House and Health Policy
Many of my friends love House. And, I’ll admit, for a more-formulaic-than-Law-and-Order medical drama, it’s pretty good. But, as Matt Yglesias points out on Twitter “puts forward terrible implicit ideas about health care policy.” To elaborate, every episode, House orders up expensive tests, has his minions perform invasive procedures and prescribes elaborate treatments that inevitability turn out to either be A. Not that informative or B. downright dangerous. As we all know from Shannon Brownlee’s Overtreated, this type of medical care isn’t just expensive, but actually dangerous. Perhaps its a sign that technocratic arguments about policy have totally deluded my artistic sensibility, but when I watch the show, that’s about all I can think about.
I should note that House does signal occasionally constructively rebel against the horrible nature of the health system. In one episode, he figures out that a young patient without insurance has some sort of chronic respiratory ailment. Instead of formally diagnoses him, he hints that the patient has this disease and should get health insurance. That’s because if House were to actually diagnose him, the patient would have a preexisting condition and either would be turned down or charged higher rates for coverage.
