From Breaking Bad to I, Daniel Blake: Even Developed Countries Struggle to Perfect Serious Illness Protection

I started watching Breaking Bad, and it is indeed excellent. The show is widely regarded as one of the finest works in the history of American television, has won multiple Emmy Awards, and enjoys enormous recognition and influence around the world. An ordinary high school chemistry teacher is diagnosed with lung cancer. Facing medical costs and the financial pressure on his family's future, he begins making drugs to earn money and sinks deeper and deeper.

Similar plots are not uncommon in American film and television. A search shows that in John Q, a father, unable to pay for his son's heart transplant, takes over a hospital at gunpoint; in Ambulance, a husband joins a bank robbery to raise money for his wife's surgery; and in Catch That Kid, a daughter plans to rob a bank to treat her father.

In Europe, which has universal healthcare systems, there are also works reflecting similar problems.

I, Daniel Blake, directed by the renowned British director Ken Loach, won the Palme d'Or, the highest honor at the Cannes Film Festival. It tells the story of an ordinary worker who cannot work because of a heart condition but encounters numerous obstacles when applying for social welfare and ultimately falls into hardship. Another film, Sorry We Missed You, shows the difficult struggle of ordinary workers among economic pressure, family responsibilities, and caregiving burdens.

Although these works involve artistic embellishment and reflect different problems, together they offer an important insight:

Even in the world's most developed countries, the economic risks brought by illness and the problems of social security are far from perfectly resolved.

The United States has a medical insurance system, and many European countries have universal healthcare, but risks such as medical costs, interruption of income, long-term care, and family life can still plunge ordinary people into hardship.

This shows that serious illness protection is an extremely complex social issue. There is no perfect system in the world that is universally applicable and can solve every problem.

Since no single approach can cover all risks, multiple approaches must coexist and complement one another.

Government medical insurance provides basic protection, commercial insurance meets different needs, social welfare and charitable assistance help disadvantaged groups, and mutual aid among ordinary people allows people to participate voluntarily and share risks together, adding another layer of protection for one another.

This is precisely the significance of KangAi Commune's long-term exploration of serious illness mutual aid.

We have never believed that mutual aid can replace medical insurance or commercial insurance, still less that mutual aid itself is already perfect. It too has limitations and requires constant improvement of rules, stronger oversight, and sustainability.

But imperfection does not mean lack of value; being unable to solve every problem does not mean it does not deserve to exist.

Since even the most developed countries are still exploring, why should we demand that a model of mutual aid among ordinary people be flawless before it has the right to exist?

Serious illness mutual aid is not the entire answer to serious illness protection, but it can absolutely be one valuable answer among many.