Michael Moore's Film Sicko and Jane Addams, Analysis of Social Issues

Analysis of social issues and potential change.
The vertical, social structure of stratification limits the ability of working-class and unemployed people to get adequate health care. Those who can afford adequate coverage and treatment oftentimes feel that they are doing the right thing by providing only for themselves or their family. Their belated ethics tells them to look out for number one, and in consequence, they “may...ignore duties to community, to sacrifice the rights of other people for the interests of one’s family, [and] to fail to see that one’s family can be kept safe only if one’s community, state and nation are safe” (Lengermann and Niebrugge, “Class Notes Addams,” Page 5). While this form of apathy or selfishness, the individual ethic, is common, it was better suited to “[an earlier] mode of societal organization of material production” (Lengermann and Niebrugge, “Class Notes Addams,” Page 5).
To assess the issue of healthcare, a better social ethic must be advocated. This new standard “must take account of [the] way material production is organized-which is in combination; that is, that production has been ‘socialized.’ Goods and services now produced by people working together. The complexity of relationships requires an ethic that takes account of that complexity” (Lengermann and Niebrugge, “Class Notes Addams,” Page 3). What simpler way is there to assess the complexity of these relationships than with a system as straightforward as universal healthcare. Equal treatment for everyone is guaranteed, regardless of any preexisting conditions, whether they be financial, social, health, or other. But, as Addams says, in order for each person to adopt a social ethic like this one “requires an expansion of [one’s] circle of caring, [the] circle for whom one feels responsible” (Lengermann and Niebrugge, “Class Notes Addams,” Page 4). This is necessary because the only means of achieving universal healthcare is through hiking taxes.
A strategy that Addams might suggest is the formation of a social movement. In order to attain equity, Addams keeps that “a valuable side of life pertaining to” one group of people should not be sacrificed for the benefit of another group (Jane Addams 1902: 57). Healthcare falls under Addams’ emphasis on the equality of ‘will and desire’, just one of several ‘valuable sides of life’ she identifies. Patricia Lengermann and Gillian Niebrugge call will and desire “people’s capacity for agency, for knowing their own minds” (Lengermann and Niebrugge, “Class Notes Addams,” Page 3). Healthcare, therefore, is an attribute of what Lengermann and Niebrugge call the “right to participate in decision making” (“Class Notes Addams,” Page 3). Many people would prefer universal healthcare over the healthcare system presently in place, and their right to participate in decision making could be emphasized through a social movement.


References
Addams, Jane. 1902. Democracy and Social Ethics. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Lengermann, Patricia and Jill Niebrugge-Brantley. 2005. “Class Notes Jane Addams as a Critical Social Thinker, Spring 2008 American University, Washington D.C.” (https://blackboard.american.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_43370_1%26url%3D).