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.