OK. I admit I haven't seen Michael Moore's latest film “Sicko” yet, but from the reviews and all the hype on TV, I'm afraid my hero's halo has slipped completely off his head.

While everything described in the movie is undeniably true about our critically ill health care system, Moore's solution to the problem is nothing more than a Medicare Plan on steroids, i.e., socialized medicine like they have in Communist Cuba and that semi-police state north of the border, Canada.

So welcome to the USSR in the USA.

My personal theory is that the former USSR fell from its own paper weight.

The Reds invented the term “red tape” in case you didn't know.

And as anyone over 65 or poor can tell you, Medicare and Medicaid are nightmares of red tape.

Mountains of unintelligible rules and regs - plan ABCDEFG, etc. Not even the bureaucrats who wrote the rules understand them.

In case no one has noticed, whether you're on Medicare or have private insurance, the quality of “health” care (a euphemism for a “sick” way of piling up profits for the HMOs and drug companies took over the FDA.

So, Moore's lame-brained “solution” will do nothing to curb the 1,000 ads a day for drugs on TV; nor will it curb our government reps from taking bribes; nor will it stop the FDA from rubber-stamping untested drugs to be released to an unsuspecting public who are nothing more than human Guinea pigs.

What I had hoped against hope would be the result of Moore's

landmark movie would have been to put a muzzle and leash on the

pharmaceuticals and HMOs to

make them accountable for the

myriad of cold-blooded “mistakes”

that end up killing countless Americans.

Profit, moola, dirty lucre, politics, bribes, hand-greasing, lobbying, etc. need to be surgically removed from the healthcare system for the common good.

Our good. The life we save may be our own.

Lucille Povero

Seneca Falls