Blue Cross and Blue Shield denied payment for the proton therapy Robert “Skeeter” Salim’s doctor ordered to fight his throat cancer. But he was no ordinary patient. He was a celebrated litigator. And he was ready to fight.
It’s called an Orphan Crushing Machine story. As in, “how nice it is that the whole community came together to raise money to stop little orphan Annie from being tossed into the orphan crushing machine!”. Stories that don’t bother to ask the important questions like “Why is there an orphan-crushing machine?” and “Why on earth did they all have to raise money to pay someone to stop an orphan from being tossed into said machine?!”
Once you learn to recognize them, you realize it’s what 99% of ‘feel good’ news stories really are.
But this one is a lot more sensitive to that narrative than most, so I’d still recommend the read.
I’d argue that is ProPublica, so generally very far from the kind of media outlet that would publish feel good stories, and that the story itself isn’t even a feel good story: even the rich, powerful attorney with the powerful lawyer friend and the powerful doctor friend had to pay for the treatment out of his own pocket, and the story ends with the insurance company, after losing the car, still only paying a fraction of that after having dragged out the entire case for years and years.
It’s called an Orphan Crushing Machine story. As in, “how nice it is that the whole community came together to raise money to stop little orphan Annie from being tossed into the orphan crushing machine!”. Stories that don’t bother to ask the important questions like “Why is there an orphan-crushing machine?” and “Why on earth did they all have to raise money to pay someone to stop an orphan from being tossed into said machine?!”
Once you learn to recognize them, you realize it’s what 99% of ‘feel good’ news stories really are.
But this one is a lot more sensitive to that narrative than most, so I’d still recommend the read.
I’d argue that is ProPublica, so generally very far from the kind of media outlet that would publish feel good stories, and that the story itself isn’t even a feel good story: even the rich, powerful attorney with the powerful lawyer friend and the powerful doctor friend had to pay for the treatment out of his own pocket, and the story ends with the insurance company, after losing the car, still only paying a fraction of that after having dragged out the entire case for years and years.