Requiem for a well being care non-system

Two latest information tales bought my consideration. The primary was in regards to the creation of “Maternity Deserts.” These massive areas in America completely lack maternity care and so they have grow to be extra widespread as a result of monetary entities are closing maternity companies in rural hospitals after they don’t make sufficient revenue.

The second story described for-profit corporations resembling CVS and Amazon shopping for up massive numbers of main care practices throughout the nation. In case you add to this the rising privatization of Medicare by way of Medicare Benefit plans and, even worse, ACO-REACH plans (which permit non-medical corporations to perform as medical health insurance corporations) you possibly can clearly see the place our well being care “non-system ” is headed.

Our lack of funding in public well being made us dramatically unprepared for the COVID-19 pandemic and price lots of of 1000’s of Individuals their lives. We might be nearly equally unprepared for the subsequent pandemic, which is able to happen.

If these matters appear unrelated, they don’t seem to be. All of them present a complete lack of planning besides to extend earnings. Nobody deliberate our well being care system. Like a New England farmhouse, it merely added new rooms when there was a necessity.

Our well being care non-system has simply advanced over time with the aim of accelerating earnings for the businesses. Well being care now prices us all an estimated $4.3 trillion per yr and, with no total plan, non-public corporations together with insurance coverage and pharmaceutical corporations and enormous hospital chains are artistic in maximizing their share.

We’ve got additionally seen the extra insidious results of the enterprise transformation of drugs within the extra impersonal and transient visits we’ve got with our personal well being care suppliers.

The nationwide main care doctor scarcity is partly accountable, and though doctor assistants and nurse practitioners fill a lot of the hole, they’re additionally briefly provide. These tendencies will certainly proceed and more and more make us sufferers into pawns with our well being care changing into solely a secondary aim.

If that is the longer term we need, all we’d like do is stay silent. Altering this might be troublesome particularly with our political stagnation, however yearly that passes sees bigger earnings and additional emboldens the moneyed pursuits. A single-payer system resembling is now known as “Improved Medicare For All” is the one resolution I can see, however my optimism that our legislatures will act is waning. The price of our collective inaction, nevertheless, is obvious.

Christopher Flory, M.D.

Williamsburg