PBS' Bill Moyers' Journal will air Critical Condition tonight, a documentary film by POV and documentary filmmaker Roger Weisberg.
Roger Weisberg's Critical Condition is a powerful, eye-opening look at the health care crisis in America. In an election season when health care reform has become one of the nation's most hotly debated issues, Critical Condition lays out the human consequences of an increasingly expensive and inaccessible system. using the same cinema verite style he employed with Waging a Living (POV, 2006), Weisberg allows ordinary hard-working Americans to tell their harrowing stories of battling critical illnesses without health insurance.
The four people profiled in Critical Condition live in places as diverse as Los Angeles; Austin, Texas; and Bethlehem, Penn., but they face distressingly similar obstacles to surviving without health insurance. It is through their eyes and words that we are taken through the gaping holes in the health care system, where care is often delayed or denied. Ultimately, the unforgettable subjects of Critical Condition discover that being uninsured can cost them their jobs, health, homes, savings, and even their lives.
Though Bill Moyer's website is not clear about it, I believe he will include some updates about the four individuals who are portrayed. (The film Critical Condition originally aired last September.)
As the film illustrates, the country spends over $2 trillion a year — over $6,000 per person — on health care, yet is the only major industrial nation without universal coverage. Forty-seven million Americans live without health insurance, and 80 percent of them are from working families who either cannot afford insurance premiums or lose their insurance exactly when they need it most: when they fall ill and can no longer work.
Despite spending 50 percent more on health care than any other country in the world, America ranks 15th in preventable death, 24th in life expectancy, and 28th in infant mortality. The struggles of the four families profiled in Critical Condition put a human face on just what these statistics really mean for ordinary Americans.
Link to Bill Moyers' site The entire program can be viewed here.
Link to Critical Conditon website
Bio on Roger Weisberg:
Veteran documentary filmmaker Weisberg's 30 previous films have earned more than 100 awards, including Emmy, duPont-Columbia and Peabody awards, as well as two Academy Award nominations (in 2001 for SOUND AND FURY and in 2003 for WHY CAN'T WE BE A FAMILY AGAIN?). He has made the American health care system a special focus of his work with such films as WHAT'S AILING MEDICINE, OUR CHILDREN AT RISK, BORDERLINE MEDICINE, WHO LIVES, WHO DIES and CAN'T AFFORD TO GROW OLD. Recent productions include WAGING A LIVING about low-wage workers struggling to achieve the elusive American dream, ROSEVELT’S AMERICA about the efforts of a Liberian refugee to build a new life for his family in America, AGING OUT about teens who leave foster care and suddenly discover that they’re on their own, and WITH NO DIRECTION HOME about the efforts of an abused and neglected teenager to take control of his life. You can find out more about Weisberg's films at Public Policy Productions.