With Obama’s recent push for health care reform, I couldn’t help but think about how our health care system has been portrayed on the big screen throughout the years.   Below is a list of narratives and documentaries that explore all corners of health care. From films that focus on doctors’ personal journeys and over-the-top dramatic scenarios to very direct looks at the institutions involved and the reality of the bureaucracy behind it all, these films capture an industry that, in this blogger’s opinion, is very much broken.

Let me know if I missed one and do give some of these films a watch.  They might change your perspective, and they’ll definitely make you think.

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10) As the Call, So the Echo (Keir Moreano) - I start with this film because it showcases that even in a broken system there are good people, people who recognize that medicine is actually about people, not about profit. Dr. Moreano’s trip to Vietnam allows time for contemplation about what it means to treat people and truly work to be the best you can be.

9) John Q (Nick Cassavetes)  - It’s a little over the top in its dramatics, but John Q accurately gets across how urgent the issue of health care reform is.  The story of a father who has to use force to get a hospital to care for his son after their insurance denies them the procedure needed to save his life isn’t so far off.  Every day people are denied coverage and procedures, and they have to choose whether to go into debt or whether to let their loved one die.  This to me is unacceptable.

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8 ) Bigger Than Life (Nicholas Ray) -   While the focus of this film is actually the destruction of a family, the underlying plot is centered on the dangers of a drug and how ready doctors are to prescribe medicine even if there are obvious problems.   One aspect of the health care industry that needs more examination is the pharmaceutical branch because even if we don’t go as crazy as James Mason’s character, we’re all taking too many drugs simply so an industry can profit.

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7) Canary (Alejandro Adams) - I won’t go into specifics on this film; it probably wouldn’t help.  But I will say that the mood displayed in Adams’ second feature combined with the film’s take on the future of industry gets across the dread I feel when I think about where our country is headed if health care reform does not happen.

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6) Titicut Follies (Frederick Wiseman) - A disturbing look at an aspect of our health care system that many would like to ignore--mental health. Titicut Follies examines the treatment of inmates and patients at Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane. It proves that how we treat the mentally ill needs the most reform of all. As Richard Schickel wrote in LIFE:

“TITICUT FOLLIES is a documentary film that tells you more than you could possibly want to know — but no more than you should know — about life behind the walls of one of those institutions where we file and forget the criminal insane… A society’s treatment of the least of its citizens — and surely these are the least of ours — is perhaps the best measure of its civilization. The repulsive reality revealed in TITICUT FOLLIES forces us to contemplate our capacity for callousness.”

If this seems like too much or if you want a narrative that also explores how we treat the mentally ill, give a watch to Milos Forman’s classic ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST.

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5) And the Band Played On (Roger Spottiswoode) - A look at the bureaucracy that surrounded the beginning of the AIDS epidemic.  The clip below is spot on about the fact that health care is an industry and that as long as profits are at stake, it’s hard to put people first.

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4) The Insider (Michael Mann) - Part of siding with Russell Crowe’s character in The Insider is believing that he took a job with a tobacco company (and stayed with it for a long time) in order to make sure his sick daughter had good heath care.  In my mind, he represents many Americans that have jobs they don’t want simply so they can go to the doctor.

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3) Sicko (Michael Moore) - I may not be a big Michael Moore fan but his documentary showed Americans many reasons why our system is deeply flawed.

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2) The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu) - For this, I leave you with the adept words of Jonathan Rosenbaum:

“The last day and night in the life of a cranky, ailing 63-year-old widower in the Bucharest suburbs, with an ambulance carting him from one overtaxed hospital to another, may sound like an ordeal, but this 154-minute Romanian odyssey (2005) is anything but. Both sad and darkly funny, the film is so sharply conceived and richly populated that it often registers like a Frederick Wiseman documentary, even though everything is scripted and every part played by a professional. This is only the second feature of Cristi Puiu, who claims to have been inspired by his own hypochondria, but he’s already clearly a master.”

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1) Hospital (Frederick Wiseman) - Simply put and again in the words of Jonathan Rosenbaum (since he referenced Wiseman above):

“Set in New York’s Metropolitan Hospital, Frederick Wiseman’s feature-length documentary of 1969 is one of the most powerful in his continuing series of investigations of various American institutions. Most of the emphasis in this setting is given to the emergency ward and outpatient clinics.”