The future of American healthcare is not looking at all healthy.
Huge, for-profit, healthcare insurers (e.g., United Healthcare, Centene, Elevance, Aetna, Cigna), the managed care companies that say “no” on their behalf, and their equity investors are bleeding off double-digit amounts of money from direct patient care. Their culture is “profits” before patients.
These companies dismiss, bully, overwork, and underpay health professionals and hospitals. Which is why doctors hate their jobs and are fleeing medicine.
Here are some diverse examples of those who have concluded they can’t take it anymore…
Who could have imagined Hollywood film studios bending to their writers? But David slayed the Goliaths. The studios conceded: writers will get royalties for streaming and ChatGPT (and its successor programs) would not diminish their credits and compensation.
College athletes, especially football players, had for many years lived under “rules” that do not consider them employees and forbid them from unionizing. Their eligibility to play rested on not earning money from their athletic status. Coaches and managers held the cards for their future careers.
But college athletes in every state gained the right to earn (sometimes) 7-figure money marketing their “Names, Images, Likelessnesses” (NIL), without risking their eligibility to play – and their future in professional sports.
A large California medical practice did not renew its contract with one of the behemoth for-profit, Medicare managed care companies dominating the insurance market for seniors. These doctors would no longer tolerate managed care administrative burdens and hassles coupled with payments set too low.
Almost overnight, 30 million people seniors covered by Medicare Advantage (MA) were without their doctors. Four for-profit insurance corporations have the predominance of the MA market (which is greater than traditional Medicare). The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has been bringing MA Advantage companies to court for fraudulent billing, making more money than they are due from our federal government (which means from your and my tax dollars).
Telehealth doctors and nurses work for Bicycle Health, in its more than 30 US sites. They are providing life-saving treatment for patients in our unending epidemic of deadly opioids. These clinicians have filed a case with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to unionize, to join the Union of American Physicians and Dentists.
Young doctors in the British National Health Service (NHS) with unbearable demands upon them walked out from work. That action further paralyzed medical care in England from cancelled medical appointments and surgeries. Wait times grew in the already crumbling NHS.
You don’t need a magnifying glass to see the growing ruin of US healthcare by for-profit companies out to make money for their executives, investors, and shareholders. Profits before patients. Or to see, in Britain and the US, the erosion in government paid medical services.
The evidence for Doctors Leaving Medicine is clear. Workforce shortages of doctors (and nurses) abound.
There are solutions to ‘arrest’ the rapidly spreading kudzu-like ruin of healthcare by profiteers and ineffective government agencies. Activism, unions, not renewing contracts, and strikes have become necessary to protect the welfare of patients and families.
There are other powerful remedies when we dare to dedicate our efforts to those we serve, not to those who make money by denying doctor-ordered medical services, and by dismissing and shortchanging medical professionals whose mission and meaning comes from serving others.
American healthcare is way past a strategy of “appeasement” to those in private and public roles who are ruining our healthcare, for their benefit. Appeasement was the strategy that Neville Chamberlain pursued before the Second World War until he was ousted as Prime Minister of Britain and Churchill had to take his country to war.
Caught in the Crosshairs of American Healthcare
Now Available as an Audiobook.
Narrated by the author.
Who will make the critical decisions about the medical treatment you, your family, and friends receive? There is a war going on between profit-driven, healthcare insurance corporations and the doctors, nurses, and hospitals who have the mission and duty to be of benefit to you.
The corporations are winning, but the war is far from over.
Caught in the Crosshairs of American Healthcare Audiobook now available at: