Sicko Documentary Reveals Flaws in U.S. Healthcare System

Abstract

Instructor’s Name Due Date Sicko is a documentary by Michael Moore investigating health care in the United States. The documentary shows blistering gaps and the need for reforms for a new system of universal health care. The United States is among the wealthiest countries in the world but has failed in the provision of Universal health care compared to countries such as Cuba, France, the United Kingdom, and Canada ranking at 37 all over the world. Michael Moore relates the tribulations of Americans to the concepts of social imagination. American sociologist C. Wright Mills defined sociological imagination as the ability to connect personal experiences with larger social structures establishing the relationship between personal troubles and social issues (Jacobs, 2021). Mill believes that personal problems are also social issues. Sociological imagination describes an interplay between an individual and the society. This reaction paper discusses how the experiences of individuals interviewed in the documentary “Sicko” are tied to the social structures governing the US healthcare system. The US Healthcare system is for-profit. In the United States, people die because they cannot afford health insurance. In the documentary, when people in other countries are asked how much their bill costs, they laugh about it. In an interview with Rick who lost his middle finger while working, and did not have health insurance. The hospital gave him the option to reattach the finger with $60,000 or do the middle finger with $12,000. The US puts value on the health conditions of Americans. Insurance companies could have been thought to relieve the burden of health care costs to the American people but are there to make money and not service the Americans even though they act like they exist for the common good of the Americans. Bureaucracy complicates the United States health care system. It represents the complicated paperwork, time-consuming processes, and complications with the private health insurance companies (Potter, 2021) Moore accuses insurance companies of bureaucracy which makes it cruel for United States citizens. Insurance companies make it stringent for citizens to get insurance in the application process. In the application for insurance, Tasha Harris failed to disclose that she had a yeast infection in the past. A condition she had treated and was no longer part of her life which made it difficult to acquire insurance coverage. The doctors should have consulted Tasha’s doctors before rejecting her application. Insurance companies are very cruel, for instance, if they end up paying for an operation of service they did not approve, they retrieve their money back. The movie ‘SICKO’ manifests instances of stigma and social judgments for financial struggles and medical conditions. Moore uses the case of Andrian to describe this analogy, a twenty-two-year-old who was diagnosed with cancer...