"The Pursuit of Happyness" and "Sicko"

By Ruben Borbon

                                                       

            In 1981, a man named Christopher Gardner with a wife and child living in the San Francisco bay area is trying to get by with what they have. Spending their whole lives savings on a revolutionary machine called a portable density scanner. A medical device he sells for a living that gives a slightly denser picture than an x-ray for twice the money. The problem was he hasn’t been selling any. He needed to sell two scanners a month to pay rent and daycare. His wife tries to find the best job that’s available for her to pay as well. But then Christopher came across a business which he could do, which was being stock broker. It would take him six months or more if he was the one to get the job and there was only one out of the twenty getting the job for the internship. He got the job and after beginning his career of Dean Witter, Christopher went on to found the investment firm Gardner rich in 1987. In 2006 Gardner sold a minority stake in his broke age firm in multi-million dollar deal.                                   

The movie relating to the working poor is that Christopher Gardner was not in a good situation, leading him to become poor and for a long time with a child. It shows that Gardner really had nothing but his child and this internship opportunity as a stockbroker. After six months of evaluation and test he got the job. He was at the bottom and got to the top allowing him to support his child. He struggled through life without a stable job and in the end he became a wealthy stockbroker.                                                                                                   

“Sicko”, is about people who don’t have health insurance but people that do. This documentary includes interviews and questions about what’s going with health insurance effects the people. It explains that health care insurances are really not helpful when you need them. Insurances tend not to aid the people until their situation is as bad as it can get. After the support they even try to get their money back as best as they can, leaving you deficient at times and becoming broke.                                                                                               

“Sicko” is about a necessity you would like but too expensive and not trustworthy to people which is health care insurance. A women named Becky Malke who’s in the health industry says, “I could be a bitch some times on the phone with patients because I don’t to hear their life story of whatever the situation is because I know there going to get denied and I can’t tell them that”. Tasha Harris says, “whatever happened to helping the person that sick… not make their problems worst.” Insurance companies try to get their money back by hiring people like Lee Inor, to find one slip on your application or pre-existing condition you didn’t even know you had. Lee Inor explains and says, “They would go through your health profile from five years. In some states its legal to have what is called a prudent person pre-existing condition and that says if prior to your insurance finding you had any symptom which would incline normally prudent person to have side medical care then the condition of which that symptom was a symptom is excluded”.                                                                                                

 “The Pursuit Of Happyness” was about a man at the bottom and his struggle through life to get to the top. “Sicko” was about people that have health care insurance and getting money taken away from them. The people were covered by the insurances based on their situation, thus making it very difficult for people to trust the insurances.