The Los Angeles premiere of "Sicko" at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater was over, the audience on their feet and the "stars" -- a.k.a. underserved, suffering patients and whistle-blowing insurance company employees -- had taken their bows.
Michael Moore, wearing a suit-minus-tie and sans his signature cap, was looking at them with a paternal glow.
Then came the lone question, shouted from the audience.
"What do we do?"
For Moore, it's a no-brainer. He wants the insurance industry out of the picture. He rattled off two bills, a kind of "Medicare for All" plan (SB 840) proposed by state Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica) and a similar national bill in Congress sponsored by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich). Both bills propose a system modeled on Medicare, funded by tax dollars, with guaranteed benefits extended to Americans of all ages.
One of two people invited by the Los Angeles Times to view the premiere and offer their insights and expertise said she agreed with Moore. Dr. Karen Lamp, medical director of the Venice Family Clinic, which provides free care to 23,000 uninsured and underinsured people each year, says she believes in universal coverage.
"I was ashamed at watching the experiences these people had," Lamp said as we brushed past actors Larry David and John Cusack to nab a table on the theater's patio. The crowd inside clustered around Moore.
But for someone on the front lines of trying to catch those who fall through the cracks, the dramatic examples on the screen were not revelations. "I actually didn't think the stories were all that extreme," Lamp says.
Jeffrey Wasserman, the other invited viewer, was more circumspect.
"There's not just one way to do this," he said, passing up the sushi offered by a waiter. A senior policy researcher for the Santa Monica think tank Rand Corp., Wasserman is working on a project comparing just about every healthcare plan proposed by states, congressional leaders and presidential candidates.
Because the goal of the Rand project is to put forth objective measures of all proposals, he keeps his opinions to himself.
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Complex problems
As Moore's movie points out, the problems associated with America's system are economic, social and cultural. They go beyond the boundaries of the provision of medical care. We see a case of patient dumping, shown through the lens of surveillance video snippets from Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles, in which a disoriented woman in a hospital gown is dropped off in a cab to wander aimlessly. No healthcare reform plan will solve America's homeless problem, Wasserman says: "People have nowhere to go, they have no social support."
