English Language Practice V December 13, 2010 Danijela Vukovi Sicko Sicko is a 2007 documentary film by Michael Moore,

one of the best known American filmmakers, authors and liberal political commentators. The movie focuses on the US healthcare system dominated by private pharmaceutical companies and compares it to the non-profit healthcare systems of countries such as Canada, United Kingdom, France and Cuba. In this film, Moore interviews numerous individuals who have suffered because of the private pharmaceutical and insurance companies which dominate the US healthcare system and often deny care to these people even though the people think that they have the adequate insurance. Moore also interviews the 9/11 American national heroes who are as well often denied care. The government initially refused to pay for the health care of 9/11 volunteers, because they were not on the government payroll. It remains difficult for the volunteers to access the $50 million fund that has been appropriated for their care. According to the film there are nearly 50 million Americans without health insurance. Those that are adequately insured, or at least think they are, are often denied care because the private insurance companies deny care in order to save money and thus make profit. Tony Benn, a former United Kingdom government minister, says that if we can find money to kill people, you can find money to help people. And while around 65 percent of young Americans cannot find Britain on a map, the United Kingdom manages to provide free healthcare for all of its citizens, while 18,000 Americans die each year just because they do not have enough money to pay for their health insurance even though over $8 billion of tax money is handed over to the drug and health insurance companies.

In the United States, healthcare costs run nearly $7,000 per person and in Cuba those costs run around $251 per person. Aleida Guevara, the eldest daughter of four children born to Ernesto "Che" Guevara, says that Cuba is a little island in the Caribbean with little to no resources. We can do a lot to improve the people's health. This does not happen in the United States. Why are we able and you are not? In Cuba, the access to healthcare is universal and Cuba is one of the most generous countries in providing doctors to the third world. It seems that Cuban doctors and healthcare is not only needed in the third world countries but also in the United States, especially for the 9/11 heroes who were, in the movie, denied proper care by the American doctors in Guantanamo but are treated by enemies of the American society, the communist Cubans. It seems to me that the government of the United States realizes, as Tony Benn puts it, that an educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern and thus keeps its people hopeless and pessimistic by first of all frightening people and secondly demoralizing them. Croatia, which to many Americans might as well be a third world country, as well as Cuba, Canada, France, Finland and almost every other country in the world, somehow manages to take care of its citizens and provide the universal, somewhat free healthcare without trying to make money on misfortune of its people.