Kate over at Healthy Policy takes a look at ABC's new reality show, Miracle Workers, a show Ezra aptly describes as "both the most charitable thing on television and entertainment's most poignant window into all that's wrong with our society." Kate feels it's, quite bluntly, "the wrong take on health care."The show, following in Extreme Home Makeover's footsteps, creates a construction that Bad Things happen to people, and a choice handful will be lucky enough to come under the lens of millions and deemed worthy of assistance. It's a revival of the notion of the deserving poor…It wouldn't take a miracle to solve the nation's health care crisis; just a little hard work and determinism to fix it once and for all. But I guess that doesn't make good television. Just ask CNN, MSNBC, Fox News...
It’s taking the uninsured and making them special cases to nurture and heal. It’s ignoring the fact that 46 million people are in the same place as the two patients featured every week on this show…
This show could really make leaps and bounds for health care if it discussed these cases in the context of what they are: the lucky few of an addressable problem. Every person in this nation deserves access to this kind of care, and there’s any number of ways we can go about ensuring that. We should take that joy and hope the sick enjoy when they get adequate care, and use that as reason to cover everyone.
Instead Americans will blissfully sit in front of their television, eyes a little wet as the "miracles" progress, little thought given to the rest of the uninsured and how they’ll never see doctors like this.
(Crossposted at AlterNet PEEK.)
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