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Moore Lobbies Sacramento For Healing
Filmmaker, Health Care Activists Promote 'Sicko' While Demanding Reforms in Industry
As Michael Moore stood on the west steps of the Capitol on Tuesday and led 1,000 activists in chanting "It's time for them to go" -- health insurance companies, that is -- he looked less like a Hollywood director promoting his new takedown of the health care industry and more like the frontman of a national political campaign.
That's because he is both.
In the days before Moore's film "Sicko" opens June 29 in 3,000 theaters nationwide, the director will be the centerpiece of a campaign that melds activism, policy, politics and Hollywood into a media force like no other widely released film. The campaign premiered Tuesday in Sacramento -- complete with nurses wearing red surgical scrubs and chanting "Hey-hey! Ho-ho! Private health care is sick-o!"
Moore's day started with a closed-door tete-a-tete with Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles, followed by a joint news conference before 15 TV cameras, where Núñez was flanked by posters for the movie and Moore diplomatically praised their "excellent meeting," even though Núñez supports a plan that doesn't immediately offer universal coverage, as Moore wants.
Then it was off to an "unofficial" public briefing led by state Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica -- whose single-payer plan Moore supports -- followed by a Capitol rally and march anchored by 1,000 members of the California Nurses Association, whose anecdotes over the years helped to inspire Moore to make the film. Then Moore screened the movie.
The word echoing around the Capitol building Tuesday wasn't "movie." It was "movement." Funny, Moore said, "how they both have the same root word: 'movie,' 'movement.' "
"I always set out to make a movie that people will enjoy, have a good time watching on Friday night," Moore told The Chronicle on Tuesday. "I'm asking for a little something here. I'm going to provide the entertainment, but I'm hoping that a certain percentage of the audience will be thinking about the issues that I raised, and a certain percentage of them will go out and do something."
The film is a godsend for those like the powerful nurses union and assorted health policy wonks who support its single-payer, free universal coverage message.
"This movie validates what we do every day," said Margie Keenan after seeing the movie Tuesday. The Long Beach registered nurse flew north to attend the festivities. She hopes it will spur a public dialogue. "This is going to change everything."
When the movie opens, Keenan will be among activist members of the California Nurses Association and doctors with the Physicians for a National Health Care Program who will stand in front of theaters handing out information on the legislative bills and telling filmgoers how they can get involved.
Everybody gets something in this movie-movement deal. The film gets real-life promotion from those working on health care's front lines. Reform advocates get star power from Moore. And, both filmmaker and activists believe, the public could ultimately receive better, less expensive health care if they're successful.
Today, Moore's campaign stops in San Francisco, where the filmmaker will meet with Mayor Gavin Newsom at City Hall to discuss the city's groundbreaking health coverage plan. Over the next few weeks, similar stops by Moore are planned in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and New Hampshire. The online activist hub MoveOn.org plans to ask its 3.2 million members to support the film, distribute information outside theaters and lobby Congress, much as it received pledges from 110,000 members to see Moore's previous film, "Fahrenheit 9/11," on opening weekend.
Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., whose congressional health care bill the campaign supports, said Tuesday: "The release of Michael Moore's 'Sicko' is one of the most important developments in the national debate on our health care crisis since the Clintons attempted to pass universal health care legislation in 1994."
A more subdued Moore has been doing the talk show rounds over the past few weeks during which his newfound, more apolitical approach -- Republican bashing was comparatively infrequent Tuesday -- found support from Oprah Winfrey. Last week on her show, Winfrey praised Moore, saying, "You are opening the door (on this issue), but we need to get Americans talking about it. Republicans talking about it, Democrats talking about it."
Chris Lehane, the San Francisco-based political communications consultant who is coordinating the Hollywood-activist-policy campaign for the Weinstein Co., producers of the film, said: "Michael Moore approached this film from day one as a call to action. So we're putting together the types of events and activities around it as though it was a political campaign."
More than a decade ago, Lehane was an aide in the Clinton White House when then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton was trying to overhaul the nation's health care system. "We lost control of the debate," Lehane said of the Clinton health care effort. This time, however, he thinks it will be different. For one, after concerns about the Iraq war, Americans tell pollsters that health care is their biggest worry.
