As a teenager, Moore attended a seminary for a year. One of the main reasons he dropped out was that he wasn't allowed to watch the Detroit Tigers, who went to the World Series that year.

Moore quit college because he couldn't find a parking space. "The first semester of sophomore year of college I was at a commuter campus at the University of Michigan, Flint." He drove around for about an hour, looking for a parking space. After an hour, he decided, 'The hell with it!' gave up and drove home ... and he hasn't been back since."

But, wait a minute, this is not an arraignment of Michael Moore, the man. But it is a discussion of Michael Moore, the film maker and his film. He has taken on the responsibility of an examination and judgment of the healthcare system in this country. It is brought to bear for it's shortcomings and totally wrong treatment of the citizens of this great nation.

By the way, Moore got his start in filmmaking when he was hired by documentary director Kevin Rafferty to interview Ku Klux Klan members. Rafferty, who was cinematographer for Moore's first film, "Roger & Me," is the cousin of President Bush. Back to the film, "Sicko". Having just seen the film, it is fairly easy to make a comment on the documentary.

It has become a journalistic bromide and therefore a foreordained part of the discussion of "Sicko" to refer to Michael Moore as a controversial, polarizing figure. While that description is not necessarily wrong, it fluctuates between self-fulfilling and trivial. Any filmmaker, politically outspoken or not, whose work is worth discussing will be argued about. But in Moore's case the arguments are more often about him than about the subjects of his movies. As stated earlier, that will, hopefully, be avoided here.

So the table has been set for a big brouhaha over "Sicko," which contends that the American system of private medical insurance is a disaster, and that a state-run system, such as exists nearly everywhere else in the industrialized world, would be better. This argument is depicted with anecdotes and statistics, with terrible stories about Americans denied medical care or forced into bankruptcy to pay for it; grim actuarial data about life expectancy and infant mortality; blaspheming tallies of dollars donated to political campaigns but it is grounded in a basic philosophical assumption about the proper relationship between a government and its burghers.

"Sicko" is not a fine-grained analysis of policy flipside, This film presents, instead, a simple compare-and-contrast exercise. Here is our way, and here is another way, variously applied in Canada, France, Britain and yes, Cuba. The conspicuous difference is that, in those countries, where much of the second half of "Sicko" takes place, the state provides free medical care.

Yes, the utopian picture of France in "Sicko" may be overstated, but show me the filmmaker who isn't a Francophile of one kind or another. Moore's funny paramour to a country where the government will send someone to a new mother's house to do laundry and make carrot soup turns out to be as central to his purpose as his chat with Tony Benn, an old lion of Old Labor in Britain. Benn reads from a dissertation announcing the creation of the British National Health Service in 1948, and explains it not as an instance of state paternalism but as a triumph of democracy.

More accurately, of social democracy, a phrase that has long seemed foreign to the American political lexicon. Why this has been so is the subject of much scholarship and speculation, but Moore is less interested in tracing the history of American exceptionalism than in opposing it. He wants us to be more like everybody else. When he, unappeased asks, "Who are we?," he is not really wondering why our traditions of generosity have not found political expression in an all-embracing system of social welfare. He is insisting that such a system should exist rather cleverly, daring his critics to explain why it shouldn't.

"Sicko" does pose some interesting bewilderment. It asks, "Why is the country, with such magnificent wealth and industrialization, so very far down the list when considering healthcare for its citizens?" And that question is well-taken. In conclusion, the question is blatant and clearly to the point ... "Why?" For more information on natural healthcare, click here.

About the Author

Dale R Smith has spent a career in graphic arts and teaching. He is a graduate of Texas Tech University and the University of Colorado. He has been a teacher in public schools, colleges and universities. A veteran of the US Army and Us Navy, he has been an instructor on graphic arts and communications.