I haven’t seen Sicko, but I’m already hearing all kinds of rumours regarding its supposedly explosive content. I must admit, however, that I’m quite sceptical about its premise: ‘If you want to stay healthy in America, don’t get sick.’ I also happen to have first-hand experience of healthcare from both the provider’s and the patient’s sides in a couple of European countries as well as in the U.S., which made me cringe at some absurdities I heard regarding the supposed greatness of European socialised medicine. Not that I believe the American system to be flawless, but it seems to me that Moore’s film aims at the wrong target.
As University of Virginia’s med school dean Arthur Garson and co-author Carolyn Engelhard showed in their excellent Health Care Half Truths, which anyone intent on ameliorating the American system should read although it may not be as funny as Moore’s documedy, health care and medical care are two different things. While medical care in the U.S. is among the best in the world, health care isn’t: hence the low life expectancy at birth (meaning that infant mortality, one of the highest of developed countries, contributes disproportionately to the low life expectancy), which is statistically discriminant for African Americans: ‘Infant mortality among African Americans in 2000 occurred at a rate of 14.1 deaths per 1,000 live births. This is more than twice the national average of 6.9 deaths per 1,000 live births.’ Moreover, as Garson and Engelhard point out,
‘The life expectancy for an African American man in Harlem is lower than the life expectancy in Bangladesh. Because of murders, drug abuse, and forty-six million uninsured, our life expectancy ranks twenty-third in the world. Life expectancy is an index of the HEALTH of our population; only ten percent of health is contributed to by MEDICAL care –which is what doctors do (…)’