Greed
Greedy doctors.
This guy is getting a chemotherapy regimen for colon cancer that we stopped using about 15 years ago. His medical oncologist was practicing the best medicine of the late 1980s, but we were in 2006. The other drugs he was being prescribed were totally unnecessary. But the doctor could get a substantial markup and make a substantial amount of money by selling them.
Greedy patients.
Another patient of mine had early colon cancer. Three doctors had told her she should not get chemotherapy. She decided she wanted it, and she went doctor-shopping until she found a doctor who would give it to her.
Greedy everybody.
I blame patients, I blame doctors, I blame hospitals, I blame drug companies, I blame insurance companies.
Interview about Otis Webb Brawley’s “How We Do Harm: A Doctor Breaks Ranks About Being Sick In America” (St. Martin’s Press).
How does the market fix issues like bad medicine (looking to the example of the greedy doctor above). In sectors where the product is difficult to understand and its success or failure could be attributed to any number of things, I just wonder how consumers can ever keep up.
Sounds like there’s a whole lot of greed going on.
Here is the question I pose. Of the following, who gets the most blame? We all know that the bureaucrats/pols are the most to blame period, but of the below list, how should they be ranked?
patients
doctors
hospitals
drug companies
insurance companies
Like Ambrose suggests, the market is very opaque. This is a real problem in health care and leads to people being able to game the system. Until this is addressed adequately, such examples will remain common.
(Deserves most blame)
Insurance Companies
Hospitals
Drug Companies
Doctors
Patients
(Deserves least blame)
That being said, all of the blame to these five parties combined doesn’t reach the blame that should be allotted to bureaucrats who make the system umpteen times worse.
Yet another interesting interview wherein the most remarkable statement got dropped in and not investigated: A man with colon cancer lost his insurance during the treatment. How the heck does that happen? Illegal in any state!