Hollywood has long viewed health insurers as villains: NPR

In the 2002 medical thriller John Q, Denzel Washington and Kimberly Elise play parents who learn that their 9-year-old son’s heart transplant won’t be covered by insurance.

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Cinematic/Alamy Stock Photo

The killing of health insurance executive Brian Thompson sparked a flood of anger on social media – directed not at the shooter but at health insurance providers – and suddenly we’re surprised only in the imagination public, insurance companies seem to be bad. guys? But Hollywood has been making them bad guys for years.

In the 1997 Oscar-winning comedy As good as it getsone of the biggest laughs has always been the scene in which Helen Hunt burst into profanity while talking to a sympathetic doctor about caring for her son. Care that didn’t come to her because of “F****** HMO b****** pieces of shit”, is how she puts it somewhat indelicately.

When she glances at the doctor and adds a quick, “I’m sorry,” he offers, perplexed, “Actually, I think that’s their technical name.”

This moment in one of the most popular films of 1997 was just the tip of the HMO-bashing iceberg that year. Two other films actually centered health insurance in their plots. Satirical comedy Intensive care took the point of view of a doctor in a hospital where patients with good insurance were considered cash cows, unlike John Grisham’s thriller The rainmaker, where Matt Damon’s crusading, albeit inexperienced, lawyer struggled to get any treatment for his clients.

Negativity: a pre-existing condition?

Was all this negativity toward health insurers just a bad PR year for the industry? Well, for a while, insurance companies didn’t have much GOOD years in Hollywood.

• Queen Latifah was diagnosed with a brain tumor Last vacation (2006) that his HMO would not cover.
• Michael Moore took no fools from the healthcare industry in his documentary Sick (2007).
• The horror movie Saw VI (2009) centered on an insurance adjuster who quickly wishes he hadn’t refused to cover for Jigsaw’s killer.
• Even Pixar’s animation team got in on the action by The Incredibles (2004), but this is about insurance companies in general, not just health insurance. When Mr. Incredible is told to hang up his lawsuit early in the film, he somberly returns to his insurance office to do what movie insurance adjusters invariably do: deny coverage to a nice little old lady who lives with a fixed income. Then his wife jokes about saving the world, one policy at a time, and he finds a way to help her. But this gets him in trouble with his boss, who yells at him to stop writing checks to every Harry Hardluck and Sally Sobstory, and to remember that his job is to keep Insuricare in the black.

Managed Care and Cost Control

Films of course reflect public attitude, and in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the public was visibly dissatisfied with how health insurance worked.

A article from 2004 in the Health Law Review argued that Hollywood stories about health care had turned into horror stories after American insurance companies largely shifted to a system called “managed” care – aimed at reducing unnecessary hospitalizations and make the health sector more efficient.

By the mid-1990s, these business plans were widely recognized for this purpose. But their success came at a cost in terms of reputation: not to mention that hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and others all played a role, insurers were cast as the main villains, and this sentiment was one that was reflected in Hollywood films, nowhere with more urgency than in the 2002 medical thriller, John Q.

Denzel Washington played the title character who, when told his insurance would not cover a heart transplant for his seriously ill 9-year-old child, took not only the hospital emergency room hostage, but also the feelings of a public gathered behind police lines. in the street in front of the hospital, seeming as disenchanted with the insurers as he was.

And, although his plight resonated with the crowd on screen, it seemed touch a raw nerve with more than 17 million spectators who saw John Q. in cinemas around the world.

The film has inspired editorials, introspection and even full page ads ” by the American Association of Health Plans, attempting to limit the damage: “John Q: It’s not just a movie,” the ads proclaimed, “it’s a crisis for 40 million people who have no cannot afford health care.”

The critics were less enthusiastic, but who ever accused a critic of having heart?