I was in High School when John Q. came out and it really was the first movie to expose me to the US healthcare system. As a healthy teenager with an upper middle class upbringing, my only first hand knowledge of health care system was getting shots, physicals, etc. Nothing major.
Watching this movie opened my eyes to the horrors of our health care system and has stayed with me all these years. I know it isn't a great movie by any means but it made an impression on me of a man who would do anything for his child in a system you expect to help him. Instead you learn how bad the system is and what is forces a man of conviction to do.
As with the news, I flashed back to this moving thinking of what drives a man to violence when he is trampled by the system. How doing something crazy is sometimes the sanest option you have left.