The Waiting Room

A new documentary chronicles what life is like for patients and doctors at Highland Hospital, a busy, safety net hospital located in Oakland, California.

Documenting the daily life of a large, under-resourced, urban public hospital, The Waiting Room offers no experts and no statistics, just a rare fly-on-the-wall look inside an overwhelmed system and its impact on patients and staff. Film director Peter Nicks set out to profile a community but ended up with a larger story about health care in the U.S.

The film has been screening at film festivals around the country and has already won several awards. It will get a national theater release in the fall, and will air on PBS' "Independent Lens" next year.


The Waiting Room Trailer from The Waiting Room on Vimeo.

Related links:

The Waiting Room - Kickstarter Page
PBS Newshour: Jeffrey Brown | Peter Nicks, Director Interview -

Struck Blind

Sometimes, it's easier to see with your ears. From the medical files of the Twilight Zone.

The Affordable Care Act Decision

It has always been my opinion that a single-payer, nationalized health program is best for our nation as a whole. But unfortunately, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act corporate compromise was the end result. Personally, because the insurance companies are still left in charge, I don't see our healthcare system changing for the better. It will likely remain business as usual.

According to the Physicians for a National Health Program -

Regardless of whether the Supreme Court upholds or overturns the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in whole or in part, the unfortunate reality is that federal health law of 2010 will not work: (1) it will not achieve universal coverage, as it leaves at least 26 million uninsured, (2) it will not make health care affordable to Americans with insurance, because gaps in their policies will leave them vulnerable to bankruptcy in the event of major illness, and (3) it will not control costs.

Why? Because the ACA perpetuates a dominant role for the private insurance industry. That industry siphons off hundreds of billions of health care dollars annually for overhead, profit and the paperwork it demands from doctors and hospitals; it denies care in order to increase insurers’ bottom line; and it obstructs any serious effort to control costs.

In contrast, a single-payer, improved-Medicare-for-all system would achieve all three goals – truly universal, comprehensive coverage; health security for our patients and their families; and cost control. It would do so by replacing private insurers with a single, nonprofit agency like Medicare that pays all medical bills, streamlines administration, and reins in costs for medications and other supplies through its bargaining clout.


Bill Moyers: Dr. Margaret Flowers on Single-Payer Health Care February 5, 2010.

Is Universal Healthcare Possible?

The United States is the only industrialized democracy that doesn’t provide health care for all its citizens. Of course, we’d like to cover all of the 50 million uninsured, but how would you pay for it?

In fact, we could. The consensus view among health policy experts is that Americans pour enough money into health care — a $2.6 trillion industry — to have universal coverage.


Source: U.S. Healthcare: The Good News | Full Episode: The Good News in American Medicine