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.
