I’ve been looking forward to this for some time now, and I was not dissapointed. He spent 30 days living on minimum wage. He and his wife both got minimum wage jobs, took public transportation, and lived in very modest housing.
He brought up a lot of great points about the insane cost of healthcare (he was charged $40 for “medical supplies” on a visit to the emergency room. All he got was one ace bandage), and how the minimum wage hasn’t changed in almost 8 years.
I can’t wait to see each installment of this series, as I hope it can open my eyes to how good I have it in life.
Yeah, I watched it and was also very impressed. Morgan himself is just a naturally likeable guy, so watching him go through these things has a good impact and he made several good points about the state of things in this episode. Do we know how many of these episodes he actually took part in? I notice next week is some other guy.
I was wishing they could force everyone in Congress to watch it. It probably wouldn’t matter though. The Republicans’d probably say that if you raised the minimum wage, these people wouldn’t have ANY job, instead of a low paying job.
Great show, I really enjoyed it. It was really enlightening how they were hundreds of dollars in debt in less than a few days.
That guy in the car really got to me who was making $7.75/hour in the early 70’s working for GM, and today barely makes $7/hour. That temp agency made me sad, too.
I really like Spurlock, I think he tells a good story, is intelligent but still approachable.
It would only be “milking it” if he were doing a show on fast food every week. This is a different situation every week.
He made a great documentary, shedding light on something most Americans don’t think about. Why not give other social issues the same treatment?
I was touched when his girlfriend was so moved by the “free store” (as they called it). That was a great show. I wish they (or at least, he) were in every episode, but it appears that he’s going to be the host from here on out. I hope the Spurlock-less episodes don’t pale in comparison because, so far, I’m impressed.
I thought it was great (and I still haven’t seen his movie). It made something about this country abundantly clear: The working poor don’t really live in the United States of the 21st century. They live in the old west. What’s that, you broke your arm? Well, doc can fix it up, for a price. 'Course, it may not heal so straight, but hey, this ain’t New York City; this is the frontier.
I haven’t even heard of this. I’ll have to see if I can get a hold of it somehow.
What a great thing to research. Seriously, I don’t know how the government (both USA and Canadian) thinks anyone can survive on their own on minimum wage. It’s not even enough to provide the bare minimum that you need to live.
Anyone who hasn’t seen Super Size Me, check it out. I don’t think I’ll ever eat McDonald’s again.
I thought it was a pretty good show too. I did have a few problems with it.
Number one, they both used the Emergency Room at the hospital as a clinic. EVERYONE knows (or should know) that this is by far the most expensive way to get treated that there is. So when he was bitching about the $300/ $550 they were charged just for walking into the ER I was screaming at him for being a moron. He had tendinitis for crying out loud, that is not an emergency.
There were a few other minor things that raised my eyebrows, but now I have forgotten them.
The scene at the free store was very moving. I never really realized that giving away things we don’t need anymore could mean so much to another person.
Last night’s show actually inspired my wife and I to change. We obviously can not live on minimum wage and neither of us is going to quit our jobs, but for one month we are going to budget ourselves (omitting the house payment from the budget) as though we were making minimum wage, just to see how much we can save and what luxuries we can do without.
A definite don’t miss! The funniest part was looking online for free stuff to do in Columbus. Link
Morgan: Here’s all the money you don’t have!
I like his fiance, and wish she would be in more shows.
I also like the premise and think it’ll be an enlightening show. I don’t agree with Meeko, this show is still being original. I’m looking forward to next week’s steroids show.
This could probably become a Great Debate pretty fast, but do you realize that going to the emergency room for anything medical is what low income families do? That was not exaggerated for the show at all. When you’re that poor, and don’t have health insurance, you don’t have a “family doctor”, you don’t have an OB/GYN, and you certainly don’t have an orthopedist or whoever else would treat tendonitis; I think that the county emergency room is the ONLY place that will treat you (can’t say for sure about those corner clinics, but I bet if you don’t have cash in hand or a credit card (HA!), they won’t even look at you.).
Sure it’s expensive, but they have to treat you. So the poor end up with another big debt on their record; so what, the hospital can’t get blood from a stone!
