Becuase Everything Else Sucks

Current TV - Free Health Care

By evmonk
Published Monday, September 15th, 2008, 9:52 am
Filed under: Videos: Political, Videos: Other, Human Rights, Society/Culture, Videos, US Politics

This short doc I produced was selected for air by Current TV and premiered on the network over the weekend.

Politicians have promised universal health care for generations, but more Americans than ever before remain uninsured and in constant fear for their health. Millions of the uninsured are young college grads like Justine and her boyfriend Brian, who are caught off guard when a serious illness strikes. The Ithaca Health Alliance runs a free clinic in Ithaca, NY to care for those whom the health insurance system has left behind.

We started working on this piece about Justine, Brian and the Ithaca Health Alliance almost a year ago, and it was the first documentary project I ever worked on despite airing after some others. Many of the rough edges and growing pains - which almost derailed the project on a couple occasions - are evident, and Current’s highly-edited and sentimental version leaves out a lot of the more compelling research and interviews we did for the piece. But hopefully it succeeds in shedding a tiny bit of light on the heart-breaking problem of health care in this country.

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4 Responses to “Current TV - Free Health Care”

  1. I don’t know if it’s Firefox or my firewall, but that video just won’t play. Any chance you could put it on Youtube?

    Andy
    09/15/08 at 6:36 pm

  2. That is something to be proud of Ev, well done. And I love their dogs too!

    John Geraghty
    09/16/08 at 2:35 pm

  3. Andy: A couple other people have had the same issue - I don’t know what it is about Current’s player. I’ll throw it on youtube soon, but I have to wait a bit so Current doesn’t notice/care. Do you have the same problem when trying to view it (or any video) on Current’s website? http://current.com/items/89298199_free_health_care

    John: Thanks! Those shar pei puppies are awesome - there’s 4 of them! Glad you enjoyed the video and found it valuable. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how this would turn out (Current had the final cut), and I’m still not sure how I feel about it. I wanted to include a deeper examination of the pitfalls of the for-profit system, the history of presidential promises of universal health care (none of them followed through on, obviously), and the current candidates plans. But the producer(s) at Current felt that that stuff would bore the audience, or something like that. So while it doesn’t go nearly as deep as I hoped, and had the footage for, I think Brian & Justine’s story has a lot of relevance to what millions of Americans are going through. So in that sense I’m glad it’s out there.

    Thanks to everybody who watched!

    evmonk
    09/16/08 at 6:13 pm

  4. @Evmonk
    No, that didn’t work. So I had to open up the dreaded Internet Explorer, and it worked fine. Great video, though I’d be interested to see your own final cut.

    Andy
    09/16/08 at 7:01 pm

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