When you watch a Michael Moore film, it doesn't take long to realise just why the US bosses find him so irritating and why his films have never been shown on US mainstream TV.

Moore takes the US health industry, looks at its ethics and how it operates then makes comparisons with health services in Canada, as well as Britain and France - before, horror of horrors travelling to Cuba!

The differences are staggering. US health care is based on a private enterprise model of health insurance rather than a universal health care system. Operations and procedures have to be agreed in advance by insurance clerks. You have to get permission for travelling in an ambulance, even if you are unconscious!

Sicko deals with the issue of "exclusions" from health care. It shows how people have died for want of treatment and how, even in crisis situations. profits come first and kids' lives second.

At the same time, it shows the complicity of the government; the amounts paid by the Health Management Organisations (HMOs) to Congressmen and senators; the campaign against Hillary Clinton's health reforms... and how she was bought off.

Universal health care is of course a hair's breadth from Stalinism. Moore captures the hysterical nature of the American bourgeoisie's campaign against both, and they look very similar. Some of the health propaganda is hilarious. Methinks they do protest too much! 

The film looks at the experience of ordinary American workers, not the poorest people on subsidised Medicare. It graphically illustrates the individual tragedies and the gross unfairness of the system. It contrasts the experience of doctors in the USA and other countries. One US doctor talks about how she was on a performance related pay scale, where doctors were paid on the numbers of patients who were excluded from health cover. That's a bit different to a British GP getting paid for the numbers of people packing in smoking and lowering their cholesterol. Maybe that's why they don't like Michael Moore.

Or maybe it's because of his expose of the treatment that the rescue workers who have become ill as a result of their work at ground zero, the site of the 9/11 attacks. Many of these workers have suffered terrible respiratory diseases and Post Traumatic Stress Disorders. Moore takes them to Guantanamo Bay, the only place on US soil where you can get free health care.  After failing to get in, the boat travels to Havana.

Perhaps the hardest hitting material is the comparison with Cuba. The price of medicine and healthcare is a fraction of the cost, despite the US spending thirty  times more per head on health services. That's big news in itself, but the film goes further than that and gives a great insight into the attitudes of Cuban workers themselves.

This film is very much aimed at American viewers; it skips over the problems in the NHS, and comparable systems. But with that in mind it delivers a really clear message. Tony Benn pops up and makes the very important point that the NHS exists in Britain because workers fought for it and not even Maggie Thatcher could destroy it.

I'm not going to tell you about the footage of Nixon or Ronald Reagan, you'll have to go and see the film yourself. One American worker, who saw Sicko, was so moved that at the end he stood up and asked the other people in the cinema if they wanted to form a group to fight for a better health care system in the US. Many agreed.

Here is a letter Michael Moore put on his website in July:

Thursday, July 26th, 2007
See the Movie, Start the Revolution ...a letter from Michael Moore

Friends,

I am overwhelmed by the response to "Sicko." And I'm not just talking about all the wonderful, heart-felt letters you've sent me and the stories you've shared with me about the abuse you've suffered from our health care system.

No, I'm talking about how thousands of you are taking matters into your own hands and using the movie to do something. From Seattle to New England, each day I learn of numerous groups holding meetings or dinners after the movie to discuss it and to plot a course for action. A church in Plano, TX took its weekly bible study group to see "Sicko." 70 people crammed into a Wisconsin coffee shop's back room. Groups are plotting over pancakes in Illinois and microbrew in Missouri. E-mail addresses are being exchanged in theater lobbies. A Connecticut group is inviting legislators to see "Sicko" and keeping a tally on their website. Local groups have been buying out theaters to have special screenings for their members. Information tables are set up, literature is distributed, action groups are formed.

Don't miss it!