Doctor’s Diary March 22, 2019: Game plan: Business takeover of healthcare

(Snippets from the frontline)

Game plan:  Business takeover of healthcare

Time:  30 years ago.

Strategy:  Streamline care into business algorithms controlling medical decision-making; eliminate physician time to listen and ask questions disrupting the doctor-patient relationship; computerize information to facilitate their billing and ferret out pre-existing conditions to deny care.

How:  Create favorable laws using lobbyists who financially influence politicians; make doctors a commodity and silence their voice dangling contracts.

The goal:  Control costs, and put that profit into the pockets of healthcare executives.

Eliminate:  Oversight agency penalties; punishment for poor care; and whistleblowing doctors.  Make enough profit to cover any adverse losses, like malpractice.

Stay under the radar:  Use the media to falsely propagandize high-quality patient care when in reality other advanced nations enjoy statistically better healthcare.

Today:  Congratulate self-serving healthcare executives who have lavish salaries, bonuses, and retirement packages.

Consequence for the American people:  Decreased life expectancy; rising premiums; increasing drug prices; higher debt and bankruptcy; more insurance “denials”; computer glitches breeding new problems; limited mental health care; and pushing seniors into nursing homes and hospice.

World consensus:  Suckers!

The winner:  Healthcare business 1, Americans 0.

Gene Uzawa Dorio, M.D.