A moderate review of Sicko

It's not a film I'm interested in seeing, so it's kind of Arnold Kling to sacrifice his own time to see the movie and post his response:

Last night, I saw the premier of "Sicko." One of the examples in the new Michael Moore film illustrates the role of beliefs.

The case was of an African-American man who died of kidney cancer. His weeping wife had been told by a doctor that there was hope from a bone marrow transplant, but the insurance company denied the treatment. You were left to conclude that the decision was based on profits or racism.

After the movie, I did a quick search on Google and Wikipedia for the treatments of kidney cancer, and I could not find bone marrow treatment. This reinforced the gut feeling that I had during that segment of the movie, which is that the guy's cancer was so far gone that none of the standard treatments was going to work, and the bone marrow idea was a desperate, last-ditch "hail-Mary pass" that had no proven track record of success.

[. . .]

But this all gets back to the way that beliefs shape the health care system. My guess is that other countries believe that when someone has passed the point where reasonable, proven treatments are available, it is ok to stop throwing lots of resources at the patient and instead use those resources where they are more helpful. In the United States, this runs up against an intense belief in saving lives, an enormous faith in doctors, and a strong desire never to give up.

In this country, we have not really come to terms with the ethical issues concerning hail-Mary health care. Some people even view desperate, last-ditch measures as an entitlement. As long as we believe that, the component of our health care spending that goes for futile care will not go down.

It's a much fairer review than some I've seen, although he does drop this Godwinian bon mot at the end: "Michael Moore has done that, and the potential damage to the belief system of Americans is something that concerns me. Michael Cannon was taken aback when I murmured on the way out, 'I can see how Hitler came to power.' I think he thought I was over-reacting. I hope I was."