Michael Moore brought “Sicko” to Capitol Hill on June 20.

He was the star witness at a hearing Representative John Conyers held on universal single-payer health care.

“The need for universal health care has never been more urgent,” Conyers said, citing the 47 million Americans without health insurance and 50 million more who are underinsured. “According to the Institute of Medicine, 18,000 Americans die each year as a direct consequence of being uninsured. These facts are unacceptable in the richest country in the world.”

Conyers pledged to hold a series of hearings on this urgent issue to rally support for his Medicare for All bill, H.R. 676.

And he kicked the series off with Michael Moore, whose “Sicko” starts running in theaters across the country on June 29.

Moore showed clips from his film, depicting shocking callousness on the part of hospitals and insurance companies—and the heartbreaking consequences. He also brought some of the people he interviewed on screen to testify.

One was Dawnelle Keys.

“On May 6, 1993, my 18-month old daughter, Mychelle, became very ill,” Keys said. “She was vomiting, had diarrhea, was having trouble breathing and a very high temperature. I called an ambulance, which took her to the nearest emergency room at Martin Luther King/Drew Medical Center hospital in Los Angeles. The doctor believed she probably had a bacterial infection, which could be treated with antibiotics. But he did not conduct a simple blood culture or treat her with antibiotics because our health plan, Kaiser, told him not to. You see, MLK hospital was not a Kaiser facility. . . . Mychelle became sicker and sicker. She became lethargic and unresponsive. I pleaded for them to treat her and still no one would give her antibiotics. Over two hours later, Mychelle had a seizure. Finally, an hour after that, Mychelle was transferred by ambulance to Kaiser. Within 15 minutes of arriving, she died.”

Moore also brought members of the California Nurses Association, who are campaigning with him about the need for universal care. Some were wiping away tears as Keys finished, as were others in the hearing room.

Dr. Quentin Young of Physicians for National Health Policy also testified, and Conyers praised the work of that group, along with a group of medical students for universal health care.

“We’ve gained some ground today,” Conyers said. “We’ve gotten more members to co-sponsor this bill.”

He and Moore both predicted that as “Sicko” gets seen by more and more people, the pressure would rise on Congress to finally do something on universal health care.

But Conyers had a wise word of caution at the end about the corporate forces that should not be underestimated, a point that Ralph Nader made just an hour earlier to me when I stopped by his office.

“We’re on the right sight, but in a corporatized governmental system, we need to realize what we’re up against,” Conyers said. “You don’t think we could have closed down this misbegotten war by now? The same forces are behind it that are resisting universal health care.”

When the hearing was ending, Moore said he had to go to Union Station theater, where he was offering to show “Sicko” for free to any insurance industry or pharmaceutical industry lobbyist. “There are four of those lobbyists for every Representative in Congress,” Moore added.

Photographs by Jefry Andres Wright, copyright.