Unnatural Causes... is inequity making us sick (2008)

UNNATURAL CAUSES in a 7-part series bundled into 4 viewing hours  that goes beyond popular conceptions linking health to medical care, lifestyles and genes to explore evidence of other more powerful determinants: the social conditions in which we are born, live and work.

 It is a powerful documentary that is comprised of the following episodes:

The Waiting Room (2102)

"The crowded emergency room of Highland Hospital in Oakland, Calif., is the setting of Peter Nicks’s wrenching documentary "The Waiting Room." Shot in 2010 over five months, the film, which has no narrator, titles, statistical analysis or overt editorializing, observes a composite day there during which nearly 250 patients — most of them uninsured — pour in." From NY Times review. 81 minutes.
I was lucky to receive an advance copy of this important and memorable film.  It is a must see for all health care professionals and others interested in the deliver of healthcare.

Money Driven Medicine (2009)

Larry Altman alerted us to this ninety minute "documentary [which] provides the essential introduction Americans need to become knowledgeable participants in healthcare reform, now and in the years ahead. Produced by Academy Award winner Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side; Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) and based on Maggie Mahar's acclaimed book, Money Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much, the film offers a behind-the-scenes look at how our 2.6 trillion dollar a year healthcare system went so terribly wrong and what it will take to fix it. 2009

The U.S. spends twice as much per person on healthcare as the average developed nation, fully one-sixth of our GDP - yet our outcomes, especially for chronic diseases, are very often worse. What makes us different? The U.S. is the only industrialized nation that has chosen to turn medicine into a largely unregulated, for-profit business."

“Money-Driven Medicine is one of the strongest documentaries I have seen in years and could not be more timely. The more people who see and talk about it, the more likely we are to get serious and true health care reform.” Bill Moyers. Trailer

The cartoon PIG, stands for "Pharmaceutical Company Giant" and was drawn by retired Mad Man, Gene Blasen from Borth Bennington, Vermont.

We just saw this film. It is brilliant and extraordinarily important. It should be available in a few months and will likely be shown on PBS stations.  Here are my Notes on MDM.

Once in Afghanistan (2008)

From Web Site: "We walked in on weddings, on funerals... whatever was going on and vaccinated everyone."

Returned Peace Corps Volunteers recall their experiences as female members of Afghan male vaccinator teams in the late 60s. The women vividly recall trying to convince the women to be vaccinated and their dependence on the Afghan counterparts and the people in the villages.
Their stories and photographs go behind the walls where people of completely different backgrounds could recognize one another in spite of their differences. In a world in which messages of hate travel faster than ever before, this is a message of understanding. 2008 70 minutes

Health, Money and Fear (2009)

Our health care system should be more about health and less about money. Instead of chaos, driven by profits, Somebody needs to be in charge of making sure we are getting the most health and the least suffering for our public health care dollars.

The system is beyond broken or sick. It's dumb. We spend more than twice as much per capita than most developed countries, the taxpayer is already paying for 60% of the total bill, and, by any measure of public health, our results are poor. Driven by technology and fear of liability, physicians order tests and treatments without regard for cost. Patients and families embrace unreasonable expectations. Drug companies successfully market expensive drugs that, at best, are marginally more effective than less expensive, older ones. As our primary care providers continue to disappear, increasing fragmentation of care, costs will rise and outcomes will worsen. Most significantly, the insurance industry adds nothing to "health" and greatly to total cost, which is increasingly a burden to our economy and threat to the financial solvency of our government.

Produced by Paul Hochfeld, this 48 minute documentary calls on some of the top U.S. experts in health care. It is well-worth viewing. Health, Money and Fear can be ordered directly from Dr. Hochfeld for a donation of $0 - 25. Well worth viewing. We sent a check for $25 (for the record)

Unnatural Causes

Unnatural Causes is the acclaimed documentary series broadcast by PBS and now used by thousands of organizations around the country to tackle the root causes of the United States' alarming socioeconomic and racial inequities in health.

The four-hour series crisscrosses the nation uncovering startling new findings that suggest there is much more to our health than bad habits, health care, or unlucky genes. The social circumstances in which we are born, live, and work can actually get under our skin and disrupt our physiology as much as germs and viruses.

This documentary sounds the alarm about the extent of our glaring socioeconomic and racial inequities in health and searches for their root causes. But those causes are not what we might expect. Unnatural Causes investigates findings that are shaking up conventional understanding of what really makes us healthy or sick.

This is well-worth watching. It will open your eyes to profound problems that affect us all.

Sick Around the World (20080

From NetFlix: With the U.S. health care system needing urgent care, "Frontline" looks to other leading capitalist democracies to see how their health care systems operate and whether those systems might be a model for much-needed reform at home. But are Americans willing to accept taxation or socialized medicine? Will U.S. insurance providers undermine change? Correspondent T.R. Reid examines systems in the U.K., Japan, Switzerland, Germany and Taiwan. 2008 60 minutes.

This is in the same vein as Michael Moore's "Sicko" but it is less over the top. Very well done and worth viewing. Trailer

John Q

From Netflix: "In director Nick Cassavetes's gripping social drama, blue-collar worker John Q. (Denzel Washington) finds that his meager insurance won't cover his son's emergency heart transplant. Desperate, he holds a hospital's emergency room hostage until doctors agree to perform the surgery. Meanwhile, gung ho police chief Gus Monroe (Ray Liotta) and hostage negotiator Frank Grimes (Robert Duvall) try to diffuse the situation amid a media frenzy.

This film addresses health care costs and the inequity of coverage that many people face in the U.S. It shows how crazy and frustrating the system is and how people get left out in the cold.

Trailer Netflix

The Hospital

Nefllix Blurb: George C. Scott stars in this black comedy as Herbert Bock, a suicidal doctor who struggles to find meaning in his life while a murderer stalks the halls of his hospital. Herbert's life is on a downward spiral, but just as he contemplates killing himself, patients at the hospital begin dying -- apparently from erroneous treatments they're being mysteriously ministered. Diana Rigg co-stars in this Academy Award winner for Best Screen Play 1971 103 minutes

This is a classic, timely today, too.

NY Times Review December 15, 1971

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu

The plot of Romanian director Cristi Puiu's real-time drama is simple, following the travails of an ailing old man (veteran actor Ion Fiscuteanu) who waits for his illness to overtake him as a weary paramedic (Luminta Gheorghiu) shuttles him between hospitals. Inspired by filmmaker Eric Rohmer's Six Moral Tales, Puiu's slyly metaphorical satire is the first installment of the planned series Six Stories from the Bucharest Suburbs. 2006 150 minutes

This is a darkly droll and sad glimpse into health care in Romania.

The Barbarian Invasions

This is a vastly entertaining and intellectual movie in French and from Montreal. It is a sequel after seventeen years of Arcand's 1986 film The Decline of the American Empire. The plot revolves around a libertine professor's battle with terminal cancer, and his estranged son's efforts, after reluctantly returning from London at the request of Remy's ex-wife Louise, to make his dying father more comfortable in his last days. His son proves willing to go to any lengths to achieve this, navigating Quebec's healthcare system, and in the process he gathers the various other friends and family members from Remy's past who come to visit and comfort him. During Remy's last days, he and his friends travel to the cottage of the first film, and discuss philosophy, politics, and past sexual and intellectual exploits.