Michael Moore's Sicko

Psychology How Sicko is Relevant to Psychology Michael Moore is an American filmmaker that has created a body of work and a niche market for hard hitting documentaries about issues critical to American culture. In 2007, he directed, produced, wrote, and starred in a documentary called, Sicko, about the American healthcare system. Moore's films have a habit of polarizing audiences. Audiences have been known to strongly agree with him and known to vehemently disagree. Moore's success comes from his approach to addressing tough issues that usually cause debate.

Moore is additionally successful because his early successes attracted the attention of film giants such as the Weinsteins, who, via one of several of their production companies, produced Sicko. Michael Moore knows his audience. He knows the people that will agree with him immediately and not need any convincing regarding his ideas. Moore, more importantly almost, knows his critics. Michael Moore is one of a few directors who consistently and intentionally produces films with the critics of his films in mind as he produces them.

Psychologically, this is a position of power and he reaches it with subtlety. Moore presents his counterarguments to his critics in his imagined audiences so that they are left little room to criticize the film; moreover, he presents counterarguments in such a way that again, there is little room for criticism. Michael Moore contends that the American health care system is itself sick and contributes directly to the lack of health in the country. Moore makes this argument through the strategic use of examples.

For example, Moore makes an announcement regarding his film online. He invites Americans to share with him, as fodder and context for the film, their horror stories within the American health care system. Within a day, he received thousands of stories. Within a week of making this announcement, he received stories that numbered in the tens of thousands. Moore shows the defects in the American health care system with numerous examples and publically accessible research, as is his usual modus operandi.

Moore shows very few examples of people who lack health insurance. Most of the examples of mistreatment by the health care system are by those who have insurance and by those who were employed by the insurance industry. Moore shows interviews with a former reviewer whose exclusive objective in his profession was to review approved claims for any minute detail that could be used to overturn the approval for the health claim -- saving the company money.

There was another example of a medical doctor who went before a congressional committee to confess her direct contribution to the death of a person by denying him a procedure that would have saved his life, as well as her confession that at no point was she held accountable for such an action, but rather, that she was summarily rewarded to use her medical expertise to deny people claims. These are powerful examples from voices within the very industry that is on trial over the course of the film.

These examples are just as powerful as moving as the ones from individuals who had health insurance and were denied care. Some of the people interviewed died before the film was completed. Their examples are stark and moving because the health insurance industry, which Moore demonstrates has clear ties to the highest levels of government, literally cost them their lives. Moore's suggestions for better health care are mostly indirect. Moore does not make many direct pejorative comments about the health care and health insurance industries.

The proposed improvements to the system come from the people he interviews, whether they have insurance or do not have it, or were or are employees of the insurance companies. Moore also references examples of people who travel outside of other countries, as well as residents of other countries. Moore implies the problems with the system and proposes improvements to the system through the voices of those he interviews as part of the film.

He interviews, for example, employees of pharmacies and medical centers in countries such as the United Kingdom. Their answers to his questions show where the American system is faulty without having to come out directly and say that, mostly. Their reactions to his questions are often more revealing as to what is wrong with the American system more so than their answers.

They laugh at him out of astonishment and they are stunned because they have never had to answer such questions as they participate in a system where the problems that are commonplace in American life do not support the condition necessary for those problems to exist. More than suggest a better form of health care, Sicko does a fine job of making very transparent what is wrong and how the American system holds up in comparison to other health care systems across the developed world.

Moore's use of psychology begins very early on in the film, as it begins with examples of Americans whose lives have been adversely affected by the health care system and a bit of bad luck, but in life, accidents happen to us all. Moore begins the film by showing these people as examples and then by stating after each example that the film is not about them.

He claims that the people who have lost fingers, having to choose which ones get reattached based on the cost of the surgery, are not the subject of the film. The people who are the subject of the film are people who have health insurance. Such people would likely be some of the opponents and critics of his film. He makes the film about the people who would potentially reject his film, as part of his strategy to bring everyone into the film as the heroes and the subjects.

He then shows examples of people with multiple income streams, people who are fully capable and eligible of health insurance as the subjects of the film as victims of mistreatment by the health care system. This makes it clear that whether a viewer is a part of the group of millions of Americans who have health insurance, or is one of the millions who are without it, the film is about everyone in America, even those who visit America.

Readers will recall Moore's interviews with his Canadian relatives who adamantly refused to visit Michigan for a few hours without attaining insurance that is provided by Canada and will provide them coverage in America. Moore employs reverse psychology to communicate his message. He dramatizes and contextualizes his examples and in the presentation of his research, as in the examples of Hilary Clinton and her attempted role in the universalization of health care.