Collateral Damage

In 2005, when Governor Phil Bredesen of Tennessee announced he would reform his state’s Medicaid program, people took him at his word. Little did they know that Bredesen’s idea of reform meant cutting 170,000 people off the program almost overnight. The size and speed of the cuts were unprecedented; the suffering they caused was immeasurable. The sickest, neediest people were denied medical care while the nation sat by and watched, and the Governor boasted to other heads of states about his success reigning in the rising cost of health care.

This intense, moving film exposes the injustice that occurred in Tennessee and its implications for Medicaid cuts nationwide. In the richest nation in the world, where people die every day because they lack access to health care, the disparities revealed in this film are chilling.