Healthcare Goes to Hollywood

Medicare for All

It’s summer, the sun is blazing, and we only have one thing on our minds - the upcoming thirtieth anniversary of the high-octane, expertly paced thriller The Fugitive, originally released August 6, 1993 starring Harrison Ford. Oh, and Medicare for All. We’re always thinking about Medicare for All. Now that we mention it, isn’t it funny how if we had a single-payer healthcare system, The Fugitive wouldn’t exist? In a single-payer system, there would have been no nefarious pharmaceutical executive to frame Harrison Ford for murder in order to cover up the side effects of Provasic. There would have been no need for Walter White to cook meth in order to pay for his cancer treatment. In fact, a lot of our favorite movies and TV shows would be entirely without conflict. In this episode, we take a look at a uniquely American subgenre: movies where our healthcare system is the villain! Plus, we dip into the Healthcare-NOW mailbag to hear from our listeners about your favorite movies where for-profit healthcare is the bad guy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKat9vjm7tI SPOILER ALERT. Some of these movies are masterpieces, and we'll be discussing spoilers. Seriously, we advise that you pause the podcast and watch Dog Day Afternoon now. Let's discuss the uniquely American film genre that depicts the healthcare industry as the villain. One of the biggest healthcare villain blockbusters was, of course, The Fugitive (1993). Our hero Dr. Richard Kimball is falsely accused of murdering his wife. He escapes police custody and along the way uncovers the truth, that he was framed by an evil pharmaceutical executive who killed Mrs. Kimball to cover up the side effects of a profitable new drug. Fun fact: Tommy Lee Jones was the former college roommate of Vice President Al Gore. The term “healthcare industry” dates back to the 1970s, and so does the reality of for-profit healthcare. Major transformations of our healthcare system have created real-life nightmares and impossible situations for patients, and that growing widespread experience of a healthcare dystopia then creates an audience for Hollywood script writers to build drama around healthcare situations. Two of the films submitted by our members come from the very beginning of the “healthcare industry,” in the early 1970s: The Hospital (1971) stars George C. Scott and Diana Rigg. A serial killer targets doctors by making them patients in their own hospital, where they die due to hospital negligence. CW: weird sexual politics. Dog Day Afternoon (1975) starring Al Pacino and John Cazale, dramatizes a true story of two Brooklyn bank robbers, motivated to steal to pay for gender reassignment surgery for Pacino's character's partner. In 2015, real life dad Bryan Randolph of Detroit robbed a bank to pay for his 1-year-old daughter’s cancer treatment after his health insurance canceled her plan. The next explosion of healthcare plots comes in the 1990s and early 2000s, when “managed care” plans and HMOs spread like wildfire, replacing traditional insurance. Intended to bring down rising healthcare costs, managed care brought us such classics as prior authorization, widespread claim denials and limited networks. This kicked off a new wave of films in the 1990s that start using health insurance villains become key plot points. The failed Clinton health reform efforts also happened in 1994, which created probably a sense of hopelessness around Congress fixing these problems. As Good As It Gets (1997): This cringefest features Jack Nicholson as a cranky, bigoted and obsessive compulsive writer. Nicholson's character can only eat at one restaurant, where he meets waitress Helen Hunt, and pays for her child's cancer treatment so she can continue to work and serve him. All kinds of toxicity, sexism, and structural inequities on display in this one. Patch Adams (1998): features Robin Williams in a real life story about a doctor whose unorthodox ways bump up agai...