I’ll probably have more to say about this at a less sleepy time, but let me just note that in my opinion this film has been dramatically undersold by your liberal media. The tendency has been to assign health wonk types as reviewers so they’ve written health wonky reviews, ignoring the fact that Michael Moore’s made a very successful film — frequently laugh-out-loud funny, occasionally poignant, and at one point sufficiently moving as to prompt me to shed a tear. The focus of the film is on what he’s best at — and what health wonks are worst at — human stories and experiences.
The result would, I think, be utterly devastating politically were it not for the detour into Cuba which winds up raising a bunch of issues only tangentially related to Moore’s core point — primary reliance on private health insurance is a hellish experience for patients, and a ghoulish one for doctors; other wealthy liberal democracies in good standing have a variety of different systems and they’re all better than the American one. If this isn’t quite the death blow to the insurance industry, then it’s something like the blow that leaves you unconscious in the middle of the highway waiting for someone to run you over.