We got down to the nitty-gritty and talked about quality-of-life crimes.

Not only does SiCKO expose the HMO prob­lem effec­tive­ly, it also is like a trav­el guide for a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life. In fact, it intro­duced those who wait­ed for the cred­its to this. In all seri­ous­ness, Moore final­ly man­ages to make a film that lives up to the promise of Roger & Me, the sort of mad­cap humor blend­ed with bonecrush­ing sad­ness that makes for the best polit­i­cal com­men­tary, at least here in the States. His man-on-the-street approach in this one works well, though it leaves open­ings for skep­tics — think of them as the ‘well i have a friend who’s a doc­tor in the U.K. and he’s real­ly unhap­py’ types — to quar­rel with his points.

What Moore’s bank­ing on here is that there are plen­ty of Amer­i­cans with health care who’ve found them­selves awash in debt after rou­tine med­ical pro­ce­dures. And they’re out there, or you know some­one, or they know some­one. So this time Moore turns down the mes­sian­ic impuls­es that per­vade his work, real­iz­ing that cur­rent Dem fron­trun­ner HRC has no chance of intro­duc­ing sin­gle-pay­er, much less uni­ver­sal health care and that we’re a peo­ple adrift in a cri­sis that will only grow worse for not just some so-called “aver­age” Amer­i­can, but for all of us, together.