Medical Ethics: “Sicko” Documentary by Michael Moore Essay (Movie Review)

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I believe Michael Moore’s approach to the health care issue in his documentary, Sicko, is elusive and reactive rather than proactive.

It is argued in the documentary that over fifty million Americans are to insure their lives whereas the large percentage insure is unable to maintain its insurance costs owing to rules and regulations and company fraud.

Several interviews were conducted to ascertain the truth of the matter and it was found out that insurance companies play rackets with the lives of people in case of medical emergencies. The insurance companies would always find a reason not to compensate its policyholders.

This is usually aimed at maximizing the profits of the company. The movie compares the healthcare laws of Canada with those of the US. The actor singles out the efforts of one of the Canadian policy maker by the name Tommy Douglas, who worked tirelessly to improve the healthcare system in Canada (Callenbach, 2008).

The actor argues that anti-health care policy individuals claim that providing free healthcare services amounts to communism, which is not true. The then head of state, Ronald Reagan, advised people that universal healthcare services would lead to the loss of freedom and introduction of socialism into the financial system.

Moore answers the critics basing their arguments to Reagan’s allegations that American financial system had not been converted to socialism by the free police services, fire services and the postal services.

In my view, Moore employs both Kantian approach and virtue ethics approach. However, utilitarianism is not applied anywhere in the movie. As Kant observed, each individual in the world exists as an end in himself but not as a means to a particular end.

In everything that an individual undertakes in the world, it must be viewed as an end not a means to an end. People do not exist as a means to achieve particular tasks. In other words, we need to strive to achieve our own pleasure but not to exist to please something else.

Critics of the healthcare bill believed that people exist to fulfill the wishes and interests of capitalism, which, according to Kant, is unacceptable since we should not attempt to fulfill the wishes of something else and forget ourselves.

In this regard, we need to act as rational beings meaning that we need to apply reason in everything we do. Healthcare is a basic right to every American hence supporting it is rational and reasonable (DeGrazia, Mappes, & Brand-Ballard, 2011).

Virtue ethics is a framework that focuses on the personality of the ethical agent as opposed to the suitability of the act. Healthcare is an issue involving ethics and the legality of the action.

Ethically, it is pleasing to fund a policy aiming at improving the health standards of people in the country. It would however be unsuitable to force the population to fund a policy that would only help a section of the society that is, the poor.

Utilitarianism claims that each policy implemented should satisfy each person in society. In other words, it should aim at bringing happiness. The morality of an action in this regard can only be determined by its outcomes.

In the American society, healthcare bill is a controversial issue that does not have positive effects only. It affects a section of society negatively meaning that it has some side effects to the rich.

References

Callenbach, E. (2008). Sicko. Film Quarterly, 61(2), 64-88.

DeGrazia, D., Mappes, T., & Brand-Ballard, J. (2011). Biomedical Ethics (7th ed). New York: McGraw-Hill.

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IvyPanda. 2019. "Medical Ethics: "Sicko" Documentary by Michael Moore." April 3, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/medical-ethics-2/.

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