Unfortunately, healthcare now is just a business
Medicare was enacted by Congress in 1965. In the months leading up to it, the American Medical Association, especially, opposed the legislation fearing excessive government intrusion into the practice of medicine. Opposition was short lived, however.
Medicare resulted in a windfall. While government regulation brought more oversight, it brought even more financial benefits to the medical profession.
Besides monetary benefits, it created a bureaucracy to deal with government regulations and other requirements.
Today, the medical profession is better described as the medical industry. Doctors are no longer the driving force in medicine. Administrators and their corporate/government bureaucracies are in charge. This is especially true of hospitals and clinics vs private practitioners.
Big medicine today is driven too much by money with care less and less the main focus. The cost of medical care in the United States is indefensible. It erodes quality when hospitals value money, administration, doctors and patients, in that order. The outrageously expensive business of medicine has become a political football and a corporate bureaucracy.
Michael G. Merhige,
Miami
This story was originally published July 23, 2021 at 12:24 PM with the headline "Unfortunately, healthcare now is just a business."