People want to point their fingers at Big Pharma and how can they profit off of people’s misery and they are the cause of our ballooning health care costs, but they are nothing compared to what is going on with large hospital networks. Pharma makes it no secret they want to profit and have no direct say in people’s medical care. But, now we have hospitals whose very existence is to make a profit. They may call themselves a non-profit, but the people running them are laser focused on making money.
Private practices are becoming a relic with most of them are being bought up by very large hospital networks. This poses 2 issues. The physicians are no longer their own boss and medical decisions are now made to maximize profit. Physicians themselves will never go along with this model, so as a result, are being forced to double/triple book patients or being laid off. And it’s definitely not due to a lack of demand. Now with private equity becoming more involved with healthcare, this is only going to worsen.