The Debate Continues

After illness struck, the Obama health care overhaul suddenly looks better

My partner John is as healthy as a horse. So when he came down with flu-like symptoms a month ago, we didn't think anything of it.

Three days later, he was in the intensive care unit of Methodist Hospital on a respirator. Doctors put him into a medically-induced coma to buy some time and figure out what was inexplicably attacking his lungs. They also started him on dialysis when his kidneys failed.

It was like a really bad episode of House.

He's home now and OK — weak from the ordeal but getting stronger every day. He's not taking any prescription medication. He can eat almost anything he wants. He can walk the dog and drive the car. Doctors don't really know what happened — they think a virus attacked his system but his body eventually fought it off. It will always remain a mystery.

I feel extremely fortunate that we live in a city with the best medical care in the world. The medical ICU team at Methodist is a group of incredible professionals who combine a sense of duty with deep caring for their patients.

But their care doesn't come cheap. Every day the mail brings two or three bills — from the hospital, more doctors than I remember seeing, and countless medical technicians who performed X-rays, CAT scans and other tests. The pile grows higher every day.

The medical deductibles are going to shave off a good bit of our savings, but I'm not complaining. If we didn't have good health insurance, I'm convinced he would be dead or we would be bankrupt. Or both.

Through the long drawn out fight over health care over the past year, I heard President Obama and others tell heart-wrenching stories about families who had lost everything because they didn't have coverage. After a while, I tuned them out. The horrific stories seem too tinged with political desperation. It reminded me of the times Bill Clinton or George W. Bush invoked everyday people to make their point during a State of the Union address. The person was usually invited to stand up, Congress applauded and nothing got done. It all seemed so forced.

But after our experience, I see things in a different light. A health crisis can happen to anyone. And when it does, your life falls to shambles. I can't imagine anyone facing a life-threatening illness without health insurance, but millions of Americans, often through no fault of their own, cope as best they can.

Even so, I'm as confused as anyone about what the new health care overhaul means. The new bill will cost $938 billion over the next 10 years (ouch). Republicans warn that it will saddle us with debt, weaken Medicare and lead to a government takeover of the health care system. I worry that this time they may be right.

Democrats say it will lower the federal deficit over time and contain health costs. Who can you believe?

According to the Associated Press (thanks for giving a simple explanation), starting this year, insurers can't put lifetime dollar limits on policies. They can't deny coverage to children because of pre-existing conditions or cancel policies because someone gets sick. Parents will be able to keep older kids on their coverage up to age 26. Insurers can't deny coverage to people with medical problems or charge them more. They can't charge women higher rates.

And more than 30 million will be covered under the new bill (although not until 2014).

That's enough for me. It may not be perfect, but it's a start.

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Movie Review

New horror movie Faces of Death puts a modern twist on cult classic

Photo courtesy of of IFC Films

Dacre Montgomery in Faces of Death.

True horror fans will likely be familiar with the 1978 cult film Faces of Death, which purported to be a documentary showing real-life killings in gory detail. It didn’t, of course, but that didn’t stop rumors from continuing to spread for decades. Now, almost 50 years and multiple sequels later, comes a new version of Faces of Death, an actual movie that pays homage to the original in interesting ways.

Margot (Barbie Ferreira) works at a YouTube-like company called Kino as a content moderator, flagging videos that violate the company’s policies. This means her job often involves seeing some truly despicable things from all manner of depraved people. One day, though, she comes across a video that seems a little too real, and after seeing more similar videos, she starts to believe they’re genuine murders.

Going against her company NDA, she starts to investigate the videos on her own, which puts her on the radar of Arthur (Dacre Montgomery), who is actually kidnapping people and killing them on camera through methods seen in the original Faces of Death film. It’s not long before Arthur tracks her down, with a plan to make her one of his next victims.

Written and directed by Daniel Goldhaber (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) and co-written by Isa Mazzei, the film is not so much scary as it is creepy, with the occasional gross-out sequence. The idea of having someone emulate the killings in the cult film is a good idea, and pairing it with the modern-day attention economy — in which content creators go to increasing lengths for clicks — is a clever twist on a concept that other films have done.

The film as a whole is a commentary on how social media and video sharing sites have often decided to prioritize profits over the well-being of their users. Margot is shown allowing videos involving violence and sexual assault to stay on the site while nixing ones depicting how to use Narcan or demonstrating putting on a condom on a banana. Josh (Jermaine Fowler), Margot’s boss, is even explicit in the company mandate that outrageous videos drive views.

While Arthur has the makings of a good villain, there are few attempts to make him seem truly diabolical. His kidnappings often seem more spur-of-the-moment than calculated, and even though he has a well thought-out dungeon at home, the house’s location in the suburbs seems to make him vulnerable to easy discovery. Goldhaber and Mazzei leave more than a few unanswered questions along the way that take away from the intensity of the story.

Ferreira is yet another actor from Euphoria who’s capitalizing on her exposure from that show. She plays Margot’s increasing anxiety well, and when the action ratchets up in the final act, she meets the moment in a satisfying way. Montgomery returns to the vibe he had while playing the evil Billy on Stranger Things, and even though his character doesn’t fully live up to his potential, Montgomery sells his evil for all it’s worth.

The new Faces of Death may not be what some are expecting given the reputation of the previous films, but it’s a solid horror/thriller that uses the brand as a launching pad into something different. It doesn’t make much of a dent in the scare department, but it does give its violence and gore a degree of relevance in today’s often desensitized world.

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Faces of Death is now playing in theaters.

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