by Dr S Guru

Created on: April 13, 2009

Other countries get to see what you don't, news headlines around the world read "In New York a woman died on the floor of a hospital emergency room, and workers watched without helping her for an hour after she fell out of her chair and was writhing on the ground, according to surveillance footage".

This footage was shown across the world making news headlines in hundreds of countries outside of the USA. People sat down to their dinners and turned on the television to watch the news and saw poor Esmin Green a 49 year old New Yorker dying on the floor of a New York hospital while people including hospital staff stood or sat nearby and just watched, the surveillance camera caught everything, the woman had been waiting at the hospital for nearly 24 hours when she fell from her seat at 5.32am on June 19, 2008. She fell face down onto the floor and was moaning and writhing on the ground while people looked on. She was dead by the time someone on the medical staff finally came to help her. As I watched the news that night I was sickened.

If you have not seen Michael Moore's documentary SICKO, the above facts may come as a surprise to you, but if you have seen SICKO then nothing about the American health service and the events that took place on June 19th 2008 will come as a surprise to you, shocking and sad as it may seem. I for one would not like to get sick in the USA, coming from a country where care is free for residents and insurance is something that only cars and houses need (not compulsory), I may have been blind to the fact that Americans don't have it so easy or very fair for that matter. When health care is free in just about every other country in the world including some third world countries it is mind boggling that in the "Land of the free" so many people are being fleeced of an essential human right. Michael Moore's doc is brave, funny and undeniably baffling for any free thinking person to make sense of the US Government policies regarding health care. I don't want to say anything about the content of the documentary because I would like you to go out and rent it if you have not seen it, I don't want to ruin it for you. It is one of those documentaries that is essential for every American citizen to watch because change cannot happen until everyone is united for the cause and this documentary has enough guts to unite the masses.

While ER and Greys Anatomy fuel an unrealistic and McDreamy escapism of the USA's current state of affairs on the health crisis this documentary shows the true situation 'warts and all.' If you are living in the USA or intending to live or travel there I would urge you to watch this documentary because if you get sick in America, Doctors McDreamy and McSteamy won't be there to help you.

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