Last month, Moore invited Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association, to a private screening of "Sicko" in New York for 50 people, including many of those who appeared in the film. Afterward, DeMoro said she asked Moore "to do Sacramento with us." He quickly agreed, and the campaign snowballed from there.
"Very early on, (the nurses) were out front on this issue and have been very supportive of me," Moore said. "And I was very supportive of them in terms of hoping that this issue would come to the forefront. And now it is."
Changing a multibillion-dollar system will take a lot of bipartisan effort. But forget reshaping policy for a moment. How can Moore persuade conservatives just to see his film? Many not only loathe him for the Bush-bashing in "Fahrenheit 9/11," they mistrust him.
"They don't anymore," Moore told The Chronicle, alluding to how many of the points he made in "Fahrenheit" about the run-up to the Iraq war have become common knowledge. "Some of my strongest letters of support (now) come from conservatives, former Republicans who feel like they've been had. They realize that I was actually standing up for them and trying to speak the truth," he said.
But no big-name conservatives have stepped up yet to support his universal health care campaign.
"Well," Moore said. "Fox News reviewed the film at Cannes and called it 'brilliant' and 'uplifting.' That's a start."
"Sicko" isn't kind to Hillary Clinton, who is now running for president. The audience hissed Tuesday when the film noted she was among the Senate leaders in campaign donations from health industry companies, just a few years after she failed to change the system.
But in searching for an apolitical tone to talk about "Sicko," nurses union leader DeMoro said Moore may have found an apolitical target.
"Oh, come on," DeMoro said. "Who likes the insurance industry?"
Chronicle staff writer Victoria Colliver contributed to this report. E-mail Joe Garofoli at jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com.
© 2007 The San Francisco Chronicle
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21 Comments so far
Show Allbravo for Moore!
at my two local theaters here in VA right outside D.C., they are showing: SpiderMan 3, Shrek 3, Hostel 2, Pirates of the Caribbean, Mr. Brooks, Knocked Up, Ocean's 13, and a couple of others i never heard of. (btw, note how many are about torture and serial killers. wtf is up w/the non-stop barrage of torture movies?)
i know moore is making documentaries, but he proves that if you make intelligent, relevant movies, people can become informed, even thru this most dumbed-down of media.
there's a reason movies are so stupid, sadistic, sentimentalist, cruel, childish, etc., and above all, irrelevant, these days.
Hooray for Michael and may he live long.
Over the years he has become such an expert at media manipulation - not all of that is bad, you know - and sets a great example for all of us who support worthy causes.
Certainly the bad guys know how to do it; they've always had more money and power. But Michael, he started out on a shoestring and has become a national treasure.
Michael Moore really hits the nail on the head with this one! Well timed to make national healthcare a defining issue in '08 while cutting through the insurance lobby BS.
When I saw Fahrenheit 9-11, I had to go to a city where it showed in a mall devastated by a Wal-Mart that moved in across the hi-way.
Among the boarded up stores stood a recruiting office. I watched these guys through the window; one had his feet on the desk leaning back throwing food in the air catching it in his mouth while boasting about something with the other guy. The mall was empty of people and so was the recruiting office.
The movie brought more people than rest of the mall had seen all day. It was so obvious to my eyes that evening what was happening; I couldn't understand why more people weren't catching on.
The lack of guaranteed health care for so many of us is the NUMBER ONE problem in the USA today.
This is a collective problem; even if you have full coverage today. Diseases practice equal opportunity for all.
Have you ever wondered if the person cooking your hamburger at any fast food outlet has untreated Hepatitis ?
Or perhaps that the person seating next to you in that plane ... had multi-drug resistant tuberculosis ?
The World Health Organization's ranking
of the world's health systems
http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html
1 France
2 Italy
:
9 Austria
10 Japan
11 Norway
:
35 Dominica
36 Costa Rica
37 United States of America
Awesome Inequality:
U.S. healthcare plans are steeply stratified — from solid gold down to "gold-plated," "basic," and NONE at all. Forty-seven million people have the last plan.
According to the World Health Organization, the U.S. ranks 24th in healthy life expectancy. "Basically, you die earlier and spend more time disabled if you're an American rather than a member of most other advanced countries," says Dr. Christopher Murray, a WHO director. Native Americans, rural African Americans, and the inner-city poor are hit hardest, according to WHO.
