The Waiting Room and the American health care system

My experience with the Canadian health care system has not been positive.  It has been filled with busy doctors who don’t listen and as a result misdiagnose.  I’ve witnessed people who are dying being treated with a complete lack of dignity and grieving loved ones rudely dealt with, (“He’s already dead, if you didn’t know,” a nurse offhandedly said to me as I pushed open the door to my grandpa’s hospital room).  I have known many people who waited hours in waiting rooms just to be told that medical professionals could do nothing for them, and then laughed at when they look for alternative methods to Western medicine to ease their suffering.

My perception of the American health care system was similar – except that they have to pay to be mistreated by professionals.  However, the documentary The Waiting Room somewhat changed my perception.

Cameras filmed the emergency room at the Highland Hospital in Oakland, California, a public hospital, for 24 hours, showing the types of people passing through and the treatment they received from staff.

In The Waiting Room, a nurse’s sense of humour has people in immense pain laughing.  A doctor finds reasons to keep patients in beds if they have nowhere safe to go, unlike in Michael Moore’s documentary about the American health care system, Sicko, which shows patients being dumped in the streets disoriented and confused because they are not insured.

Looking in as a Canadian with undiagnosed, ongoing health problems, I couldn’t help but be jealous.  Sure, they have to wait a long time, but so do we and at least for them at the end of that wait is someone who cares and can give free help.

Dennis Kucinich, the former representative of Ohio, said that the average wait for diagnostic imaging in Canada is 3 weeks, compared to 6 months in the United States.  In The Waiting Room a man with testicular cancer had no wait to get diagnostic imaging.  He went into the public emergency room hoping to have surgery to remove his cancer that day.  The film gave the impression that a man with excruciating pain had had diagnostic imaging procedures done the week prior when he dropped in the emergency room.  He was diagnosed with bone spurs.  It was made clear that the wait for him to see a doctor to discuss surgery would be long.  Still, an overall impression was given that wait times are not unreasonable.

The Waiting Room gave also the impression that everyone could get the health care they needed for free.  Kucinich also said that a quarter of Americans with insurance still cannot afford the medical treatments they need.  For the most part, all Canadians need to worry about is paying for prescriptions, but even then many are covered by provincial government programs.

While this film gives an interesting glance into a day in a public hospital, it is more about individual people than the system as a whole, and therefore cannot be used to compare the American and Canadian health care systems, but rather our own personal experiences.

The lack of commentary stopped the film from showing the American health care system on a greater scale, but it also gave the film objectivity, making it feel more credible than Moore’s documentary on the same topic.

While it could not tell the story of all Americans, the few stories it did tell were compelling.  The people telling their stories were in very vulnerable positions.  They were worried about the health of themselves or loved ones and frustrated by financial situations that led them to that emergency room.  I found myself really, truly caring about these people and their situations.  When a father spoke of his two year old child dying, I wanted to cry for him.  I was so worried about the man with testicular cancer and his partner that I thought about their suffering even when they were not on screen.

Different types of people were portrayed in the film.  There was a woman who appeared middle-upper class who said she had recently lost her job, forcing her to go to the public hospital.  A student and his partner sought surgery for his testicular cancer and needed to get donations of money from friends and family to save his sperm iso they could later have biological children.  Divorced parents fretted over their daughter whose jaw had swollen.  A man trying to support himself, his daughter, and her baby on his small salary was in agony from bone spurs and worried about how he would continue earning a paycheque with such great pain.  There were people of many different races as well, though most were racialized.  This showcased how issues of systemic racism, poverty, and health  are related.  The diversity of people and conditions meant that nearly anyone watching the film could relate to someone based either on their medical, societal, or familial situation.

These people told their stories, causing me to both cry and laugh, but did not comment much on factors external to their lives that led them to those positions.  A father spoke of loosing his job and being unable to find work over the past year, but he didn’t give his opinion of problems in society he was falling victim to.  Instead, the audience was left to draw their own conclusions.  This lack of commentary or context left me trying to piece together what was really going on and what the solution might be.  The documentary was compelling and well done, but does not stand alone well.