Kiss my ass and call me in the morning

This weekend, in between me morphing back into a human being instead of twitchy stressball, and in between the much more resourceful F-word making pasta and pizza bases again, not to mention ice cream (my hero), we watched Sicko. I had really resisted watching it because I abhor Michael Moore. It wasn't bad, though.

His usual problematic relationship with the truth in an effort to prove his central idea was less annoying than usual - though present. I know he's trying to cram everything he has to say into feature-length, but surely we could have been spared the minutes he spent yelping into a megaphone and the story about how he rescued the wife of one of his detractors from cancer to give a more well-rounded overview of the health systems in the countries featured.

I don't think it would have harmed his argument, and it would have helped his credibility, if he'd mentioned there are some real problems with the Canadian system in terms of access to experimental drugs, for example, and some real problems with the French system in terms of massive over-prescription and a complete systemic inability to usefully treat chronic mental illness. That doesn't make universal health coverage in those countries any less desirable, and it doesn't make the American system any less shameful. The thing is, I think it would have worked better as an aspirational film - picking out the problems and the benefits of each system - rather than as a 'dang, us Americans is stupid health-wise compared to them furrners' film. Because frankly, anybody who's really thought about it knows that already.

But Sicko was much better than his other two big budget documentaries and I was quite sad that he only made it the time he'd alienated everybody except the choir he was preaching to. Because it's much more important. Too bad. San Francisca used to be an emergency medic, and yesterday we had a chat about it - she said she'd have to bellow into the faces of stab or gunshot victims and car crashees 'DO YOU HAVE INSURANCE?' to figure out which hospital to take them to - or go through their pockets and wallets looking for their insurance cards.

How can anybody possibly think that's a good idea? How can you bear the thought that if a member of your family gets hit by a car, the first-response medic team is going to have to spend some of the time they could spend treating them or even just holding their hand to reassure them yelling at them about their insurance or going through their pockets, and depending they may have to wait longer than necessary to get to hospital? Puke.