This is a program that every grotesquely overpaid health insurance CEO thug -- and all of the other heartless 1 per cent-ers in the banking industry -- should be watching:
Yes, BBC Panorama's recent "Poor America" program presents the stunning poverty and inequality in the, say it with me, "richest country on Earth."
A man who may die of an infection and needs urgent surgery:
"But if I go to the emergency room, they're going to send me a bill..."
His wife in tears: "I mean what are they gonna do to us if we can't pay the bill, you know? They can't come eat us. They can't kill us and eat us. They can't come take our home away because we owe a hospital bill...right?"
And, if you can believe it, the health insurance nightmare that is America is not the worst part: children interviewed explain how they go to bed hungry, they have been forced to eat rats, and sometimes mix ketchup packets -- grabbed from their school cafeterias at lunch -- with water to make "soup."
America should be fucking ashamed, but instead we have the likes of Rick Santorum telling us that Americans are spending money on iPads instead of health care.
Luckily, we have heroes in the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Physicians for a National Health Program -- planning for a single-payer health care system that would, arguably, do more than anything else to fight poverty and deprivation in this country.
And, the man quoted above, he chose to go home when he was told by the hospital billing department that saving his leg from gangrene would cost $20,000.
Shame on us...Lord help us.
UPDATE: Remote Area Medical is prominently featured. This video is exceptionally well done: