Another triumph for the US "Healthcare System"! A flawed cop, but otherwise OK human being, is driven to bank robbery in order to meet the medical bills he will receive in order to keep his daughter alive. What sort of a third-world country is this? No, in some third-world countries she would get the care she needed. The US is driven below the level of a third-world country by the stranglehold of the insurance industry and Big Pharma. One of the greatest regrets of my life is that in 1961 my father was asked to use his experience in the UK NHS to set up a similar system for an American state: I think it was Illinois, where he'd done some work. I remember it began with "I", and Illinois certainly had the financial clout to pull off such an introduction. But he turned the invitation down and went to work in the UK for the WHO instead because he didn't want to be parted from us for the time the project would have taken. Had he accepted, that project could have been the seed that would grow into a real healthcare system for the USA today. So, I feel guilty, sixty years on: hey, that's my problem! As to the episode itself, I find myself in general agreement with edwagreen and bkoganbing, but entirely out of agreement with the reviewer who reacts so strongly to Donnie Wahlberg's character. We may not like him but he has to be there - he is a formulaic character who has to be there, at least until the series is established. We see Elliot Stabler in the Law & Order franchise, Hank Voight in the One Chicago franchise. Scene chewing Jack Nicholson replacements have to be there. The question is, how do the scriptwriters handle them? We will see.
Review of Critical Condition
