I Call It Murder Theme

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Recommended: Inequality in healthcare

A Killer System I Call It Murder is a documentary about the troubling truth of Chicago’s Cook County Hospital-now closed. The main theme of the movie is how unjust the healthcare system is towards the very same people it was designed to help. It highlights just how difficult it is for uninsured and/or poor patients to get the needed and deserved quality care. The documentary also exposed the sickening reality of health disparity and how factors like low socio economic status can quite literally be the cause of death in some cases. I did not know the true extent of the prejudice and discrimination those low-income individuals and other vulnerable populations dealt with. I was shocked to see the discriminative behavior reach health professionals and be reinforced by the healthcare system. Patients can be denied treatment at a “premier” hospital for reasons like not having a green card, or being poor, and/or uninsured. If a patient was deemed unqualified to receive treatment at the premier hospital, they got transferred to a free hospital such as Cook County Hospital. This unethical treatment didn’t exclude patients in critical conditions; a person with serious bullet wounds can be turned down on the …show more content…

The fact that a hospital even has that kind of authoritative capacity to be able to turn somebody down on the spot is alarming. The movie even points out how it had become the norm for health professionals to take a gravely injured patient to a free hospital instead of the nearest one. It is as if the doctors have agreed that it is important to treat a dying patient, but not as important as completing the paperwork first. This practice of “transferring” patients has gone on for quite sometime in Chicago and can be held accountable for the death of many rejected patients who either died on their way to Cook County or soon after

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