Moore film attacks US health care, wider society

Director Michael Moore says the US health care system is driven by greed in his new documentary SiCKO, and asks of Americans in general, "Where is our soul?"

He also said he could go to jail for taking a group of volunteers suffering ill health after helping in the September 11, 2001, rescue efforts, on an unauthorised trip to Cuba, where they received exemplary treatment at virtually no cost.

The controversial filmmaker is back in Cannes, where he won the film festival's highest honour in 2004 with his anti-Bush polemic Fahrenheit 9/11.

In SiCKO he turns his attention to health, asking why 50 million Americans, 9,000,000 of them children, live without cover, while those that are insured are often driven to poverty by spiralling costs or wrongly refused treatment.

But the movie, which has taken Cannes by storm, goes further by portraying a country where the government is more interested in personal profit and protecting big business than caring for its citizens, many of whom cannot afford health insurance.

SiCKO uses humour and tragic personal stories to get the point across, and had a packed audience variously laughing and in tears. There was loud applause at the end of the two-hour documentary, which is out of the main Cannes competition.

Moore was asked by journalists why he painted such a rosy picture of other countries' health systems, including Britain, France, Canada and Cuba, and the implied criticism is likely to be raised again. But he defended his methods.

"I recognise that there are flaws in your system but that's not for me to correct; that's for you to correct," he told a Canadian reporter.

One section of the film explains how a US man severed the tip of two fingers in an accident and was told he would have to pay $12,000 to re-attach the end of his ring finger, and $60,000 to re-attach that of his index finger.

"Being a hopeless romantic, Rick chose his ring finger," Moore quipped in a typically sardonic voiceover.

It also follows a woman whose young daughter falls seriously ill but who said she was refused admission to a general hospital and instructed to go to a private one instead. By the time she got to the second hospital, it was too late to save the girl.

One of the most controversial passages of the film, due to be released in the United States on June 29, compares health care in the United States to that which Islamic militant suspects receive at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

"I think when Americans see this they are not going to focus on Cuba or Fidel Castro," Moore said, referring to the controversy surrounding his trip to Cuba, which has prompted a US government investigation.

Moore added that he was taking the investigation seriously.