Controversial filmmaker Michael Moore (“Fahrenheit 9/11”) focuses on a number of case studies of people who have, for one reason or another, not received the health care they need. Some, who had health care, found out that their insurance did not cover certain procedures or conditions. Some are broke: One middle-aged couple has moved in with their daughter because they simply have to live somewhere. Some, whose surviving loved ones appear on camera, are dead.

Moore traces the advent of HMOs. (That’s an acronym that’s been around so long I honestly had to look up its meaning: Health Maintenance Organizations are managed-care groups that have a network of providers.) We hear President Nixon discussing managed health-care plans in 1971 from the Oval Office.

Moore’s plan is a simple one: We know that a health-care crisis exists, at least for the 50 million Americans who don’t have health-care insurance, in the United States. So why not take  what’s working in other countries and apply it to our system?

Moore visits France, England, Canada and Cuba (where we meet Che Guevara’s daughter, who is a physician). In all these countries, he finds people who tell him that they appreciate universal health care. Moore goes on house calls with a doctor in France.

This time, Moore isn’t on screen as much. And he lets his subjects tell their own stories as they relay their tragic tales of seeking care. It’s impossible to define the most poignant moment, but one of the most memorable is the testimony of a health-claims investigator who knows that a man died because she denied his treatment.

Moore’s target is reform, not a blast at the right or the left. Both take their lumps as Moore informs us how many legislators have been “bought” by health-care interests. Moore aims at a system badly in need of a transfusion of compassion and justice. He points out that the United States is the only developed nation that does not have universal health care.

You’ll remember the people in this movie for a long, long time, especially the wife who learned that, because her husband was denied treatment, realized that he didn’t have long to live. No other scene in any film this year could match the simple sequence of her memory of discovering her husband in the bathroom, crying because he knew he was going to die.

Moore handles the subject matter deftly, with drama, moments of laugh-out-loud humor and perfectly timed music to enhance the show’s various moods.

Of course, controversies about the validity of Moore’s film have begun. For example, the Pacific Research Institute, which is according to its news release “a non-profit, non-partisan group,” says that, although “Michael Moore paints a picture of an efficient Canadian government-run system … The reality is that in Canada health care is rationed; there are long waiting lists for doctors; Canadians have limited access to the latest equipment and drugs; and the health outcomes from many diseases such as cancer are inferior when compared to the U.S.”

You’ll have to judge for yourself. So take a look. And take a tissue.

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