The Politics of Art & Authenticity

I love watching documentaries.  It’s one of my guilty pleasures.  So when Professor Davis told us that we would be going to the IFC theatre to see The Waiting Room, directed by Peter Nicks, I was pretty excited.  The film shows one day in the emergency room of Highlands Hospital, in Oakland, California.  Throughout the entire day the waiting room is completely full.

It gives the audience an insight on how the other half of society must seek medical help, without any insurance.  Numerous patients’s stories are told throughout the film, and it makes people see that everyone has a story and struggle.  The documentary definitely served its purpose on exploring Obamacare and the general health care policy in America.  I know for myself, and hopefully for a lot of other viewers, my opinions of health care policy have definitely changed after viewing this film.

We see a man in his 20s, planning on getting married to his girlfriend, and has just found out he has a testicular tumor.  Neither him nor his girlfriend have insurance and the tumor must be removed immediately.  When I saw how long it took before the hospital staff was able to take care of this man my heart dropped.

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I also felt sorry for the man who was sitting for hours in the waiting room with a bullet lodged in his hip.  And for the staff, this is just a normal day.

There aren’t enough public hospitals across the nation to help all the people in need of medical attention, and it makes me see why health care initiatives, like Obamacare, have been formed.  There are so many people struggling each day to get by, and they’re trying to find jobs to get out of unemployment but it’s difficult.  America shouldn’t deny people basic health care because they can’t afford it.  One father was so worried about his sick daughter, and the audience could see is pain in knowing that he can’t provide the things he wants for his children because he’s out of work.

I know there’s also the other side to the story.  Some people take advantage of government policies and don’t try to make their situation any better.  There was the one patient who was a drug addict and had over a dozen visits to the hospital in that year alone, all due to alcohol poisoning or an overdose of drugs.  It’s people like these that make tax paying citizens annoyed that they are giving money to people who are abusing the system.  It brings up the question if the good outweighs the bad in the health care situation?

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My answer is yes.  I might be a little optimistic and look at the good in life, but why should the people who work hard and try with everything they have be punished?  Even if only one person’s life is changed for the better due to Obamacare, it’s one more person than being no one at all.  I feel like a lot of the people against Obamacare just look at the numbers and think it’s too much money for too many people, but they have to see that each person has their own story and issue.  They have to look at the situation on the personal level and realize that it’s worth the extra taxes to help hundreds of thousands of Americans every single day.

I think what I like most about documentaries is that it makes people think and look into the life of someone else.  And The Waiting Room definitely accomplishes this task.  Documentaries should  leave an impact on the viewers and make them want to do something about the situation they just saw.  It might sound a little crazy, but I would love to be able to make a documentary one day that will impact people’s lives and motivate them to create great change, just as this film made me want to tell people how much Obamacare helps citizens of America.

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