Health insurers worried sick over Michael Moore film

Filmmaker Michael Moore, on July 6, sent out a copy of a confidential memo forwarded to his office by an employee of Capital Blue Cross. The memo, intercepted by a Blue Cross worker, was written and circulated by the company’s vice president of corporate communications, Barclay Fitzpatrick. His assignment was to go and watch Sicko, observe the audience’s reaction, and then suggest a plan of action for how the health insurance industry should deal with the movie.

The film is a searing indictment of the role of private insurance companies in the delivery of costly and substandard health care to the American public, and it shows how people in Britain, Canada, France, and Cuba enjoy health care superior to that available in the United States.

The Blue Cross vice president appeared on the verge of depression as he wrote, “You would have to be dead to be unaffected by Moore’s movie.” “Sicko,” Fitzpatrick wrote, “leaves audiences feeling ashamed to be a capitalist, and part of a ‘me’ society instead of a ‘we’ society.”

The Blue Cross VP wrote further in his memo: “In typical Moore fashion, government and business leaders are behind a conspiracy to keep the little guy down and dominated while they get rich.” “No. You don’t say! That can’t be!” Michael Moore said in response.

Moore’s film presents the picture of a health insurance industry dedicated to denying claims in the name of profit. It exposes how the companies call routine treatments “experimental,” how they call new illnesses “pre-existing conditions,” and how they single out application errors and omissions—all in an effort to deny treatment and increase their profits.

The film shows how Blue Cross, specifically, denied many claims for incredible reasons, turning down life-saving treatment for a woman simply because she was “too fat.” Fitzpatrick’s memo discusses reaction of the public after the film showing he attended. He expressed alarm that “people—complete strangers—started mingling and talking to each other, making remarks like ‘I didn’t know that the insurance companies did that.’”

He continues, “The impact on small business decision makers, our members, the community, and our employees could be significant. Ignoring its impact might be a successful strategy only if it flops, but that has not been the history of Moore’s films. If popular, the movie will have a negative impact on our image in this community.”

Moore, in response, challenged Capital Blue Cross to a debate.

No more secret memos and hand-wringing about the millions seeing Sicko,” he said, “Just me and your CEO openly debating the merits of a system that kills thousands of innocent Americans every year.”

Moore also told the folks at Blue Cross that he hoped they wouldn’t mind his sharing the Fitzpatrick memo with the people of the United States. Not too much regarding Sicko seems to be going as the insurance execs had hoped. On July 6, the day Michael Moore released his copy of the secret Blue Cross memo, the movie opened in an additional 100 cities for a total of over 700 screens across the United States. Attendance went up a whopping 56% on the Fourth of July, higher than any other film in theaters.

“But don’t be scared, and certainly don’t be ashamed to be a capitalist,” Moore wrote to Fitzpatrick, adding, “Greed is good! Especially good for you. There’s nothing like having the pre-existing condition of being rich, should you ever get sick and need help.”

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CONTRIBUTOR

John Wojcik

John Wojcik is Editor-in-Chief of People's World. He joined the staff as Labor Editor in May 2007 after working as a union meat cutter in northern New Jersey. There, he served as a shop steward and a member of a UFCW contract negotiating committee. In the 1970s and '80s, he was a political action reporter for the Daily World, this newspaper's predecessor, and was active in electoral politics in Brooklyn, New York.