Open Space — Season 1, Episode 11: Health Care: Your Money or Your Life

Episode synopsis

A documentary by Jon Alpert and Kelko Tsuno for New York's Downtown Community Television Centre. A heart-attack victim is rushed into the emergency room with no pulse. Miraculously, the doctors bring him back to life, but two days later he is dead. Budgets, cut-backs, broken equipment and lack of supplies delayed the surgery that could have saved his life. The programme follows patients in two New York hospitals - one public, one private - to illustrate the vast differences in health care the two systems offer. At a time when our own National Health Service is under increasing threat this chilling picture of what happens in America raises disturbing questions about what could happen here.

About Open Space

Open Space was a programme produced by the BBC's Community Programme Unit. It was an evolution of the earlier Open Door series of programmes allowing minority points of view to make a television programme about issues of concern to them. The programmes were transmitted on BBC 2 in a mid-evening slot and would attract audiences between 500,000 and 1,500,000. In a typical year there would be two or three groups of up to eight Open Space programmes each usually half an hour long. A producer, an assistant and a budget of up to £25,000 would be allocated to each programme.

More episodes from Season 1

• E1Power in Your Hands
• E2Time and Other Thieves
• E3Christine's Children
• E4Chingari - The Spark
• E5National Health Service: 1: the Consultant's Tale
• E6National Health Service: 2: Mission of Mersey
• E7National Health Service: 3: On Whose Authority?
• E8A Day Off the Buses
• E9Ducking the Rocks - A Social Worker's Life
• E10Downtown Video
• E12A Healthy Future?
• E13A Midsummer Night’s Belfast