Health Care Industry

Ralph Nader describes how US medical insurance companies deny coverage for needed medical treatment, and in other ways undermine medicine to increase profits, resulting in thousands of deaths per week.

The companies deny coverage for various medical services so often that we could call it a denial-of-service attack on patients' health.

One man seems to have taken violent revenge for this, murdering the CEO UnitedHealthCare and leaving signs that accused the company of killing patients. Detectives could perhaps try to find the murderer by checking the relatives of people who have been killed by denial of service — except that they could never check so many suspects.

Violence against a CEO can call attention to the evil but is not going to end the companies' deadly denial of service. The company will soon have a new CEO and continue the same practices. To end the killing of patients can only be done by new laws. But will we ever have enough effective democracy to try?

I have recently encountered the denial of service personally. For a couple of years I have been taking febuxostat to control gout. I tried the cheaper allopurinol first, many years ago, but that made me so drowsy and forgetful that I could not function. I had to stop using it.

A few weeks ago, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts told me that it would no longer cover febuxostat. I asked why, but instead of an explanation I received an autospeculation: "Maybe we wanted to make people use the cheaper allopurinol."

I too had made that speculation in my mind, but that company owes me a reason, not merely an autospeculation.

I will try allopurinol again, on the off chance that it doesn't incapacitate me now. It is reasonable to ask patients to try the cheaper medicine and see. It is not reasonable to say, "We will abandon you if that cheaper medicine won't work for you.

In civilized countries, the national medical system negotiates with the manufacturers for a good bulk price. Biden tried to introduce this into the US medical system, but was mostly blocked.