'Sicko' stars thank Moore for Cuba trip
By Jocelyn Noveck, Associated Press
from USA Today
NEW YORK — It could have been a college reunion: hugs, tears, laughter, photos, and a big friendly guy in shorts and sneakers organizing it all. But the guy in shorts was Michael Moore, whose new documentary, Sicko, takes aim at the U.S. health care industry with the same fury — laced with humor, of course, and plenty of statistics — that he directed at the Bush administration in his hit Fahrenheit 9/11.
And the people who'd flown in for this intimate first screening, a day after the film had been shipped to the Cannes Film Festival, included grateful Sept. 11 "first responders," suffering lung problems or other ailments from their days at ground zero. In the film, Moore takes them to Cuba and tries to get them treated at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay — where, he contends, terror suspects were getting better medical care than the heroes of 9/11.
The Cuba trip actually accounts for just a small part of Sicko, which aims its wrath at private insurance and pharmaceutical companies and HMOs, while praising socialized medicine in countries like France and Britain. Moore fills it with stories like that of a woman whose ambulance ride after a car crash wasn't covered — because it wasn't "pre-approved."
But Cuba has loomed large in the flurry of prerelease publicity. That's because the director, an unabashed critic of President Bush, is being investigated by the Treasury Department for possibly violating the U.S. trade embargo by traveling to the island nation. Moore has fired back with an open letter accusing the administration of "abusing the federal government for raw, crass political purposes."
(More here.)
from USA Today
NEW YORK — It could have been a college reunion: hugs, tears, laughter, photos, and a big friendly guy in shorts and sneakers organizing it all. But the guy in shorts was Michael Moore, whose new documentary, Sicko, takes aim at the U.S. health care industry with the same fury — laced with humor, of course, and plenty of statistics — that he directed at the Bush administration in his hit Fahrenheit 9/11.
And the people who'd flown in for this intimate first screening, a day after the film had been shipped to the Cannes Film Festival, included grateful Sept. 11 "first responders," suffering lung problems or other ailments from their days at ground zero. In the film, Moore takes them to Cuba and tries to get them treated at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay — where, he contends, terror suspects were getting better medical care than the heroes of 9/11.
The Cuba trip actually accounts for just a small part of Sicko, which aims its wrath at private insurance and pharmaceutical companies and HMOs, while praising socialized medicine in countries like France and Britain. Moore fills it with stories like that of a woman whose ambulance ride after a car crash wasn't covered — because it wasn't "pre-approved."
But Cuba has loomed large in the flurry of prerelease publicity. That's because the director, an unabashed critic of President Bush, is being investigated by the Treasury Department for possibly violating the U.S. trade embargo by traveling to the island nation. Moore has fired back with an open letter accusing the administration of "abusing the federal government for raw, crass political purposes."
(More here.)
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