The Running Dream

The Running Dream represents the medical and insurance systems in the U.S. as fundamentally unfair to families that lack money. This unfairness is clear in the story of Jessica, a teenage track star who loses a leg below the knee after an out-of-control car crashes into her track team’s bus on their way back from a meet. Ordinarily, the insurance of the person who caused the accident would cover Jessica’s medical care—but because the man who crashed into the bus didn’t have insurance and died in the accident, that’s not an option. Meanwhile, Jessica doesn’t have her own health insurance because her working-class father (a “self-employed handyman”) and mother (who works as her father’s secretary) thought that health insurance for Jessica was too expensive to justify. Thus, Jessica’s family—through no fault of its own—becomes saddled with a mountain of medical debt and has to take out a second mortgage on their home while the school’s insurance and the bus company’s insurance fight over who is responsible for paying Jessica’s medical bills. Moreover, insurance wouldn’t cover a running prosthesis for Jessica even if she had insurance, though running is good for Jessica’s physical health and central to her mental health and sense of self-worth. Jessica ultimately has to rely on community fundraising spearheaded by her track team to get the running prosthesis that changes her post-accident life. Through Jessica’s family’s problems with insurance and the revelation that insurance wouldn’t even cover a running prosthesis in the first place, the novel subtly emphasizes that getting adequate medical care often requires one to have money—even when the person who needs medical care was injured through someone else’s fault.