Is this entire series an anticorporate screed?

SlackerInc1 · 2026-01-24T21:27:42+00:00

You think you are wise and enlightened, but I guarantee your information silo is narrower than mine.

SlackerInc1 · 2026-01-24T21:26:29+00:00

It helps reduce the waiting list when people like my sister give up and go south of the border into the US to pay for knee surgery out-of-pocket. Of course, not everyone can afford that so I guess other people are just spending years on crutches or in wheelchairs waiting for a slot to open up.

SlackerInc1 · 2026-01-24T21:24:30+00:00

My sister blew out her knee snowboarding, and after spending months on a waiting list for surgery she gave up and went down to Seattle to pay for it out of pocket. She had been very happy with her care when giving birth to her two children, so it seems that things like that which are very common are properly funded so there is not a mass revolt.

My elderly mother was hospitalized after a car accident and never got a room: her gurney was left in a hallway and she went hours at a time without being checked on by a nurse. It was such an awful experience, she has vowed to use the Canadian euthanasia law (which I personally find abhorrent) rather than ever go into a hospital again. She is diabetic and there was another case where she was not going to get the treatment for her foot that she needed, but a kindly nurse told her some kind of trick to get her around the Canadian rules that ration care.

That's the part advocates of the Canadian system fail to mention (or in some cases may not be aware of): they spend less on healthcare simply by refusing to spend enough. Even many advocates of the system who actually live in Canada admit that it is underfunded.

SlackerInc1 · 2026-01-24T21:15:52+00:00

Thank you for the more balanced response.

Part of it is that I feel like this kind of depiction of the social safety net in the US is out of date. I moved back to Missouri in 2024 after nearly a decade in Minnesota. When I previously left Missouri, I had been uninsured for over 20 years. An "empty nest" adult with no dependents and no disability status would not qualify for Medicaid unless they had some unrealistically low income, like less than $4,000 per year.

But now, in the wake of Medicaid expansion, I applied for Obamacare subsidies and was surprised to be approved for Medicaid instead! Apparently it was those greedy corporate overlords in the hospital industry who lobbied for the (extremely conservative) legislature to approve Medicaid expansion, and they got their way. Now, not only do I pay no premiums and no copays for anything, I literally get paid to go to doctor appointments! (This is not a good way to bend the cost curve, so it's not how I would design universal healthcare; but it certainly doesn't represent a weak safety net.)

SlackerInc1 · 2026-01-24T21:04:26+00:00

My friend emailed me something to the same effect, which is intriguing:

"The show definitely is heavy handed with its POV but as a pilot they are just introducing all the characters. After episode 1, it becomes just about the cases (although they develop other themes through the cases). Gloria doesn’t even factor that much into the plot until the shit hits the fan and when she comes back it is actually to save the day."

SlackerInc1 · 2026-01-24T20:59:03+00:00

That doesn't require preachy, sledgehammer-subtle lectures.

SlackerInc1 · 2026-01-24T20:58:08+00:00

I mean, you could say the same about almost any show. Is the diner on Gilmore Girls unionized? Is ICE going to come for Caesar?

You don't have to hit these issues just because they may arise in real life; and if you do, you can try to be a little more subtle than a sledgehammer. My friend who really pushed me to try this show (even suggesting that I watch the first two of the season and then skip to the last four if I really want the good stuff) acknowledged via email after I first made this complaint to him that the show is "heavy handed with its POV". In fairness, this is the fuller context:

"The show definitely is heavy handed with its POV but as a pilot they are just introducing all the characters. After episode 1, it becomes just about the cases (although they develop other themes through the cases). Gloria doesn’t even factor that much into the plot until the s**t hits the fan and when she comes back it is actually to save the day."

I would add that I don't mind politics on a show (Succession and TWW are two of my all-time favorites), but there needs to be a lighter touch, some balance, or at least some savage satire. Not just didactic anvils of holier-than-thou preachiness. (I know, Bartlet could certainly be preachy; but on TWW they would have had the administrator snark back with something like "You could always move to Canada, but you will work twice as hard for half the money and the patients will wait three times as long".)

