Malena Amusa

Watch “Sicko” Online

To watch “Sicko” online, go to TV Links. Then go to “documentaries” at the top right. Scroll down to “Sicko”. Click it, then watch.

Shortly after seeing “Sicko,” I called one of my friends, a Black conservative-leaning moderate. He immediately stopped my praise of the movie by saying universal health care is socialist. I let him go on for a couple minutes about this. Then I said: “Just see the movie.”

In creating “Sicko,” Moore has launched an incredible piece of evidence that if some would just take a minute to watch, would find it awfully difficult and alienating to argue against progressive health care reform.

After “Sicko,” conservatives will have to risk it all to win against universal health care. They’ll have to explain why preventing America’s 18,000 annual deaths from a lack of insurance is an ethical result of our current system; why it is alright for insurance companies to deny life-saving treatments for the profit of a few, white execs; and why easy access to health care is not a family value. To do this, they’ll be only able to say that privatized health care saves money. But nobody who’s taken time to interrogate this, believes this. And at the end of the day, conservatives will have to lie. Again.

For progressives, Michael Moore also makes our job harder. Because “Sicko” left out so much, namely a racial analysis. Ultimately, progressives must look beyond “Sicko” and use it as an entry point to examining other failed systems, such as our immigration, housing, and education policies that make our problem with health care just another layer of crisis for many people of color.

Posted at 9:57 AM, Jul 09, 2007 in Permalink | View Comments