- Documentary about how Medicare was formed as a way to desegregate American hospitals and enforce civil rights.
- At a time when many African Americans had little or no access to health care, Medicare offered President Johnson a "golden opportunity" to destroy the Jim Crow medical system prevalent in the 1960s. He had only a few short months to desegregate thousands of hospitals, and every reason to fear massive resistance and violent retaliation. Chased by the Klan and followed by local police, a hastily recruited army of federal hospital inspectors working closely with civil rights activists fanned out across the nation in a race against time for health and human rights. By the implementation of Medicare on July 1st, 1966 more than 90 percent of the nation's hospitals were certified to be in compliance with the Civil Rights Act. In a mere 4 months thousands of hospitals had been desegregated bringing life-saving medical care to millions of Americans.
Power to Heal tells how civil rights activists, the federal government, and medical professionals leveraged Medicare funding to bring down segregation, opening the door to hospitals, doctors and medical schools for Black Americans and other minorities in both the North and South. The film begins by revealing the culture of segregated health care and the real perils it unleashed in black communities. It follows a chronological arc, beginning with federal legislation (the Hill-Burton Act of 1946) that facilitated the spread of segregated hospitals following World War II just as black doctors intensified their efforts to end racial discrimination. The film weaves together the first-person accounts of participants in the desegregation effort with expert historians' commentary to create a cohesive storyline that shows how segregation was dismantled in hospitals and how astonishingly successful the effort was. This struggle of a half century ago is very relevant to today's health reform efforts.
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