Michael Moore Rallies for Health Care in Colorado

Posted by David Sirota at 10:35 PM on June 24, 2007.

As part of Denver's Screening Liberally lineup, my wife and I went to see an advanced screening of Sicko last night, and were really blown away. None of the movie was surprising to anyone who has studied the dysfunction that is the American health care system, but it was nonetheless perfectly made - a mix of dark humor and tragedy that lived up to the "I laughed, I cried" cliche of the modern day movie reviewer. Then, tonight, I attended a big health care rally at the Colorado Capitol with Michael Moore. You can watch some video excerpts I got of Moore's speech here on YouTube.

What I found most profound about the film was not the details about other countries' health care systems in comparison to our own, but Moore's very subtle point about how our health care system's problems - and middle class economic oppression generally - serves to depoliticize the public. A population that must constantly worry about affording medical care, managing personal debt, and keeping a job for fear of losing health coverage/expanding that debt is a population that has an incentive to keep quiet and never challenge the status quo for fear of risking economic catastrophe. If you know, for instance, that asking for better wages may get you fired and thus terminated from your health coverage, then you are going to think twice about making the ask and standing up for yourself in the first place. Put another way, for the Establishment, keeping the majority of the population under economic pressure serves the dual objective of siphoning more wealth to the top and undermining political activism that might change things.

I had the good fortune of being able to spend a day with Michael back about 6 years ago when he was doing his television show, TV Nation. He came to Capitol Hill to film a segment where he would be confronting lawmakers who hadn't had a reelection opponent and telling them he was running a plant against them (it was a fica tree, if I remember correctly). The Capitol police tried to throw him out of the building because he didn't have approval to film in the halls from any Member of Congress. He and his crew bolted over to then-Rep. Bernie Sanders' (I-VT) office to ask for help, and Bernie called off the police, and sent me with Michael to help point out the lawmakers he was looking for to interview. During that day, I met one of the rarest forms of people in politics - a guy who is really selflessly committed to the issues. Though Michael's appearances in his own documentaries may strike some as conceited, it's clear he does this because his personal narratives helps humanize often unfathomably large issues for the viewing audience - and Sicko was no exception.

Moore touched on much of this in his speech tonight at the Capitol in downtown Denver. His remarks were a call to action, telling us to do whatever we can do to put this issue front and center. It's time for America to reject the sickos in the American media and political Establishment who have worked to make health care a special privilege just for those who can afford it, rather than a basic right of citizenship in the wealthiest country in human history.

Tagged as: health care, michael moore

David Sirota is a veteran political strategist and author of Hostile Takeover, a New York Times bestseller about the corruption of both political parties.