The rich supplement their insurance plans by purchasing the services of their own private, on-call physicians.
In the USA we have a health care system that is criminally negligent, with nearly 50 million Americans without any insurance coverage.
The drive for profits poisons care. Insurance companies are in the business of denying medical services. The more they retain their premiums, the greater their profits.
The bloated bureaucracy exists for just one purpose: to enrich a small number of individuals. In 2006, profits totaled about $9 billion for four of the top companies.
Thank you Mike.
Moore helps counter the argument of major media, that they are simply "giving people what they want". Moore's success shows that there are plenty of people who want to be informed on issues like this. It goes back to McChesney's argument of Supply creating Demand, and if there was more media taking on subjects like Moore does, there probably would be a massive market for it.(Even though there already is one they won't acknowledge)
Unfortunately, the major media uses "giving people what they want" in order to saturate their broadcasts or print with disinformation and diversions. Keep up the good fight, Mr. Moore.
I hope everyone goes to see this. Everyone will be talking about it. But what will they do once they get riled up?
I'm confused as to why nobody is mentioning Dennis Kucinich? Moore mentioned Edwards and Hillary as not having a beefed up health care plan but didn't say the name Kucinich, even though he has a non-insurance-company plan. I guess it's a best-kept secret?
Go,MICHAEL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What a country! Where else can an overweight nerdy looking smart ass show up all the spin- meisters of the corrupt insurance, pharma,HMO., and for profit hospital industry for the sputtering idiots they are!
Since around '47 when Truman first proposed nationalized health care the AMA and thier minions have managed to change th subject and ignore this important issue. Now they cannot anymore thanks to Sicko.
This movie should give impetus to Dennis Kucinich's single payer universal health care plan that he has been touting for years. Taking insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies out of the driver's seat would mean no more premiums, no more copays and no more deductibles.
We are the only industrialized nation not offering universal health care for all and, in addition to that, we are ALREADY paying for universal health care but not receiving it because almost 31% of the health care dollar is diverted to others things not related to providing health care(ie high executive salaries, stock options, lobbying, marketing etc etc).
Let's go deeper...Let's see how the "health" industry is killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
Prescription drugs are the THIRD cause of death, after heart disease and cancer, by people taking their prescriptions as the doctor ordered and NOT by overdose.
Over 200,000 people a year die from prescription drugs or one person every two minutes. That would be like two jumbo jets falling out of the sky every day. Where's the FDA on that??
The president of the largest drug company, Merck, said in a USAToday interview that only 30 percent of drugs "perform as expected." That means that 7 of out every 10 prescriptions DO NOTHING!
"ALL prescription drugs cause disease," according to a recent Noble Prize winner a couple of years back.
The REAL issue is who is dying TODAY (one person every two minutes).
The FDA is controlled by the drug companies.
A recent Common Dream comment noted this:
"What it means to them is simply MARKETING. Of course, the people at the top of the USDA [and F.D.A.] are looking for consulting jobs with the very people they regulate, or lobbying jobs on their behalf, so they are eager to please Corporate America and set an example for the predecessors that will make their lobbying jobs easier and more successful as they come back to further push the envelope of Corporate Catering. The revolving door of the public regulation and private consulting is destroying what little power our government has left to regulate industry." (Moses Kassandra June 9th, 2007 3:16 pm)
And the drug company board of directors sit on the major media company boards so no one watching TV is gonna hear about it or see it.
I want to see Mike take on the drug companies. Then the S*** will hit the fan!
Go, Mike!
Off22: Good points about WHAT is being filmed and produced. 13truthseeker: Just curious where you got your statistics, as last time I checked, the contra-indications of prescribed drugs were the 5th leading cause of death (and that was released by Public Citizen). It's possible it's "moved up the charts," but I'd like to know your source?
