SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t watched the show “Breaking Bad” and are interested in doing so, this probably isn’t the column for you.
As AMC’s hit television show “Breaking Bad” winds its way through its final, tumultuous episodes, fans of the show are shocked at just how “bad” main character Walter White truly is.
Actor Bryan Cranston portrays a high-school-teacher-turned-drug-kingpin as a ruthless crime lord, willing to lie, steal, kill and harm anyone who gets in the way of his methamphetamine empire. At this point in the show, it’s difficult to recognize the seemingly harmless chemistry teacher from a few short seasons ago.
However, “Breaking Bad” is not simply about a middle-class husband, father and teacher who takes the low road to high profits. It’s about a man who saw no other choice after facing death.
The show begins with White, a humble chemistry teacher, learning he has lung cancer. White comes to the realization that with his meager salary and benefits as a public school teacher, he can’t cover the costs of necessary treatments and can’t provide his family a nest egg if — and when — he succumbs to the disease.
Living in a hotbed of meth activity, White discovers by making high-quality meth, he can pay for his treatment and build that nest egg for his wife, son and unborn daughter — with maybe a little extra to spare.
If you cast aside the murder, mayhem, violence, drug use and tendency to sit on the edge of your seat during the show, “Breaking Bad” is actually a striking critique on the cost of health care in the United States and the low pay of our public school teachers.
What if White made decent money or had good benefits as a public school teacher? Isn’t it realistic that the show’s premise might not exist in a country that actually paid its teachers their full worth and had a health care system that didn’t regularly bankrupt families when somebody gets sick?
According to the National Education Association, over the first decade of this century, teachers in Florida saw their salaries decrease by about 7 percent, the sixth-largest decrease in the country. The average starting salary for a public school teacher in Florida is $35,236, ranking 19th out of the 50 states. The average overall salary for a teacher in Florida is $45,732, leaving the state near the bottom.
According to the NEA, “Salaries are important for attracting, developing and keeping a top-notch teaching force in place in each zip code, however over the years from 2001-02 through 2011-12, the buying power of teacher salaries has declined 2.8%.”
Just to put a teacher’s wages into perspective, in 2012, the average pay of a CEO for one of the top 350 companies in the United States was $14.1 million.
Once you consider the cost of treating cancer with chemotherapy, prescription medications, radiation and other forms of treatment, you could be facing a cost of several thousand dollars per month in order to beat the disease.
Can you really blame White for giving up on his teaching career for a life of crime?
People shouldn’t pursue a career of cooking meth in order to pay for their health care, and they shouldn’t even have to consider it. While the “Breaking Bad” example is far-fetched and highly unlikely, in reality, it raises serious questions about the growing disparities between the wealthy and the middle class — or what’s left of it.
The Affordable Care Act tries mightily to end the madness of disease bankrupting families, but as with most major reforms, it faces major challenges. For the American economy to fully recover and for the middle class of this nation to grow and thrive, we need to ensure that teachers — even fictional ones like Walter White — don’t have to rely on illicit means to pay for health care.
We are a better country than that, and those citizens making an honest living should not lose everything just because they get sick.
Some may prefer a “you’re-on-your-own” type of society, but that’s not right, and it’s certainly not American.
Finally, if you don’t watch “Breaking Bad,” you need to change this immediately.
Joel Mendelson is a UF graduate student in political campaigning. His column usually runs on Mondays. A version of this column ran on page 7 on 9/3/2013 under the headline "‘Breaking Bad’: an insightful critique of American health care"
