Sicko.

I finally saw it (no, I have not been watching the game. Sorry folks). And I have to hand it Michael Moore. I was impressed. Yes, there were stunts (Guantanamo, the feigned surprise at European systems). But the stunts were damn effective. Those who oppose national (I’ll say it – socialized) healthcare come off as callous, greedy, and flat out stupid. As the smirking chimp put it:

Thirty-five years ago, in the same week Watergate happened, a New Left radical said something I never forgot.

“Eventually the United States and the Soviet Union will become mirror images of each other,” he told a bunch of us college students. “They will get color TV, and we will get bugging, inefficiency and long lines.” That memory came back to me when Sicko showed how crowded hospitals bundle confused, disoriented and indigent patients into taxis and dump them out on Skid Row, in front of a mission. (A hospital administrator even defends this practice, on camera.)

Sure, the movie fails to expose some of the flaws (yes, there are some) of the systems in the UK, France, and Canada. But you know what? At this point, those flaws are peanuts. And our problems are growing by the day.