The Clinic & The Person
The Clinic & The Person is a podcast bringing knowledge and perspectives from the humanities to certain aspects of biomedicine. “The Clinic” represents all that biomedicine brings to bear on diseases and treatments, and “The Person” represents all that people go through with health problems. Our episodes draw from works in the humanities—any genre—directly related to how people are affected by specific clinical events such as migraine headaches, epileptic seizures, and dementia, and by specific health care situations such as restricted access to care and gut-wrenching, life and death choices. We analyze and interpret featured works and provide thoughts on their applications in patient care; health professions education; clinical and population research; health care policy; and social and cultural trends and preoccupations. Often joining us are the creators of works we feature or experts on the topics we select.
The Clinic & The Person
Lights, Camera, Deny: Managed Care at the Movies
Four movies released between 1997 and 2002 picked up on the anger and resentment building among people encountering increasingly aggressive managed health care tactics aimed at reducing costs during that time. The four movies are: As Good As It Gets; The Rainmaker; Critical Care; and John Q. We talk about how they caught and depicted the rage as it was just reaching the surface of broad societal notice and concern. We note how the rage persists despite efforts on many levels to address it over the years, and wonder if it has reached its apogee with the gunning down of a health care insurance executive.
Links
Trailers for featured movies:
Other movies mentioned:
- Damaged Care (no trailer available)
- Sicko
Russell Teagarden’s blog posting on the featured movies, with more about what is behind the managed care practices generating anger and frustration.
Russell Teagarden’s published article on proper uses and improper uses of prior authorization. If not available and of interest, contact him at russell.teagarden@gmail.com.
Previous podcast episodes mentioned:
- Consumptive Heroines: Opera and TB with Drs Linda and Michael Hutcheon (Episode 26)
- Life Imitates Art: Covid-19 Edition (Episode 16)
Additional Background
- Daniels N, Sabin JE. Setting Limits Fairly: Learning to Share Resources for Health. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
- Wynia MK, Schwab AP. Ensuring Fairness in Health Care Coverage: An Employer’s Guide to Making Good Decisions on Tough Issues. New York: AMACOM, 2007.
- Pearson SD, Sabin JE, Emanuel EJ. No Margin, No Mission. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
- Daniels N, Teagarden JR, Sabin JE. An ethical template for pharmacy benefits. Health Affairs 2003;22:125-137.
Our next episode will focus on illness as normality as we can grasp it from the inventive novel, Nervous System, and with the help of its author, Lina Meruane. Our discussion could lead to the question: Why can’t biomedical writing be more interesting?
Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: russell.teagarden@theclinicandtheperson.com.
Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts, or visit our website.
