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Obama Doesn’t Want You Seeing This Movie About Healthcare
July 3,2012
By Jeff Lipkes
It's not a documentary, and it's not by a conservative. The writer and director is a French-Canadian leftist, or former leftist. But, among other things, the film is a horrifying and hilarious exposé of health care in Canada. The film is The Barbarian Invasions by Denys Arcand, and though it did well in the U.S. for a foreign picture, winning the Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film in 2004 and grossing over $25 million, it hasn't been seen by nearly enough people.
Barbarian provides a vivid glimpse of what we have in store if President Obama is re-elected in November. I should perhaps at this point issue the usual "spoiler" caveat, though as it's a film about a man with terminal cancer, there isn't much of a plot to spoil. Like many good movies, it's the interactions of the characters and the ways in which relationships evolve under stress that make the story interesting.
Rémy is dying of an unspecified cancer. His ex-wife Dominique pleads with their estranged son to fly back to Quebec from London and see his father for the final time.
The source of the estrangement is clear enough from the early minutes of the film. Rémy is an outspoken socialist history professor, a libidinous devotee of the counterculture. His son, Sébastien, is an arch-capitalist, a commodities arbitrageur for a bank in the City, who "never reads a book," Rémy says disgustedly. Each heartily despises the values of the other. But it is only the son's Gordon Gekko morals — his willingness to bribe and bully — and his deep pockets that enable Rémy to escape the horrors of the Canadian health care system.
These are depicted in gory detail. At the start of the film, the camera follows a nurse down the hall of Rémy's hospital. Patients in various states of distress are parked in the hallway. The corridor is packed to capacity. The nurse, bearing hosts for communion, threads her way among groaning and coughing patients, carts of dirty laundry, and electricians at work. Rémy is lucky to have a room, though it has about half a dozen other patients in it, and the staff are continually confusing him with his roommates.
The hospital is ruled by its union bosses. Nothing gets done without their approval. Laptops are routinely stolen, but "lost" computers can be promptly located after bribes to the union chief.
Sébastien notices that there's an entire floor below his father's that is unused. Lying about his identity, he gets an appointment with the hospital's administrator and requests that his father be moved to a room on the empty floor. The lengthy answer he receives is a brilliant parody of health care bureaucratese. Undeterred, Sébastien offers the administrator a folder filled with $100 bills, and he promises further "reports" each week. After protests — "we're not a third-world country!" — the cash is accepted. The son then pays the union lavishly to refurbish the room, and Rémy now has a private suite.
Rémy's problems with the hospital continue. He is told by his doctor that he requires a PET scan, but he will have to wait at least six months. The only solution is to cross the border to the hated U.S. of A. Sébastien makes the arrangements, and the father is scanned promptly by a private clinic in Vermont that caters to Canadian "health tourists." The results are faxed to Rémy's doctor while the van is still en route back.
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Can someone explain why we have never scene a past girlfriend interviewed or past friends, students he taught etc. ? Just asking how a man that has no past can be president but the media can get a story that Mitt “cut a person’s hair in school”?