You know this guy, right? Rapper-turned-actor Will Smith is also the only person who’s tried to kill himself with a jellyfish.
You’ve heard the stories about ICD-10 billing codes covering everything under the sun — suicide via jellyfish included. Well, in case you’re wondering where the idea came to kill yourself with a tentacular sea creature, look no further, we found the inspiration — Hollywood.
Will Smith, born Willard Carroll “Will” Smith, Jr. (born September 25, 1968) is an American actor, producer, and rapper. He’s enjoyed success in television, film, and music, with Newsweek calling him the most powerful actor in Hollywood. He’s been nominated for four Golden Globe Awards, two Academy Awards, and has won four Grammy Awards.
He also starred in Seven Pounds, a film that A. O. Scott, writing for The New York Times, said “may be among the most transcendently, eye-poppingly, call-your-friend-ranting-in-the-middle-of-the-night-just-to-go-over-it-one-more-time crazily awful motion pictures ever made.”
Tim Thomas (Will Smith), while carelessly sending a text message while driving, veers across the center line into oncoming traffic and causes a multi-car crash in which seven people die: six strangers and his fiancee.
At this point, we’re not sure what significance box jellyfish play, or why this character would be harmed by one.
In a conscious bid for atonement, unable to live with what he did, Tim sets out to save the lives of seven good people by donating his own vital organs, a process that will be completed after his planned suicide.
Yes, Tim (Will), you killed six innocent people. You owe them big time. Jellyfish suicide big time.
Tim moves out of his house and into a local motel, taking with him his pet box jellyfish—decidedly the most venomous creature on earth, with its sting causing death in three to five minutes.
“Okay, goodbye. I need to fix six other people’s lives to make up for the six I ruined. Wait, I need to grab my pet box jellyfish –” (Still no explanation as to why this character has a pet jellyfish.)
Tim then fills the motel bathtub with ice water to preserve his vital organs, calls 9-1-1 emergency and reports his own suicide, climbs into the tub, and releases his box jellyfish into the water with him. The jellyfish wraps its tentacles around Tim’s arm, causing excruciating and horrific pain and suffering, but a quick death.
Oh, that’s why you needed the jellyfish. Plot point.
Okay, so let’s get real for a minute. We have a 155,000 code nightmare coming down our pipeline. And we actually have invented billing codes for things THAT HAPPEN IN HOLLYWOOD MOVIES. If healthcare wants to play around in lala land, be our guests. We don’t want to rain on their fantasy. But we’re going to kindly sit out their showing, and do cash-only medicine outside of the red tape (or maybe’s it’s silver film now). Seriously, if we as a nation are going to deliver actual healthcare, that’s actually affordable, we recommend solutions that aren’t culled from the silver screen, and are based in reality instead.
Direct care is real care. It’s the same price as a monthly cable or phone bill. It entitles you to 24/7 access to a doctor. It means wholesale prescriptions and insanely discounted labs. It means free in-patient procedures (forget ever having to go to an urgent care clinic and paying anything). It means discounted MRI and CT-scans. It is primary care that is affordable, meaning you can see fewer specialists, meaning you waste less money. It many things. Things that can become reality — if only we’d see through the fantasies being paraded around by pundits as “beneficial” — like ICD-10 billing.