The Uninsured and Under-Insured Speak

Here is a very revealing project called The Waiting Room where a documentary team out in Oakland, CA take microphones and cameras into the waiting room of a county hospital and talk to patients and staff. They mostly speak for themselves, and are less interested in the political debate and the minutiae of policy than they are in telling their own stories. They don't always want to talk about the illnesses and injuries that brought them to the hospital, but sometimes about their lives generally.

This is very revealing and a real contrast to the sanctimonious and patronizing rhetoric that dominates the public debate over health care these days.

I would argue that these folks are every bit as much the "Real America" as those crazy white people on Medicare screaming about "socialism!" that the corporate media fawn over. But then, the Bronx is every bit as much "Real America" as any Iowa small town, and much older (the realities of rural poverty make those small towns in Iowa closer in experience to the Bronx than either realize).