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Film Analysis: Rainmaker

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Film Analysis: Rainmaker

Francis Ford Coppola is the director of the film Rainmaker, a 1997 legal drama based

on one of John Grisham’s novels. In the movie Rudy Baylor, the protagonist takes a big

insurance company which declines to cover for the bone marrow transplant treatment of a

terminally ill 22-year-old boy. In challenging the actions of the insurance company, Rudy

Baylor faces a dilemma to either betray the client’s cause or take on the antagonist head-on.

The antagonist disregards the laws and rules regarding the confidentiality of protected health

information (phi) contrary to the provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and

Accountability Act (HIPPA).

The film is suspenseful; it has evoked my emotions. At some point, I got angry,

anxious and empathetic due to the prevalent injustices that advocates of a free, just and fair

society must endure. The theme and performance of the characters provide a basis through

which legislators, healthcare advocates, social workers and policymakers can borrow.

Further, the film made me feel encouraged that it is possible for victims of unethical practices

to get justice. Thus, the film elicited mixed emotions.

Concerning the comfort of the film's ending, I can term it satisfactory. Like most

societies today, large corporations tend to trample on other people’s rights, like the insurance

company in the film. In this film, Rudy Baylor has successfully challenged the insurance

company by raising pertinent issues that require redress. Nonetheless, Rudy’s success has not

amended the existing policy framework around healthcare. As such, the film indicates the

continued efforts to address prevailing ethical and legal challenges in the healthcare sector.

As a lawyer, Rudy Baylor is confronted with an ethical dilemma. At some point, he

had to deal with either opting to advance the interests of his client by adhering to the existing

ethical conduct of a lawyer or accepting a bribe from the insurance company and tampering

with the evidence in favour of the latter (Coppola, 1997). The ethical conduct rules for
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lawyers indicate that a lawyer needs to represent the client’s case with vigour and passion.

Further, as an ethical duty, a lawyer owes a duty to their clients to represent their best

interests. This ethical dilemma reflects lawyers' temptations while representing clients against

powerful organizations. The film extrapolates Donny Ray Black’s legal rights.

Donny Ray Black’s legal rights feature throughout the film. Since his subscription to

the insurance company is up-to-date, he has a legal right to receive leukaemia treatment. The

insurance company’s denial of his claim constitutes an affront to Donny Black’s right to

healthcare. Donny Ray Black’s case is not an isolated issue as it depicts the challenges

patients face in society. Apart from violating this right, the film extrapolates violations of

existing rules and regulations, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability

Act (HIPPA).

The film portrays an array of violations of the Health Insurance Portability and

Accountability Act (HIPPA), most of which are in accordance with the class materials. At

one point, the protagonist encounters a nurse who violates the HIPPA privacy rule by sharing

confidential patient information (“U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2022”).

The law requires certain safeguards to protect the privacy of protected health information

from unauthorized individuals. As such, by disclosing protected health information to

unauthorized personnel, the nurse violated the HIPPA rules, and the hospital management

ought to have subjected him to a disciplinary hearing.

Moreover, the insurance company violates HIPPA rules by failing to seek consent to

obtain medical records. HIPPA permits insurance companies the right to obtain an

individual’s health records for reasons related to payments. Nonetheless, the HIPPA rules

provide specific guidelines that ought to be followed to protect patients’ confidentiality and

privacy (“U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2022”). Firstly, the insurance can

only access patients’ records, which is necessary to pay claims and determine eligibility to be
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covered. The insurance company in the film overlooked this aspect in accessing patient

information. Secondly, the insurance company is expected by law to have a proper

administrative, physical and technical safeguard to avert a breach of confidentiality of the

protected health information. Thus, the company’s actions outright disregard the Health

Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) provisions.

Overall, “The Rainmaker” demonstrates existing ills in the healthcare sector by

exploring ethical and legal issues. The film depicts the challenges patients face at the hands

of hegemonies whose primary role is maximizing profits. Also, it sheds light on the ethical

dilemmas lawyers face while representing vulnerable clients against powerful adversaries

who have little or no regard for the law and ethics. One of the laws the insurance company

violated is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA). The company

did not follow the channels prescribed by the law to access protected health information.

While the film illustrates the challenges facing society in contemporary society, it provokes

the audience's minds to advocate for all organizations in the health sector to adhere to the

existing legal framework, principles and ethical theories.

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References

Francis F. Coppola. (1997). Netflix. Netflix - Watch TV Shows Online, Watch Movies

Online. https://www.netflix.com/title/1181661

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2022, October 20). Individuals’ right

under HIPAA to access their health information. HHS.gov.

https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/guidance/access/index.html