Health care industry braces for Sicko.

Think Progress » Health care industry braces for Sicko.

Health care industry braces for Sicko.

The U.S. health-care industry has the June 29 premiere of Michael Moore’s new film Sicko “circled on its calendar… For-profit providers of health care are the controversial and award-winning filmmaker’s latest target.”

“I don’t think Michael Moore set out to make a balanced movie,” said Karen Ignagni, president America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade group. “He set out to make a movie about government-run systems and imposing them on the United States as the solution to the health-care crisis.” […]

Managed-health-care provider Amerigroup Corp.’s chairman and chief executive, Jeff McWaters, in his remarks at a recent investment-banking conference, listed the film’s coming release among the “headline risks” for the industry overall.

The trade group that represents the drug industry, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, issued a statement last month deriding both the movie and Moore himself. […]

Moore “has no intention of being fair and balanced,” [the group’s vice president Ken] Johnson said.

In the run-up to a Washington DC screening of Sicko, Moore has taken out a front-page ad listing dozens of health care lobbyists by name, inviting them to watch the film.