Michael Moore marks ‘Sicko's' 5th anniversary with Philadelphia event
When they were featured in Michael Moore's 2007 documentary, Sicko, Donna and Larry Smith were sick and broke — she was a cancer survivor, he was recovering from three heart attacks — and buried under soaring co-payments and deductibles. Now, as the film's fifth anniversary is celebrated in Philadelphia on Saturday with an onstage reunion headlined by Moore, the Smiths will be back in the limelight. And they are still sick and broke.
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"None of us, it didn't fix the problems we had in our life," says Donna Smith, now 57, of Washington, whose cancer has reemerged after 10 years in remission. "The trauma in our lives continued to unfold."
The film also shows the Smiths going bankrupt and moving in with their daughter despite having health insurance. They were swamped by their deductibles and co-pays.
"The legislation does address some of the more egregious issues" in the documentary, said David Nash, dean of the Jefferson School of Population Health at Thomas Jefferson University.
"The ACA is the closest we've ever got to universal coverage," he added. "I'm sure Michael Moore would be happy if it passes. My prediction is they will strike down the individual mandate and maintain everything else."
Many critics see the measure as too heavily increasing the role of government and adding to bureaucracy while doing little to control costs.
Wendell Potter might seem an unlikely ally for Moore. He worked for insurance giant Cigna Corp. for almost 15 years.
The further he moved up the chain, he says, the more his job started to pick at his conscience.
He became concerned about strategies and loopholes that he says allowed insurers to avoid paying for care, or to drive up consumer rates so high as to leave many uninsured.
His job was to defend these tactics, which he eventually "couldn't in good conscience keep doing," and so he quit, without having a Plan B. He now uses his years of inside experience to speak about the health care industry.
A Cigna spokesman had no comment about the documentary or Potter.
Potter says that he had to do significant damage control, especially because the patient was a young child. He also acknowledges that the company knew that once the movie stopped being screened, the negative attention would "blow over."
If You Go
What: "Still Sicko After All These Years" with Michael Moore, Wendell Potter, and the subjects of Sicko
When: 7 to 9 p.m. Saturday
Where: Plays and Players Theater, 1714 Delancey St.
Cost: Minimum $40 donation, all proceeds go to Public Assets Institute and Healthcare-NOW
Website: https://secure.qgiv.com/for/paievent/event/7893/