This week on CounterSpin: Michael Moore's new film SiCKO is premiering around the country, delivering a blunt message: the U.S. health care system is broken. But Moore doesn't just want to fill movie theaters; he wants to spur a debate about health care policy—namely, getting rid of the private health care system in favor of a public, government-financed one. That'll be a tough sell to the mainstream media; we'll talk to Don McCanne of Physicians for a National Health Program about SiCKO and the debate over health care.

Also on CounterSpin today, why doesn't the United States have publicly-financed health care? Some in the media say Americans are just different; but of course there's more to it than that. We'll look at the propaganda effort to defeat national health care just after World War II, when policies supported by the president, congress and the American people succumbed to a corporate right propaganda blitz. We'll talk to Professor Stuart Ewen of the CUNY Graduate Center and Hunter College.

Links:

— Michael Moore's SiCKO

— PR!: A Social History Of Spin, by Stuart Ewen