If you want a movie made about a pioneering activist for a single-payer health system, you'd better act fast.
Filmmakers Al Nowakowski and Cat Jarboe have turned to Kickstarter to crowdsource their documentary, “The Good Doctor Young,” via a 30-day campaign that expires Oct. 28.
By Oct. 24, their effort had raised just more than $15,000 to produce the movie telling the life story of Chicago single-payer and civil rights activist Dr. Quentin Young.
“If you don't meet your goal, you get bupkis,” said director Nowakowski, explaining the rules of Kickstarter fundraising. “It's not running up to our expectations,” he concedes. “But a lot can happen quickly and, from what I understand, a lot happens in the last 72 hours.” The money raised would be used to buy the rights to use historical film footage and photos. Filming began in March “on our own nickel,” Nowakowski said.
Young was named to Modern Healthcare and Modern Physician's 50 Most Influential Physician Executive list four consecutive times. He is chairman of the Health & Medicine Policy Research Group board of directors and is treasurer and national coordinator for the single-payer advocacy group Physicians for a National Health Program.
He retired from his internal medicine practice in 2008 to devote attention to his activist positions full time. “In a word, I'm a zealot,” Young told Modern Healthcare at the time.
Young, who turned 90 on Sept. 5, released a book this month on his life story, Everybody In, Nobody Out: Memoirs of a Rebel Without a Pause. The title echoes the slogan of his “Medicare for all” healthcare policy.
The documentary could be released as early as next summer—if the financing campaign is successful.
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