Let’s Get Real: US Healthcare Is an Industry, Not a System
This is your nurse. We called him Doug.
Some days we didn’t see a nurse for entire shifts—and only for medication delivery and scanning the bar codes for payment. This is also your patient technician. Oh, wait, techs are in short supply, and the robot camera doesn’t do hands-on patient care. This camera isn’t even your fall-risk protection. The camera watches as you fall to record your missteps and guard against liability.
And with the help of every hospital administrator and every one of its complicit employees who have given themselves over to its inhumanity, the medical-financial-industrial complex (MFIC) has evolved to put patients in their places. It is an industry driving nearly one-fifth of the country’s economy—it is not a system.
Patients are widgets, at best, deserving of protection only to the extent that our profitability remains intact. Once the costs of delivering care exceed the revenue generated by our health insurance coverage or bank balances, the MFIC finds ways to turn that equation back to solid gold. The profits are dear. Your health is not the goal. That’s an industry, not a system…