> You've never heard of Breaking Bad?
Breaking Bad does not feature medical debt, or even medical costs that fhe character does not have ready access to funds to pay.
It does feature hubris, the traditional central feature of tragedy, though.
Breaking Bad does not feature medical debt, or even medical costs that fhe character does not have ready access to funds to pay.
It does feature hubris, the traditional central feature of tragedy, though.
Every goal he wanted (getting enough money to pay for college for his children, paying living expenses for a decade, etc) he met and still continued.
He even says so in the last episode, he did it because it made him feel alive.
The initial diagnosis is that it is terminal and without useful treatment options and his rationalization for cooking meth is to leave a nest egg. The high cost treatment comes up later and he immediately turns down an offer of no-strings payment in favor of cooking more meth to pay for it (Epsiodes 4-5).
The only medical service he pays for out of drug money before turning down the offer to pay for all treatment is the initial evaluation with the highly-rated oncologists that his wife schedules on her own without a clear plan of how they’ll pay for it from which the treatment plan originates.
All the despicable actions he did during the show (watching his partners GF OD and not intervening, running over two people with a car, poisoning a child, letting a child get murdered, collaborating with neo nazis, and selling Jesse into slavery) were not done to help his family but for his own selfish gains.
That’s like the entire point of the show, selfish man wants his own nut at the cost of his loved ones.
Admittedly, the focus on debt was very small. The Korean shows put a lot more emphasis on it.
I get his evolution as a character as that's the primary theme, but it never would even be a thing is he didn't have cancer.
You remove this factor, no Heisenberg. Full stop.
The cancer diagnosis and its implications for him and his family is what sparked this. And he continued further down that path due to believing he was going to actually die. If you recall when he decided to get treatment and found out he was in remission, there was a moment of "wtf have I done" for his character.
The Gray Matter backstory, and his former cofounders re-entrance in his life due to perceived medical bills explained the peeling the onion that led to his shift.
But it is the story of a father doing everything possible to make sure his family is taken care of after he is gone.