Film is the future of free inquiry in this country--and the stakeholders in policy debate know it.
Michael Moore's new film about health care has premiered at Cannes, and has received a guardedly positive assessment from a New York Times reviewer who recognizes that Moore must be understood as a "radical partisan" and notes that while Sicko is slick, it doesn't quite convince: "It’s difficult to share his enthusiasm about [Cuba]’s apparently terrific health care given its history of human-rights abuses."
Former Tennessee senator and possible presidential candidate Fred Thompson has responded to Moore's challenge to debate health care with a hard-hitting viral video response--one that in turn refers Moore and other viewers to the work of a filmmaker who was jailed and tortured by Fidel Castro for expressing dissenting views.
The shape of this building debate is instructive. It's not just that Moore and Thompson differ on health care, but that both understand film as the medium through which debate most readily and accessibly takes place in our heavily wired (and increasingly wireless) age. With that in mind, there's another figure who should be added to this mix: MPI fellow Stuart Browning, whose short films on health care tell a very different story than the one Moore offers in Sicko. A full understanding of the issues surrounding single-payer health care systems requires a rounded grasp of the facts, and a broader understanding of the story than Moore allows. Browning's films help make that possible. Check out A Short Course in Brain Surgery and Two Women. And, if you have more time, be sure to see Dead Meat as well. There is more coming soon from Browning. Stay tuned.