The Evils of Corporate Medicine

Warning this is another rant.

In the not so distant past doctors had small individual practices, and hospitals were run by charities or physicians.

People paid doctors what they could.  The technology of medicine was not so advanced.  I’m not so sure the technology has made us much healthier. 

Vaccines, knowledge of vitamins and diet, sanitation and cleaning up the environment has lead to our longer lives.  Antibiotics are lifesaving. 

The rest I am not so sure about. 

We don’t spend enough time going upstream and helping the people who are being thrown in, i.e., how to prevent disease, we just pull them out downstream and try to patch them up.

Now most practices are being taken over by corporations or corporate hospitals.  Most payments are made through insurance companies. 

These are not good trends for the compassionate practice of medicine.

Yes, a doctor in practice on his own was a small business.  Yes, some were corrupt.  But, most doctors were there to take care of people the best they could.  They usually gave much of themselves, being on call 24 hours a day, sometimes taking barter. 

Some did grow very rich, particularly in big cities, and taking care of the worried well. 

What is wrong with corporations?  They have no compassion.  They have a reptilian brain.   They live to feed and multiply.  Making money for stockholders.  They are beholden to their stockholders. 

Even non-profit corporations, when large enough, have great difficulty being compassionate.  They are usually run by administrators.   People not chosen for compassion.  They are chosen for their business skills. 

How could we change corporations?  Could we install a conscience using legislative means?  If we hired enough evolved individuals within the corporation would the whole level of the corporate consciousness rise?  Where will you find these highly evolved personnel?

What I have seen over the past 25 years in the medical profession is that corporate medicine is killing people.  The insurance companies are killing people, or driving many into bankruptcy. 

There seems to be other models of medical care around the world that work better then what we find in the US. 

Some proposals:

1-Decrease the exorbitant differential between payments to different specialties.  More like Japan where the differences are not so great between the interventionists such as surgeons and cardiologists and the physicians who have to use their minds and their compassion as their main tools for healing.  

If they can not earn exorbitant amounts of money, medical students will be less likely to enter the profession because they can make a lot of money.  Pay doctors well, you want the best, and even more important, the most compassionate minds. 

They don’t have to be the most brilliant.  “Smart enough” may get you the more compassionate students.  You do want them to be smart enough to keep up with the literature and to find out what is wrong with you!  Just don’t make it into a corporate atmosphere.

2-Create a single party payer system providing good integral medicine to everyone.  No you won’t get everything you want, but you will get what you need. 

3-Eliminate as many administrators as possible.  Cut out the insurers.  We will save billions. 

4-There will always be a separate system for the very rich.  That is OK, that is why they make their money.  If making money is their main focus they won’t be very happy anyway.

I am not saying we should go back to the past.  But, our current practice of medicine can often be a very uncompassionate enterprise focused on making money.  Your doctor may be very compassionate, but the system is not.  Doctors are retiring in droves to avoid practicing within a corporate medicine atmosphere. 

We can’t go back.  But, we can evolve to a higher evolution of medical practice.

Physicians need to be in the business of healing.  Yes, to get the best you need to pay them decently.  But, when the ability to make too much money is present, this corrupts the practice of medicine.  We become part of an uncompassionate corporation.  How much is too much?  I don’t have that answer.  They can be paid to live upper middle class. 

Let us make 2 systems.  One is streamlined, affordable, and integral.  You get what you need.  The other system is for the very rich, they can get what they can pay for. 

Lets take the billions of dollars saved from no longer paying insurance companies and the administrators and put these funds to prevention.  Clean up the environment, find programs to help people to lose weight and exercise, and to battle addictions. 

Take an integral all quadrant all line and levels consideration to how we practice medicine. 

We will all be grateful.