Illustration of Nurse Jackie.
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Even USA Network's escapist Royal Pains has a class-conscious premise. Idealistic Dr. Hank Lawson gets fired when he chooses to save a young patient's life before treating a hospital board member. He takes a job as a "concierge doctor" to rich summer people in New York's Hamptons, treating everything from hemophilia to deflated breast implants. It's fluff, but with a theme of modern medical feudalism: top docs attending the richest like courtiers. If your hospital waiting room has cable, watch it sometime!
In all, prime time depicts a medical system in which the technology is amazing but access is terrifying and sometimes random. Nurse Jackie, Hawthorne and NBC midseason nurse drama Mercy present nurses butting heads with doctors who demand incorrect treatments, with dangerous or fatal results.
Still, medical TV is in a sense idealized. Whereas ER and St. Elsewhere were set at cash-strapped urban hospitals, TV now prefers upscale settings. Patients generally get well, and you don't see them bankrupted by bills. (If you really want to make a show about the insurance crisis, set it at a repo agency.)
These ideal images, though, may only make people more critical when real-life care doesn't measure up. CBS's fall debut Three Rivers, set at an élite transplant center, could underscore our luck-of-the-draw access to lifesaving resources. Or it could remind viewers of the top-shelf procedures that Obama's critics say will be threatened by "socialized" solutions.
One thing Obama may have going for him is timing. In 1994, ER made it on air just as the Clinton plan was declared dead. This time the politics and the programming are in sync. Now to see if the U.S. is a country truly ready for health-care change, or if it just plays one on TV.