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There clearly need to be some policy changes in the healthcare system. I think Obamacare is not the answer and is way too much policy and not enough sense, but we need something. People need affordable coverage for the issues that make sense for their gender and age bracket, they need to be given more help when they are trying to work, and there needs to be more incentive to become a doctor so that there are more PCPs out there nipping a lot of these issues in the bud. So the ER is for emergencies and is a less stressful, long-wait, ridiculous situation.

I looked up the rates of hospital bankruptcy/closing, the results looked to be interesting. The article (http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/hospital-bankruptcies-result-…) makes it seem avoidable, if the warnings are taken seriously in the years leading up to the crisis. "What they found was that filing hospitals tended to be smaller, not part of a health system and were more likely to be in the Northeast or West Coast. Many factors were involved, including poor financial management, changes in payer mix, reimbursement reductions, overzealous construction and purchasing of physician practices, decrease in volume and demographic shifts that were the impetus for filing."

I also looked up ER wait time statistics, by state, over the course of several years, etc. (https://projects.propublica.org/emergency/) Very interesting!

The narrative of the film is describing how disorganized the system of healthcare is. The film gives a one on one view of how people without insurance are left to wait for hours upon end to recieve care, then have no way to pay after they recieve treatment. The film provides a in person account of what people have to deal with, only public hospitals take patients who do not have insurance and treatment time is months in advance. The healthcare system is overflowing and the amount of resources to treat people with special circumstances are significantly less than the number of patients that need to be treated.

The argument is made and sustained by filming various types of patients in the hospital: a diabetic women who was given a sandwich after waiting for hours, a man who did not want to recieve dialysis because of the ordeal of waiting he had to endure each time he was at the hospital, a boy who got shot and died inside the trauma room, a man who had bone spurs on his spine, to name a few. The narrative is also sustained through the view of the patients, the doctors, the nurses and the financial staff all views of the healthcare system are shown and maintained. The film does have emotional appeal because it follows patients from when they first enter the ER to when they leave: for example a little girl who had a severe case of strep throat and could not talk, to her getting treatment, a doctor's appointment and then being discharged. The film portrays each patient in a way that allows the viewer to want to see more of their story.

The stakeholders of the film are wanting to be treated, but having to wait hours to be seen and maybe months afterwards for an appointment, even if their conditions are life threatening. Patients who are in severe pain may not have the option of surgury because they do not have a way to pay for it, or they cannot afford the medications for example. Each patient potrayed in the film did not have a job or had a job, but they could barely afford housing, let alone insurance. The patients needed to make decisions on whether they could deal with things on their own (like the man on dialysis who stated he would rather die then experience the wait again), or the man in his 20s who had the tumor on his testicle, who said he would find the money because he needed the treatment.

Emergency responders are portrayed in the film through bringing patients to the ER. These patients were deemed as more critical and got care before those who walked into the ER. Emergency responders are shown as another leg of the healthcare system.

I found hearing the patients' stories and the doctor's effort to help others even though there was no resources to be most persuasive and compelling because despite the fact that both patient and doctor knew that long term care was slim they both tried to have hope in treatment, the patient's prayed for recovery, while the doctors pulled strings to get patients who really needed the care or the shelter to be a priority. I found it inspiring that even in a messed up system both parties tried to make the best of the situation.

I was not convinced by some of the doctor's attitudes towards the patients. I understood that such a busy ER could be hetic, but it is their responsibility to help those in need. I felt that not finding a way to help the man who was on dialysis to stop bouncing back and forth was not fair. I thought there was a way it could have been remediated better than how the doctor decided to fix the task.

This film best addresses audiences who do not understand the healthcare crisis in the US. It provides a first hand view on the crisis and exemplifies how it needs to be fixed.

The viewpoints of the police, EMS and the corners as well as family members of patients who have died are not included in this film.