I always want to hedge a bit when writing such things, but Sicko may very well be my favorite movie by Michael Moore. It’s well written and, with the exception of a trip taking Ground Zero workers to Gitmo, not prone the sensationalism that can sometimes accompany Moore’s work.

While the fact-checking behind this movie is pretty solid—Moore has seemingly made a point of that since Bowling for Columbine was shot full of holes—you can find a lot of sources making some very legitimate complaints about the movie, particularly its tendency to gloss over some of the less spiffy sides of socialized systems. But focusing on such criticisms misses the larger point, as similar criticisms could easily be leveled against many healthcare institutions in the United States. The question should be would we as a country, as a whole, be better off with a nationalized system? Sicko makes a fairly convincing argument that the answer would be “yes.”

By a weird coincidence, Robin and Andy happened to watch Sicko the same evening Lisa and I watched it for the first time. While Andy seemed to think Moore made a good case for socialized medicine, he said felt the chance of such a system being instituted in the United States was unlikely. I’m not so sure. While immediate or even short-term change on the federal level does seem unlikely, there does seem to be the opportunity for change on state and local levels, as initiatives in San Francisco (more background) and Massachusetts have shown. Granted, those initiatives are very minor efforts compared to a national system (and, especially in the case of Massachusetts, can still be prone to the problems highlighted in Sicko), but they’re steps in the right direction, and if 25 years from now we had a de facto national health care system, that would probably put us in a better place than where we are now.

Anyway, to get back to the movie itself, not only do I recommend it, but I’ve bought a copy to foist upon unsuspecting friends and coworkers. 9/10.