Hollywood is about as likely as Washington to turn down moneyed interests. Bill Lawrence, creator of the hot health-care comedy “Scrubs,” sees a meeting with the HMOs as basic research. “I’d talk to anybody if it helped the show,” he says. Others find the HMO-Hollywood axis bizarre. “It’s like the Catholic Church hiring a talent agent,” says Dr. Mark Morocco, medical supervisor for “ER.” “It’s just so wrongheaded.”
The gambit hinges on whether viewers will buy an HMO-friendly story. One plotline that the groups would like to see: HMOs doling out bioterror antidotes. Even that might not help. “Do you think the public would be ready for a positive portrayal of the accounting industry?” asks Stephen A. Greyser, a consumer-marketing professor at Harvard Business School. “They’d laugh!”
