Filmmaker Roger Weisberg said he was staggered by diabetes patient Hector Cardenas, a warehouse manager in Los Angeles, who told doctors to take his infected foot -- to save his health benefits.
"To hear somebody facing the prospect of losing his job," Weisberg said, "and having to choose between losing his foot and losing health insurance, and opting to amputate his foot before he lost his health insurance -- it said a lot."
Cardenas' story is the first Weisberg presents in "Critical Condition," a 90-minute documentary that follows four stories of working Americans without health insurance and facing major health problems.
Joe Stornaiulo of Pennsylvania, Karen Dove of Texas and Cardenas lost their coverage when they lost their jobs because of illness. Carlos Benitez of Los Angeles -- a chef living with a severe and painful spine deformity -- couldn't afford it.
Weisberg spent 1 1/2 years following 15 different subjects to address what he
sees as long-overdue reform of the American health care system. The four stories that made the final cut, he said, were selected to address a diversity of questions on the topic. He said the timely airing of "Critical Condition" during the run-up to November's presidential election is not a coincidence.
And it's not the first time Weisberg's tackled the subject. "Sound and Fury," "Can't Afford to Grow Old" and "Borderline Medicine" are among his vast work focusing on health care systems. (His "Waging a Living," which looks at the life of "working poor" Americans, aired on "P.O.V." in 2006.) Weisberg said he continually returns to the subject he began covering two decades ago.
"I'm outraged," he said, "and want viewers of this film to be outraged that we treat health care as more of a private consumption good in this country than we do as a right of citizenship. In every other developed democracy, health care is an absolute a right. That gets my blood boiling."
Viewers will see Cardenas repairing a worn-out prosthetic foot intended to last only a few months, Dove going through chemotherapy for Stage 3 ovarian cancer, Benitez traveling to Mexico for surgery options and Stornaiulo and his wife going through unpaid medical bills as he declines from chronic liver disease.
Between chapters, Weisberg pulls up facts, such as that 2.2 million Americans lost health insurance this year and that 80 percent of the uninsured are working families.
"My hope is it's gotten to the point where this health care system is no longer sustainable and it just cries out for a national solution," he said. "The country is now debating what form that solution ought to take."
Karen Shade 581-8334
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