Admit one: "Sicko" to Sacramento

Get out your designer Gucci hospital gowns and your diamond-studded radiation safety goggles: The red carpet's coming to the Capitol. "Sicko," Michael Moore's latest Mooramentry about America's health-care system, is debuting in Sacramento (as well as lesser metropoli: New York City, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.) on June 12. The big man will be here--and just in time for the state budget conference committee to be finishing up.  It'll be just like Cannes!

Moore's choice of venue isn't hard to grasp, as the Capitol here and in D.C. are enmeshed in debate about cost and availability of health care.  (NYC and L.A. share a slightly different political focus, on universal access to rhytidectomies).  Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez is hosting the premiere and will meet with Moore in the Capitol as well. (Note to Michael Moore: possible next project: "McClintock and Me".)

Don't bet that Moore will have too much enthusiam for Nunez's reform plan--or those of anyone in Sacramento except for single-payer icon Sen. Sheila Kuehl--because Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Democratic leaders have already agreed to build on the existing system of private insurers, which Moore's movie blames for much of American's health-care ills.

Tickets to the premiere of "Sicko" will be $150,000 each, with Insurance covering $8.75 and a co-pay of $149,991.25.

                                                                                                                                                     -- Jordan Rau

Update: During his visit on June 12, Moore will testify at a legislative briefing put on by Kuehl. He'll also participate in -- prepare for a big surprise -- a rally put on by the California Nurses Assn., which supports single-payer, and Physicians for a National Health Program, which, well, take a giant crazy guess about its ideological orientation. Then there's the actual screening; no word yet of an afterparty. The movie opens June 29.