Alexandra Jacobo on Nation of Change reveals some of 2024’s worst instances of healthcare
profiteering. Unsurprisingly, United Health is listed for “pressuring doctors to minimize time
with patients”, though its high rate of claims denial became a public scandal with the
unfortunate murder of its CEO. Another firm, Amgen, gave patients—and charged
for—unnecessarily high doses of its anti-cancer drug Lumakras.
Jacobo’s article is well worth reading as it describes a litany of ways major corporations game
the system at the cost of lives and billions of dollars. Many of these “opportunities” arise from
the takeover of our medical system by private equity, i.e., corporate and financial interests.
United Health Group, for instance, is one of the largest companies in the country. The divinely
named Apollo Global Management owns 220 of the U.S.’s 6,120 hospitals. Meanwhile, 191 rural
hospitals closed between 2005 and 2023 and 25 more in 2024 alone. Another 700 are
endangered. It’s not just corporate ownership. Major funding cuts, especially in red states, have
undermined health care for the very groups that voted heavily Republican. And in Boston,
arguably the medical center of America, the Boston Globe reported how Cerebrus Capital
Management destroyed Steward Health Care, while in Rhode Island and Connecticut, Prospect
Medical Holdings, in partnership with the private investment firm Leonard Green and Partners,
perpetrated what “11 state attorneys general last June called…’possibly the worst example of
private equity greed: enriching investors at the expense of low-income, vulnerable patients.”
These practices hit home for millions of people, poor and well-to-do alike. A friend of mine
noticed that all the cardiology practices in his small city had been bought up and consolidated
by one private company that owns almost 200 hospitals in the U.S. (not Apollo). Soon after he
was seen by them for an arterial blockage. The practice recommended a multiple arterial
bypass. Knowing that all the local cardiologists were now a single company, he sought a second
opinion from a retired doctor who referred him to a university hospital in the next state. The
hospital performed the stent operation and told him that the recommended bypass was blatant
medical malpractice. But it wasn’t a mistake: the bypass cost four times more than the stent
operation and it was clear that monetizing patient treatment was a goal imposed by the new
corporate ownership. He has been in good health ever since the stents were inserted and his
recovery was rapid and complete.
Every human and public services industry—pharmaceuticals, education, transportation,
infrastructure, insurance, publishing, mass media, etc.—is being profitzed and monetized
without regard for the public good or the people the industry is supposed to serve. At the same
time, since the Reagan presidency, trillions of dollars have been transferred from the middle
class to the upper 1 percent, and especially the .01-.1%, via tax breaks and job replacement.
That is the main reason an estimated 92 million Americans live in poverty or “just above the
poverty line”, the latter that zone of hopelessness and deep anxiety about the future. It is also
why the middle class has shrunk in the past 50 years from 61% to 51% of the population and
income inequality is at an all-time high.
Corporations view the federal government as the main obstruction to this plundering of the
common wealth. When Franklin Roosevelt was elected president in 1932 on his relatively
progressive platform at the low point of the Great Depression, he incurred the wrath of the
wealthy class and the many American business leaders who supported the fascism of Mussolini
and Hitler. The wealthier business class considered FDR a traitor and planned a coup to remove
him from office. Aside from deep-seated racist and anti-Semitic prejudices, it was labor unions
(which they had very violently opposed), financial protections such as Social Security, and the
graduated income tax that infuriated them.
Today the ascendant American ultra-right feasts at a grand buffet of issues. They’re still hacking
away at the graduated income tax even though the rate for the highest income has gone down
from 91 percent (1944-1963) to 37 percent today. A look at the historical chart tells the real
story: Reagan’s presidency (1981-1989) brought the top rate down from 70% to 33%; it then
dipped to 31% under George H. Bush, popped up to 39.6% under Clinton, and is now at a paltry
37%. At the same time, the amount of income earned by the wealthiest few percent has
skyrocketed and the amount of money hidden in off-shore accounts is in the tens of trillions of
dollars. Who is responsible for soaring public debt combined with pitiful spending on
infrastructure, education, health, anti-hunger programs, new job initiatives? Blame it on the
bossa nova (old song).
Reagan broke the air traffic controller’s strike, and its union, in the first year of his presidency,
but unions are still under attack by Republican-dominated states and Amazon, Walmart, and
other giant firms. Racism still triggers right-wing rage and fear along with abortion and the
Equal Rights Amendment, homosexuality, and the insane Mag-ite obsession with guns.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, child labor laws “are under attack in states across
the country”. The Republican Party, at federal and state levels, is working to fuse church and
state into one entity. Completely deregulating business, rejecting any coherent environmental
policy, and undermining public education are all explicit goals of this group. And right up there
among their targets are Medicaid and Obamacare, the assault upon which is scheduled to start
with Trump’s inauguration. This aligns closely with Project 2025’s strategy of taking apart public
programs on every front.
Medical care, however, goes right to the gut. When abuse and denial of the most fundamental
social mercy—care for the sick and the dying—come to define the system, the underlying
problems extend way beyond health care itself. The abuses are not anomalies perpetrated by a
few unethical companies or greedy individuals. Nor is it justified by “shareholder profits” or the
false belief that business is only about maximizing profit by any means possible.
We have become a corporatized state whose political officials and judiciary serve their wealthy
masters to an unprecedented degree. And we can dismiss the world-weary cynical refrain that
the system has always been corrupt. The system has always suffered from corruption but we
are in a new era in which technology enables unrestrained manipulation of minds and markets,
a high level of social control, and profiteering that makes the Robber Barons seem like so many
Santa Clauses. In the medical field, these policies in effect turn patients’ bodies into organic
matter mined for profit. Kind of like “The Matrix”. Or, to be more accurate, technocratic
fascism.
What can we do about it? There are no short-cuts. We need strong and informed public
criticism of health care abuses and a medical system largely free of corporate control. We know
we won’t be getting that from our current government. Let’s at least take action that lays the
groundwork for future change. Organize, inform, and campaign.
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