services of libraries, firefighters and post offices. If Moore believes this, surely Mennonite Church USA can find a way to work at these health-care and mutual aid goals for our church workers—and beyond.

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