Hollywood and the evil HMO empire

Workforce, May, 2002 by Janet Wiscombe

In the movie John O., Denzel Washington plays the role of a human resources poster child who has a string of terrible luck. He has been reduced to working part-time, is told he's overqualified for a second job, and then learns that his medical insurance won't pay for his son's heart transplant.

Enough is enough. He takes the hospital emergency room hostage. And then things really get bad.

Ever since the action-thriller was released in February, the film has served as a lightning rod for discussions about the evils of managed care. You don't have to be an HR professional, a health-policy analyst, a transplant coordinator, a managed-care advocate, or a health-insurance executive to know that health care is one of the most compelling stories of our time.

Nor does it take the frantic father of a dying child to illustrate the emotional significance of the health-care issue. A new study conducted by global consultants Hewitt Associates in Lincolnshire, Illinois, shows that workers want more control and choice in health care, are interested in new consumer-choice models, and rank health care as the most important benefit.

The study of 528 employees in the United States found that health care ranks as the most important benefit, outscoring compensation by a margin of two to one. More than half of survey participants who are enrolled in employer-sponsored health plans ranked it number one; 82 percent placed it first or second in order of importance. Two-thirds of the respondents said that they considered health-care coverage a primary factor in choosing a job or staying with it.

As an argument for national health care, most critics agree that John O. was embarrassingly one-sided and socially clueless. But no one disputes Hollywood's wisdom on this: the subject of health care touches a universal chord.