The Politics of Art & Authenticity

The Waiting Room directed by Peter Nicks is an award winning documentary depicting one, twenty four hour stretch in an overworked Oakland hospital emergency room. The film is advertised as “24 hours. 241 patients. One stretched ER.” After about an hour through the documentary I started to feel sick. It may have been the amount of sick people on screen. It may have been seeing the medical staff fail at saving the young boy who was shot… I think it was a culmination of many things, but the predominant reason I felt sick was because of Nicks cutting from one story to another. His choice of following the patients’ stories in the way the patients are handled by doctors– in a discombobulated merry-go-round– made the documentary tedious and almost painful. And in the middle of all the chaos, there was that sweet but stern nurse who was just working another shift– that is the norm. I couldn’t help but notice how many of those people didn’t need to be clogging up the emergency room with their non-emergent issues, but that was the only place they could get medical care without coverage. And then there were the subtle mention by a patient or two of “Obama-care” and the bogus medical insurance industry. This was an interesting choice on Nicks’ part. If you want to learn a lot about the health care system without skewed numbers and politics,  The Waiting Room is the way to go. It puts you in the Oakland hospital, a place you don’t want to be.

courtesy of nytimes.com

http://1morefilmblog.com/wordpress/the-waiting-room-nicks-2012/

Peter Nick’s The Waiting Room was a documentary about the public hospital in Oakland, California. The first person that appeared in the film was this nurse who was full of personality and kindness. She cared for everyone who entered the hospital and tried to make everyone feel better. She was full of life while the waiting room seemed dull. There was a long line of uninsured people waiting to be assessed and it was going to be a long day for her.

It made me sympathize for the uninsured and those are unable to pay for their hospital bills. People wait all day long and get charged so much money because they want to be healthy. It made me realized how much Obama’s Health Care Act can definitely change this. This film showed different situations people were in. There was this man who was denied a surgery from a private hospital because he wasn’t a member. I guess in this society people care more about money than the well-being of others. There was a background story on about how his wife or girlfriend had a miscarriage and this surgery would decrease the chance of reproducing, which made the audience sympathize with him even more.

There was another shocking situation of a 15-year old boy brought into the emergency room and died. It showed the nurses and doctors working as hard as the could to revive this young man. The workers in the hospital want to do what’s best for their patients. There was this man who was on cocaine and amphetamines that was on the verge of death. The doctor wanted to keep him in the longer because he was worried about his well-being after going back out into the world.

I would definitely recommend people to see this documentary, especially those who oppose Obama’s Health Care Act. Maybe it would change their minds.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4a/Poster_for_The_Waiting_Room_Documentary.jpg

Well, my mommy taught me to be honest and hopefully Professor Davis doesn’t fail me for this, but I definitely dozed off for the first 10 minutes of the movie. I blame it on the darkness and coziness of the room

Anyway, once I actually woke up and started watching, I was amazed. That waiting room was PACKED. I felt bad for the doctors and nurses and staff and the people waiting hours and hours just to be seen. It seemed as though this was filmed in one day and if it was I hope it just so happened to be a busy day. Regardless, it looked stressful, unpleasant, and nutty in there. I was surprised more people weren’t filmed throwing fits.

The film in general got me thinking about Obama Care. Now, I’m not crazy about politics and all the shenanigans it entails but I didn’t ever give much thought to people who don’t have health insurance. It’s one of the many things that a lot of us overlook. We don’t think about it because we have health insurance and when we need to see a doctor we don’t think twice about it.

The most touching instance in this movie was the young man diagnosed with testicular cancer whose surgery was cancelled because he didn’t have health insurance. I just wanted to give him a hug. Poor guy. That must be such an awful feeling for him, his girlfriend, his family. Helpless is what I imagine him feeling in this situation.

Most of the people in the film demonstrated people truly in need of health insurance that didn’t have it. People recently laid off from their jobs, people of low-income families, people who just can’t afford this luxury. Now I understand a little more why people are rooting for Obama Care so fervently.

However, I also see the other end of the spectrum in this debate. What about the people who can work and simply don’t want to? The homeless crack/meth addict with a hangover – does he deserve health insurance? Those people that mooch off of tax payers like my parents to acquire benefits from the government? People who really don’t deserve this kind of aid.

The degree of government involvement is also scary. Aren’t we a free market, capitalistic society? The government has nothing to do with private insurance institutions so why get involved now? Obama Care from this point of view has a socialistic, borderline communistic edge to it. Not at all something Americans want for their nation.

It basically comes down to one question: do we help those in need and risk investing our money in people who don’t deserve it or do we ignore this issue and continue living our lives? It’s a difficult question to answer. I’m inclined to ‘do the right thing’ and help out those in need but would that really be the right thing to do?

Seeing this film made me realize why healthcare is such a controversial issue in America today. I don’t think I’ve made up my mind about it just yet but hopefully these politicians know what they’re doing. They probably don’t which is another scary thought…