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Even Pam’s baby birth on ‘The Office’ assaults insurance industry
Bob Graham is executive editor at Insurance & Financial Advisor and IFAwebnews.com.
Last week’s much-awaited episode of “The Office,” the NBC sitcom detailing the lives of workers at Dunder Mifflin Paper Co. in Scranton, Pa., took an easy, but at least humorous, shot at health insurance companies at a time when they seem fodder for all sorts of assaults. (I have delayed writing about it until now to give people who taped it for later viewing a chance to catch up.)
For much of the hour (Part 1 and Part 2), Pam, a Dunder Mifflin worker who was pregnant with the baby of her husband, Jim, another Dunder Mifflin employee, continued to work despite obviously needing to go to the hospital. She had contractions, getting progressively more painful and closer together. Her husband and others at the paper company tried to get her to consent to go to the hospital, but she declined, explaining early on that if she waited until midnight to go, she would get an “extra night” in the hospital.
As can only happen in sitcoms, Pam Halpert had the baby at the hospital and all was fine, but not before the insurance industry played the villain again, now to TV characters.
2 Responses to “Even Pam’s baby birth on ‘The Office’ assaults insurance industry”
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Van Says:
March 11th, 2010 at 10:37 pmInsurance companies certainly do have such rules. Who knows how many people make similar choices. Yes, insurance companies are currently profit driven. Perhaps some things should not be profit driven. I’ve also been appalled a the profit driven funeral industry. Kind of sick-o these businesses. Maybe in the far future we can have a better world.
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Laura Says:
March 15th, 2010 at 11:26 amInsurance companies, all companies actually are profit driven. The reason that you have a paycheck right now is because your company is profit driven. If they were not they would go out of business, which is basic capitalism. Socialism does not work, as has been proven time and time again. If you fundamentally disagree with Capitalism maybe you should move to a “better world” where the government takes care of people such as China. The freedoms that we enjoy as American’s are a result of the free market that we have.