I SAW (but didn’t experience) a lot of this when my youngest daughter was going through some health problems. The best children’s hospital in town also happens to be the county hospital. So we’d go in the emergency room and be confronted with the crush of humanity; people who’d been waiting some time with serious problems (God help you if you weren’t actually bleeding or unconscious. We talked to one woman who’d been in the waiting room 6 HOURS waiting to see a doctor.) Well, because we have a fancy pants United Health Care card and a referral from a pediatrician, we were immediately whisked away from the emergency room to a separate section and saw a doctor within 15 minutes.
I guess my point in all this is that the poor don’t go to the ER because they are lazy or stupid, they know the ER sucks, but that’s the only choice they have. I think Spurlock was trying to make that point. The only complaint I’d have is that an actual poor person probably wouldn’t have bothered going to the ER for tendonitis.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people didn’t know this. If someone is sick and needs treatment (and doesn’t have a regular doctor or HMO), the most obvious place to go for help is the hospital. And the most obvious place to go for help at the hospital is the ER.
At least, I figure that’s the thought process involved. When you’ve got a sudden and unexpected medical problem (kid wakes up at 3:00am with a sudden fever, say), you don’t always have the luxury of taking your sweet time and trying to work out the best low-cost solution.
Ah, but this just illustrates the catch-22 that the poor are in.
They’re too poor to afford health insurance, as we all know.
They first went to the Free Clinic for treatment (at least for his wife’s UTI). But the demand was so great there, and the lines so long, that if you didn’t get to the clinic to stand in line by about 2:30 in the afternoon, you wouldn’t be treated before it closed that night. So, you COULD go to the clinic early, but to do so you’d have to skip a day of work, which you can’t afford to do … so you go to the ER, which is more expensive … but in the case of his wife, who was in severe pain, she couldn’t bear to wait another 24 hours for treatment at the clinic, even if she wanted to be frugal …
Then you’ve got Morgan. His menial jobs require him to be in good physical shape. But his wrist starts hurting. He can’t afford to go to the ER to have it checked, can’t afford to skip a day to go to the free clinic to have it checked … but also is worried that if he lets it go and doesn’t have it checked out at all, perhaps he’ll lose the use of the arm (maybe not permanently, but at least temporarily) and, as a result, be unable to work, which he can’t afford to do …
My girlfriend and I both enjoyed this show very much.
We both were nearly moved to tears at certain points, especially by the hispanic couple waiting in the ER for help with their Diabetes. When asked what he would do if he couldn’t go to the hospital he said he would just die.
Our hands instictually intertwined and squeezed.
She mumbled “Damn. We really are lucky…”
I just wanted to clear this up a little if you don’t mind.
He went to the free clinic first for his wrist after waiting a couple of days to see if it would heal on its own. They said they would only be taking the first 20 people in line because of a limited amount of doctors in the building. He didn’t make the cut, so he knew later on when he really started hurting that he would have to go to the ER.
When his wife woke up sick they went directly to the ER, knowing that they couldn’t wait until the morning.
It is definitely a catch-22 as others have already noted.
That was the weird thing. I only finally got around to seeing Super Size Me last week, so last night’s show was great.
Apparently, his fiancee said that no, he wouldn’t be doing every show. Plus, there are some shows that it wouldn’t make sense for him to do - it wouldn’t push him outside of his comfort zone (he seems really easy going). But it will do that for other people.
I didn’t know this, until I had a raging fever and felt like I was going to die one night a couple of years ago and had my friend drive me to the ER. The doc came in and sort of glanced at me, ordered a blood test and told me to call him the next day for the results. I saw him for a total of probably less than 3 minutes. I called him the next day and he said he didn’t know what the hell was wrong with me. The hospital billed me $600 for that. Then, to my complete shock and horror…the DOCTOR HIMSELF (as in the private individual) sent me a bill for an additional $350, on top of what the hospital charged! When I didn’t pay it for a few months he sicced the collections agency on me. The collections agency told me that so many people don’t pay their medical bills that doctors had to start charging their patients above and beyond what the hospital charges just to earn a wage.