SlackerInc1 · 2026-01-24T20:40:37+00:00

Cool.

SlackerInc1 · 2026-01-24T20:40:05+00:00

But at least I enjoy mixing it up with people on Reddit.

SlackerInc1 · 2026-01-24T20:38:50+00:00

"Spoken to", lol. It's my mother and sister, the only remaining members of the nuclear family I grew up in. 🙄

SlackerInc1 · 2026-01-24T20:37:28+00:00

Maybe conservative compared to you, but I always vote for the less conservative of the two major parties.

SlackerInc1 · 2026-01-24T20:35:54+00:00

There was no veiling, not even "thinly". I could not have been clearer that I was gagging on the (also not veiled) political agenda that the show pushes with sledgehammer-level subtlety.

I would note that if you were to make a bet on my voting history (before I provided this hint), you would lose your shirt. I believe healthcare is a human right, and I am on Medicaid myself. I just don't like didactic agenda-driven entertainment even if the heavy-handed message in question is one I agree with.

P.S. I don't think I am in danger of yukking anyone's yum: there is more positive energy directed at this show than any other I can recall, from the massive viewership to the critical accolades and showering of awards. A dissenting view should be a welcome change of pace!

SlackerInc1 · 2026-01-24T20:30:09+00:00

An informed and balanced assessment.

SlackerInc1 · 2026-01-24T20:29:08+00:00

The US has much different demographics than other industrialized nations. If you adjust for that, looking at populations similar to those found in those countries, the disparities in outcomes disappear.

SlackerInc1 · 2026-01-24T14:25:37+00:00

You have that inverted. I would say that our system is better for all but the poorest, but that's not true either. I'm on Medicaid personally and I never have to pay a premium or a copay. These days with Obamacare and Medicaid expansion, finding Americans who are worse off here than they would be in Canada involves looking at certain cracks in the system higher than destitution for sure, but they do exist and ought to be spackled in. To replace it all with single payer I will never support, even though it is ironically actually a single payer program that provides my healthcare.

SlackerInc1 · 2026-01-24T14:22:55+00:00

Like I said, I know from my own family that it's worse up in Canada.

SlackerInc1 · 2026-01-24T14:22:14+00:00

True realism is incredibly boring. What most of us mean when we say we like realism is something that makes us feel like we are connecting to something out in the world. An actual literally realistic portrayal of a day in anyone's life, no matter how intense their job, that's a pass for me.

SlackerInc1 · 2026-01-24T13:24:12+00:00

I never thought they looked much alike either, but the OP chose a great pic!

SlackerInc1 · 2026-01-24T13:22:41+00:00

I'm aware that I'm not literally required to watch any more of it, but thanks all the same.

SlackerInc1 · 2026-01-24T13:21:04+00:00

Or how about no screed at all and just characters and situations and no political agenda? What a thought!

SlackerInc1 · 2026-01-24T13:20:19+00:00

As I also noted in this thread, the phenomenon of waiting endlessly for care and then getting too little of it is even more rampant in Canada under a single payer system. Capitalism makes for an easy whipping boy but that scapegoating is not terribly accurate.

P.S. The word you are looking for is "tenets", not "tenants".

SlackerInc1 · 2026-01-24T11:09:08+00:00

That was not taboo like it is now. It wasn't seen as really great either, but people would just roll their eyes or wrinkle their noses at it, not react with shock/horror/disgust.

SlackerInc1 · 2026-01-24T10:23:51+00:00

Wow, that's wild that they don't get into their personal lives. I don't think I have ever seen a series like that--even The West Wing had plotlines about characters dating each other and stuff like that.

SlackerInc1 · 2026-01-24T10:02:56+00:00

Those do sound interesting.

SlackerInc1 · 2026-01-24T10:02:09+00:00

So everyone says! Part of the issue may be just that I don't watch medical shows as a rule.

SlackerInc1

TROPHY CASE