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MARCH 2024:

Directed by Nick Cassavetes, Written by James Kearns, Produced by Mark Burg, and Oren Koules, Starring: Denzel Washington, Robert Duvall, James Woods, Anne Heche, Eddie Griffin, Kimberly Elise, Shawn Hatosy, Ray Liotta, with Cinematography by Rogier Stoffers, Edited by Dede Allen, Music by Aaron Zigman. Production company: Evolution Entertainment, Distributed by: New Line Cinema. (2002) — *John Q.* (2002)

A Bitter Pill…

In 2002, the American Association of Health Plans ran a full page, color advertisement in Hollywood trade newspapers, and in the Capitol Hill paper Roll Call. The ad puts a major spin on John Q.‘s message about health insurance plans. The ads coincided with the film’s release week of February 15, and looked to counter the viewpoint of the film that John Quincy Archibald resorted to violence due to his insurers being unwilling to find a way to help him secure his son Michael’s heart operation financially, that they were uncaring and bureaucratic. The ads looked to respond to the film’s disparaging message about the medical insurance practice and point the finger elsewhere.

The film looks to address the financial issues within the healthcare system that results in millions of Americans being uninsured from year to year, while the film has a razor focus on the transplant coverage of an insurance plan, it still deals with the fact that healthcare remains unaffordable for the average American. An estimated 15.2 percent of the population or 43.6 million people were without health insurance coverage during the entire year in 2002, the year the film was released. But the film also addressed another issue within the healthcare system, the increasingly profit-driven state of health care: health maintenance organizations (HMOs), and organ procurement organizations such as the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), a non-profit scientific and educational organization that administers the only Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) in the United States, established by the U.S. Congress in 1984 by Gene A. Pierce, founder of UNOS. John Q. emphasized the lack of available organs for transplant that create this profit driven medicine. The drastic shortage of organs coupled with the difficulty uninsured patients have paying for them, results in at least 16 people a day dying waiting to receive an organ. Therefore, John Q. hits on one of America’s worst flaws: our failure to provide people with the basic human right healthcare.

Doctor in office Photo Credit: Getty Images

Stock Photo illustrating American healthcare issues. Photo Credit: Getty Images

(L to R) Denzel Washington, Kimberly Elise, and Daniel E. Smith in a scene from the film "John Q" (2002) Photo Credit: New Line/Getty Images

(L to R) Denzel Washington, and Kimberly Elise in a scene from the film "John Q" (2002) Photo Credit: New Line/Getty Images

(L to R) Anne Heche, and James Woods in a scene from the film "John Q" (2002) Photo Credit: New Line/Getty Images

Doctor in office with patient Photo Credit: Getty Images

Originally designed to control the costs of medical procedures covered by insurance, HMOs are systems of managed care that encourage doctors and nurses to make the cheapest medical decisions, which are not necessarily the best for the patient. They have played a significant role in decreasing the independence of doctors while turning the nation’s health care system into a marketed product. With patients’ critical medical decisions now in the hands of corporate entities, and boards, profit takes priority over what’s best for patients. This often results in underinsured clients being denied an expensive operation such as a heart transplant, based on the financial liability that will fall on the insurance company rather than the patient. Rather than considering if the operation is necessary to save or sustain a life, HMOs are determining the life of liability for their company while insuring the patient. This isn’t quality of care or providing people with the basic human right to healthcare, its telling Americans your only entitled to that human right if you financially viable.

A patient receiving a consult on a heart transplant. Photo Credit: Google Images

With the release of John Q. in 2002 some hospitals had a fear the film’s violent account of a parent feeling backed into a corner financially to save his son’s life, would induce some copycat behavior, and provoke desperate people to take aggressive actions in the same fashion. But the use of violence is not limited to pulling a gun and taking people hostage, it can also be a corporate system with the odds against you medically through financial profit. Cost-cutting policies that leave millions without health care can also constitute a structural form of violence that is equally just as damaging. Otherwise, how does it make sense that 20 years after the film, 27.6 million Americans still remain uninsured in the United States, and without the basic human right to healthcare due to insurance premium costs that most Americans can’t afford on a working wage? The film resonates with viewers not because they want to react violently at the system working against them, but in fact because they want the system to work for them and way to many viewers can relate to the subject matter in some way shape or form medically.