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I've read many reviews, and they're mostly positive. Still, though, it seems many completely miss what I've taken from the movie.
Simply put, the film is about us as Americans. It asks how we, decent caring people, could let our system of healthcare come to this. It doesn't have to tell us that most with insurance in the US receive good care from great hospitals and doctors most of the time. It doesn't have to tell us that the systems in Canada or England or wherever have lots of problems too. We already know that. But do we really know about how good those other systems are, do we know anything at all about healthcare in Cuba? Of course not. Moore doesn't need to tell us what we know. His goal is to show us that there is a much better way of doing things.
And he asks why we refuse to borrow from that example, from the attitude about and approach to healthcare that other countries use.
Sure the Cuban stuff is gimmicky but it's the film's most illustrative segment. Even in this third world country, largely isolated from the rest of the world, with so little in the way of resources, with its 1950's vintage cars, a healthcare system that stresses care and not profit or money can produce outcomes as good as those in the richest country in the world.
We are all brothers Moore tells us, whether we're firefighters, or just people inhabiting the same planet. And sometimes it's just right to put this fact first and take care of each other.
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