Sicko - Moore losing his edge?

First, let me say that I have not seen Sicko. I doubt I will pay to see it. Nonetheless, from what I have read about it, clips I have seen, and what I have heard Michael Moore say himself about it, I will base these judgements.

Has he lost his edge? Is anyone at all really surprised by his conclusions about the health care system in the U.S.? I really doubt it. We all know the U.S. health care system is unfair and unequitable. Heck, even the right wing media was not outraged at all by Moore. As a result, did we really need this movie and is there any reason to go see it? Is it not just going to be a serious of shocking footage and stunt designed to reinforce what we already know? I expect so.

Included I give you Roger Ebert's review:

Sicko hits its mark: This time Michael Moore's target is American health

Universal Press Syndicate(Jun 29, 2007)

* * * 1/2/* * * *
Documentary written and directed by Michael Moore
Playing at: SilverCity Ancaster, SilverCity Burlington
Rated: PG
If you heard the story, you remember it.

A couple of weeks ago, a woman bled to death in an emergency room while her husband and a bystander both called 911 to report she was being ignored. They were ignored. She was already in the E.R., wasn't she?

Her death came too late to be included in Sicko, Michael Moore's litany of horrors about the American health-care system, which is run for profit, and insurance companies, who pay bonuses to employees who are successful in denying coverage or claims.
But wait a minute. I saw the movie almost a year to the day after a carotid artery burst after surgery and I came within a breath of death.

I spent the next year at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and the Pritikin Longevity Center, and still require daily care of a nurse.
I mention this to indicate I am pretty deeply involved in the health-care system. In each and every case, without exception, I have been cared for by doctors who are kind, patient, painstaking and expert, and by nurses who are skilled, wise and tireless. My insurance has covered a small fortune in claims. My wife and I have also paid large sums from our own savings.

So I have only one complaint, and it is this:

Every American should be as fortunate as I have been. As Moore makes clear in his film, some 50 million Americans have no insurance and no way to get it. Many of the insured discover their policies are worthless after insurance investigators reel off an endless list of conditions and procedures that are not covered, or discover "pre-existing conditions" the patients "should" have known about.

One woman, unconscious when she is put into an ambulance, is billed for the trip because her insurer says it was not pre-authorized. How could she get authorization when she was out cold on the pavement?

We also learn a lot about drug companies and HMOs in the film. It is an item of faith in some circles that drug companies need their profits to finance research and development.
Out of a dollar of profit, what percentage would you guess goes to R&D, and what percentage goes to advertising and promotion, multimillion-dollar executive salaries, corporate jets, palatial headquarters, bonuses and stockholders?

Moore plays 1971 tapes from the Oval Office as Nixon discusses the original Kaiser plan for an HMO. "It's for profit," he says admiringly.

Have you ever understood exactly what benefit it is that an HMO provides, while it stands between you and the medical care system, and acts as a toll bridge? Do its profits not depend on supplying as little health care as possible, at the lowest possible price?

Moore visits Canada, England, France and Cuba, all of which have (1) universal health care, and (2) a longer life expectancy and lower infant mortality than America.
In France, he drives with one of many doctors kept on full-time house-call duty.

Of course we have heard all about "socialized medicine," which among many evils denies you freedom of choice of hospitals and doctors. Hold on: That's the free-enterprise HMO system.
Moore sails to Cuba with three boatloads of sick people, some of them 9/11 volunteers who have been denied care for respiratory and other problems because they were -- well, volunteers. Unlike firemen and policemen, they had no business being there, I guess. One woman is on $1,000-a-month disability, and needs $240 a month for her inhaler medication. Moore's gimmick (he always has one, but this one is dramatic) is to take her to a Cuban hospital where she finds that her $120 medication costs 5 cents in Cuba. At least that R&D money is helping Cubans.

Moore's original purpose in sailing south was to seek medical care for his passengers at the Guantanamo Bay prison base. He is turned away, of course, but not before observing that accused al-Qaeda terrorists get better (free) medical attention than 9/11 volunteers.

So until someone gives word otherwise, I don't think there is too much reason to patronise his work. Fahrenheit was a weak argument; Bowling was at least entertaining; were his best days really Roger and Me?

It is great to be oldest!

I love it when the newspaper prints the obvious! (no ego issues at all!)


Growing up as the eldest son means being the smartest: study TheSpec.com - Local - Growing up as the eldest son means being the smartest: study

The Associated PressWASHINGTON (Jun 22, 2007)

Boys at the top of the pecking order -- either by birth or because their older siblings died -- score higher on IQ tests than their younger brothers, a study has found.
The question of whether first-born and only children are really smarter than those who come along later has been hotly debated for more than a century.
Norwegian researchers say it isn't a matter of being born first, but growing up the senior child, that seems to result in higher IQ scores. Petter Kristensen and Tor Bjerkedal report their findings in today's issue of the journal Science.
It's a matter of social rank in the family. The senior boy -- the first born or, if the first-born died in infancy, the next oldest -- scored highest.
Kristensen, of Norway's National Institute of Occupational Health, and Bjerkedal, of the Norwegian Armed Forces Medical Services, studied IQ test results of 241,310 Norwegian men drafted into the army between 1967 and 1976, all aged 18 or 19 at the time. The average IQ of first-born men was 103.2, second-born men 101.2, and second-born men whose older sibling died in infancy scored 102.9.

http://www.thespec.com/News/Local/article/210566