They Ruined “ER”

When my daughter was little, she used to watch “The Land Before Time” over and over again. And as much as I understood the reasons why—as much as I understood the safety in the familiar, the comfort of lines you know being repeated over and and over like some kind of toddler Zen koan—it still drove me crazy. “Try something new,” I’d push. “Your next favorite thing is just around the corner!”

How ironic is it, then, that nearly a quarter of a century later I find myself doing the exact same thing, and instead of clicking on one of the literally dozens of new shows that friends and family insist will be my “new favorite thing,” I cue up yet another episode of early season “ER.” Unfortunately, however, I’ve come to realize that Mark, Doug and Carter don’t have quite the same soothing effect on me that Ducky, Cera and Longneck had on her.

Sure the pagers, Diet Cokes and pay phones are soothing (Doctors! Waiting in line! For a pay phone!) And yes, George Clooney is dreamy in any era. But the once comforting repetition of hearing the doctors ask the nurses for a “CBC” (After a certain point wouldn’t they just take that particular test as a given? No? Carry on, then.) has dimmed somewhat by the niggling thought in the back of my head saying “I wonder how much that is going to cost?”

True, the writers of “ER” did make an effort to address the cost of healthcare even back in their day. When Carter has to work on a famously prickly cardiologist’s patient and orders every test he can think of just to be on the safe side, the nurse is aghast. “That’s two thousand dollars worth of tests!” she gasps. Meanwhile, I’m sitting on the couch sighing like I’ve just seen a young Mickey Rooney offer to shine someone’s shoes for a nickel. “Two thousand dollars,” I think. “For a trip to the ER. How quaint.”

The hard truth is that in 1994, when “ER” premiered, health care costs in the United States were already ridiculous—and they have nearly quadrupled since then. This even as life expectancy rates have fallen—we are now 35^th in the world for longevity.

Most of this decline is because of the skyrocketing increase in mortality among the young and the middle-aged—people in the prime “Go Fund Me” years of their lives. Sure, a significant percentage of this increase is due to “deaths of despair” like suicide, drug overdoses and alcohol-related diseases, but we can’t overlook the fact that many of these deaths are due to exclusively financial reasons—for too many people, the cost of treatment is an insurmountable barrier. And by insurmountable, I mean insurmountable like Everest, with the accompanying body count to prove it.

Take insulin, for example. There is absolutely no question that without it, diabetics will die. Which is why Dr. Frederick Banning gave away the patent for free after he and his team developed it in 1922, and why, in almost every single first world country, its price is kept affordably low. (Sometimes I like to imagine Banning’s ghost one day coming back to punch America’s greedy drug manufacturers in their collective dicks. It’s a comforting thought whenever you are on hold with your insurance company.)

Now, of course, the ridiculous and insurmountable cost for many is going to be the test for Covid 19. Or will it? I’d like to think that, finally, those in charge will step in and fix our broken system—and not just because, unlike with diabetics, and insulin, they have figured out that they, too, are at risk when everyone doesn’t have access to basic healthcare, but rather because they all have some kind of Scrooge-like awakening and finally realize that it is the right thing to do.

But then again, I might be a little naïve. After all, I can still be made happy just by watching George Clooney speak on a cell phone bigger than his head.