I watched the movie “John Q” a lot of times and I still love it. Because it tells a emotional drama story, and a problem that the American health care is facing.
The movie tells a story about a family of two parents and a son. One day John was with his wife at his son’s baseball game, and suddenly his son past out from heart exhaustion. After having some tests on
Michael, it turned out that Michael has an enlarged heart and he needs a new one. However, the problem was that Johns company dropped him from a full time worker to a part time, which made his health insurance change from PPO to HMO. Also, the current health insurance company he has does not cover the surgery. John and his wife try to get some money by selling some of their personal stuff from their house in order to get their son on the list to make the surgery. After a few days Michael got worse and the hospital decided to release him because the hospital got tired of waiting for the payments. John decided to do anything just to get his son on the list and to keep him alive, so he walked to the hospital with a pistol and begins a hostage situation. After having a talk with the Chicago chief of police John decided to release some hostages out, and one of them was a pregnant lady. Few hours later chief of police decided to send one of his sniper SWAT policemen in to the building by an air shaft. The operation was failed and the sniper got beaten by John. John told the chief of police that he will get his sniper man back if he gets his son back. As soon as his son arrives, john decides to suicide himself so his heart can be replaced to his son. Before pulling the trigger, John was told that they found a heart who has the same blood type as Michael. After the surgery was done Michael was back to life, but his father had to stay five years in jail.
There were a lot of ethical issues in this movie, and one of the issues that made me feel really sad is when the doctor was having a conversation with some rich people (patients) he was having fun with them by telling jokes, laughing and making them feel better. It seemed that he was having fun with them. While in the same moment when the doctor saw john his face expressions changed and he was trying to get rid of him, he also made him feel sad and depressed by saying that he can’t help his son until he gets the money. Which shows that the doctor would like to get involved with who every pays him money by encouraging them that everything will be ok and easy, while he doesn’t care about the others. Also it shows how our community sprite people into levels between rich and poor people and each level is been treated differently from the other