Jan. 10, 2013 - Issue #899: The games we play
The Waiting Room
» Waiting for health care
Weaving together the stories of the aforementioned patients, along with a few others, The Waiting Room plays out in a highly effective, mostly-vérité style. There is no voice-of-God narration, no scary pie charts, no overt editorializing or Michael Moore-style ambushes. There is, however, a time-compressing editing scheme (it's not like all these patients actually arrived at Highland on the same day), a subtly propulsive score and a series of voice-overs, without talking heads, from patients opening up about everyday anxieties, the perils of self-diagnosing and self-medicating, work problems, parenting problems and marriage problems, and from underpaid doctors describing the daily dilemma of deciding what to do with all of the non-urgent cases who might be taking beds from urgent cases, with all these people forced to use the ER as their primary care doctor (a practice, promoted by Mitt Romney during his presidential campaign, that seems at best totally chaotic and at worst catastrophic). As one such doctor explains, the ER might seem like the right place for young doctors to get a regular adrenaline rush while saving lives, but the truth is that refilling diabetes meds is just as important to someone's long-term health as treating gunshot wounds.
The Waiting Room is a portrait of a public institution that, in spite of its multitude of limitations, maintains strong ties to the community. The US heath care system's at times appalling disservice to poor or working-class citizens makes the film a frequently maddening experience, but I suspect that muckraking was never that high on Nicks' agenda, at least not once he actually set about making the film. The Waiting Room is guided above all by a love of people and the ordinary bravery they summon up in times of crisis, and you can watch it for that reason alone.
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