And while I agree with the points you make, another form of poisoning Americans is the food, the unregulated toxic debris increasingly being released into our water, air, and soil and the fact that it BECOMES us, quite literally, as "body burden." Since EPA has been virtually tied and bound, and there are few restraints on big business, added to the fact that imports (thank you, NAFTA) are NOT adequately checked for content/quality... in short the pursuit of profit is compromising our food and water, etc. WE are virtual guinea pigs. On one hand the big corporations get to render our shared environment toxic, some fall to asthma, cancer and other degenerative diseases, but then conveniently THEY (the victims) have neither access to nor recourse to health care. What a system. Sicko, indeed!
way to go m.m.
making smart relevant movies (that means you too al) seems to be catching on as a viable tool for changing public opinion. not only because the medium is getting better, but also because since people have grown quite skilled at the "act" of passive viewing, many will be drawn in to the urgency of the message who might have otherwise not been ready for it. obviously it'll take more than trips to the theatre/video-dvd store to get people to "do" something with this info. the unfortunate part of the equation is that passivity is subtly reinforced. "the medium is the message" - still, better to have deeper meaning involved than mindless escapist tripe.
I don't think universal coverage is the answer, that's like switching drivers while you're making good time going down the wrong road. Conventional medicine is costly for many reasons; it's not just extremely expensive but dangerous and ineffective. Limiting medical insurance to catastrophic policies and eliminating drug company advertising directly to the consumer (as is commonly done in other countries and used to be done here) would get the public asking questions like "(D)o I really need this(?)" and "(W)hat are my choices?" This would allow the croakers to concentrate on the things that are really needed (trauma and infections) and allow the population to spend less while being healthier. We won't see effective change until the drug companies are reigned in, and when do you think the industry that spends the most on lobbying will allow that to happen?
I'm leery about John Edward's Universal Health Care Plan, which involves mandating that everyone purchase a plan from insurance or something like Medicare. The problem is that the illnesses I have are not responsive to allopathic medicine. What works for me is Chiropractic and Traditional Chinese Medicine (accupuncture, herbs). Under Edward's plan, I'd have to pay out for services I don't use, and ALSO pay for those I do - because in all liklihood they won't be covered by Universal Health Care Plans.
IMHO, any 'solution' is NO solution unless citizens are given the option of health care coverage for what works for them. Otherwise it's just a government sponsored racket to siphon more of our income to the "Medical-Industrial Complex.'
Well, bluestater, having lived in all 3 situations, i.e., in Canada in the pre-medicare days and now; in the U.S. with no health insurance; and in Austria with its very minimal health insurance premiums, I can tell you that there's no contest. Universal health care is the best of all worlds -- even now, what with NAFTA eating away at our once-very-good and very efficient health care system in Canada. You might wanna think about the fact that Canada pays 7 percent of GDP on health care, while the US pays 9 percent of GDP. Now, who do you suppose is getting that extra 2 percent? If you Americans keep dragging your feet on this issue, no one in North America will have decent health care. North American Union (NAU) is scheduled to come online in 2010, and that will mean that both Canada and Mexico will be "harmonizing" our social programs with the U.S. We already have American HMOs threatening to sue Canada for "unfair trading practises." They will only have to wait for NAU to get their suit before the WTO -- and that'll be the end of single-payer health care for all of us.
zoya...Canada pays 7% of GDP, and reveived FULL coverage for 100% of citizens
USA pays 9% of a LARGER per capita GDP, and only receives partial coverage for a portion of the population ( and 50 million having NONE)
so the missing funds (corporate profits) are a heck of a lot more that 2% GDP
I just hate the mental image of insurance CEO's getting multi million $ bonuses, while citizens die in wating rooms untended
Michael:
Whatever your motivations, you have provided valuable insight to many people with your well backgrounded information. Keep at it.
Zoya;
Yes I have thought about this. Taking an expensive, dangerous and ineffective system and making it cheaper won't make it much better, it just makes it cheaper. Check out Mercola.com for more details, they've done a great job of patient education.
You have all made good points. The bottom line, how can we cut into the power of the big corporate industries, Insurance, big Pharma, Chemical Companies who are profiting from our illnesses, and toxifying our environment and food? Public financing would help us elect canidates who are not beholden to these lobbies and might therefore pass laws that protect and support rather than undermine us.
Michael Moore is a hero for telling the truth in all his films and bucking the corpratocracy. There is one area I disagree with him though, he does not think food choices are important, I do. Everytime you eat organic or locally grown produce, it not only protects your health but it is a way to boycott another industry which seriously undermines our health the fast food industry. It also helps protect the lives of animals and our enviroment. There is a great organization called Earth Save which clarifies all these connections.