BHA 3801, Critical Issues in Health Care

BHA 3801, Critical Issues in Health Care

Unit V Learning Activity: Critical Issues in Health Care via Film

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The goal of this activity is to create new perspectives on important health issues while reinforcing reading and lecture material. For this activity you will need to locate and watch one or more of the suggested films:

• Gambling with Health Care. 25 min. JumpStart Productions

(http://www.jumpstartproductions.com). PBS NOW travels to Nevada, where a huge budget deficit, spiking unemployment, and cuts in Medicaid and other public services are forcing people to gamble with their own lives.  Share in the stories of frightening numbers and investigate possible solutions with insight from Dr. Howard Dean, former Vermont governor and chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

• PBS Video (http://www.shoppbs.org/home/index.jsp).

o    The Journal: Health Care Reform. 2009.  25 min. Bill Moyers sits down with Trudy

Lieberman, director of the health and medical reporting program at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, and Marcia Angell, senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School and former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine. o       The Journal: Profits Before Patients. 2009.  50 min. With almost 20 years inside the health insurance industry, Wendell Potter saw for-profit insurers hijack our health care system and put profits before patients. Now, he speaks with Bill Moyers about how those companies are standing in the way of health care reform.

• Big Bucks, Big Pharma. 46 min. Media Education Foundation (http://www.mediaed.org). This film pulls back the curtain on the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry to expose the insidious ways that illness is used, manipulated, and in some instances created, for capital gain. It also challenges the viewer to ask important questions about the consequences of relying on a for-profit industry for our health and well-being.
• Sicko. 2007. 123 minutes. Commercially available. Highly contentious, disturbing, and also funny documentary by Michael Moore on the state of health care in the United States, with comparison to Cuba.
• John Q. 2002. 116 min. When his health insurance company refuses to pay for a needed heart transplant for his son, a father holds an emergency medical room team hostage to force them to provide the surgery. Manipulative and simplistic melodrama, but useful for beginning a discussion of managed care and insurance.
• Sick Around the World. 60 minutes. PBS Frontline

(http://www.shoppbs.org/home/index.jsp). With the intelligence Frontline is known for, this film compares health care in the U.S. to that offered in the United Kingdom, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, and Taiwan.

• Physicians for a National Health Program PowerPoint slideshows. 2003. Available for free downloading at
• World-Class Healthcare: Why Isn’t the U.S. the Best? 23 min. Films for the Humanities & Sciences . Investigative news report from ABC television, which compares the Canadian and U.S. health care systems.

Think about the following questions while viewing the film(s):

• What social and cultural contexts exist in the film?
• How does the information relate to the course?
• What is the overall feeling you get after watching the film?
• How does the film inform your understanding of critical issues in health care?
• Do you agree with the film?
• Does the film have any social or political messages?
• Is the film realistic or overly dramatized?
• Did any of the messages strongly affect you?

Suggested Documentaries and Films List From Weitz, R. (2010). The sociology of health, illness, and health care: A critical approach instructors manual (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning