An American Sickness

An American Sickness will motivate you to see what you can do to help improve the state of healthcare in the United States by blowing open the recent greed, corruption, and selfishness of healthcare companies.

The United States healthcare industry began around 1900. Hospitals were started by religious groups as charitable institutions. An insurance policy was simply a way to alleviate the burden of lost income while people were sick. These companies were non-profit, but that all changed in the 1950s.

Americans purchase rate of health insurance policies jumped by 60 percent. This was a clear signal that it was big business, and that’s been the condition of healthcare ever since.

As awful as it sounds, hospitals even began to hire business consultants in the 70s. They could have been bringing on people to help them make people better, but instead, they just wanted more money.

“Strategic pricing” is just one shameful tactic that they began implementing to optimize profits. And the patients are the ones who suffer for it.

One woman had to deal with a $44,000 bill after getting surgery to remove an ectopic pregnancy. The statement listed the procedure as “miscellaneous.” This intentional obscurity is one way that hospital accountants maximize profits. Gross, huh? It gets worse.

They also began giving doctors incentives to call for more expensive treatments and procedures. Those that charged their patients more made more money. And units of hospitals that didn’t perform as well financially were outsourced. All to give room for expanding those parts that made more money.

A pharmaceutical company is what makes and sells the drugs that a doctor prescribes to help you get better. While their origins and original purposes were similar to that of hospitals, they are unfortunately also just as selfish. Antibiotics used to cost just a few dollars and vaccines prices were just pennies. But now pharmaceutical companies try to raise the prices as high as possible while patients watch helplessly. If you have ulcers in the United Kingdom, you might pay about $12 for the drug to treat it. But in the United States, the same prescription costs anywhere from $700 to $1,200. This is making some people leave the US to go to other countries just to stay alive and not become dirt poor. Perhaps the most famous case of greed in the pharmaceutical industry is what Martin Shkreli did when he bought the rights to a drug that helps treat HIV. He’s now the main name associated with big pharma’s gluttony because he raised the price of just a single pill of the drug from $13.50 to $750. But wait, you might be thinking, shouldn’t that be illegal? Sadly, these conniving companies…