A group of 9/11 volunteers follows Michael Moore on his quest to get them the same health care available to prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay prison camps.

The figures evolve depending on who's out of a job and who's able to afford the co-pays, but at least 43.6 million Americans live their lives uninsured and hoping for the best, which means our health care crisis resembles a societal gambling addiction. Michael Moore's new film "Sicko" doesn't formulate a way out of this heartless craps game we're playing. It is, however, a very entertaining position paper, and a reminder that we should do better by more of our citizenry.

"Sicko" represents a subtle but distinct shift in tone for Moore. Realizing he has in his mitts a great and genuinely bipartisan issue, the writer-director from Flint, Mich., moderates his attack strategy for the better. As always he indulges in various short-cut comparisons, and too much of his patented, thuddingly ironic voiceover commentary. Yet when he finds the right way to crystallize the right point, the results are hilarious and on-point. At one point in "Sicko," Moore follows a Michigan resident as she crosses the border into Canada where the drugs are cheaper. After all, Moore says, defiantly, "We're Americans. We go into other countries when we need to."

Pundits on the right dislike Moore, I think, because they recognize his rhetorical tactics and in many ways admire their effectiveness (as do many on the left, and in the center). The message of "Fahrenheit 9/11," Moore's most profitable film to date, was brutally simple: Do not re-elect George Bush. Despite $222 million in worldwide box-office receipts, Moore's mocking outrage didn't convince enough voters to get in the president's way. At the Cannes Film Festival last month I talked to Moore about the aftermath of "Fahrenheit 9/11" and the ramifications of Bush's second term. Moore seemed genuinely shaken up and even chagrined, and he admitted that he wanted a less shrill tone with "Sicko" as well as less of himself on screen.

The bear-like filmmaker remains off-camera for the first half, during which we meet a variety of poorly insured or uninsured Americans and hear their horror stories owing to everything from cancer to a buzz-saw accident. Then Moore and crew take us on the road to Canada to spend time with, among others, Moore's Canadian relatives, who always take out travel insurance when visiting Michigan, just in case.

In London, Moore thumbnail-sketches the history of the National Health Service and its humanistic glories. One line guaranteed to depress every Walgreens pharmacist in America is spoken when a British pharmacist gamely puts up with Moore's interrogations regarding the limited ancillary products on his shelves. Where's the cereal? Where are the cleaning supplies? The reply: "I haven't been trained that many years to sell detergent."

Like all Moore's films, "Sicko" mashes up archival footage (here we get some great AMA-sponsored scare stuff from the '50s about the evils of socialized medicine, narrated by Ronald Reagan) with ruthlessly effective interviews featuring those victimized one way or another by insurance companies and the American political system. As in previous Moore films, here the director cannot resist that fifth or sixth close-up of the heartbroken wife/mother/partner in tears. Also, the decision to use Barber's "Adagio for Strings" (the "Platoon" music), however briefly, was a poor one. There's only so much suffering one issue can take.

You may have heard about the Guantanamo Bay excursion in "Sicko," in which Moore takes some volunteer 9/11 rescue workers suffering from respiratory ailments to Gitmo so that they can receive the same high-quality treatment afforded those imprisoned there. How that stunt plays out capsulizes the undeniable strengths and nagging weaknesses of Moore's work. Really: Was it too much to ask to paint life under Castro's Cuba as something less than Utopian? ("Sicko" could not have been made in Cuba, period.) You don't have to be a conservative to take issue with the way Moore apples-to-oranges so many economic comparisons in his movie, or the way he relies on the easy comment. "Everywhere else, [people] seem to take care of each other," Moore says late in the film. Everywhere else?

These things hurt because Moore's basic point is a sharp and necessary one. Surely we can adapt the best of what other countries offer when it comes to the health and well-being of our people. The "how" part of this isn't exactly overanalyzed in "Sicko." I wish its maker were more of a journalist and less of an entertainer. Yet he's enough of both to make "Sicko" a better, more focused effort than "Fahrenheit 9/11" or "Bowling for Columbine." Increasingly, the man from Flint appears interested in pinning down his arguments with something more than pure vitriol. Yet the old muckraking spirit is there. The best of this picture is likely to make you nuts, in a good way.

Get showtimes and movie details for "Sicko."