Sad, awful truth is that in the US today the majority of hospitals are owned either by giant corporations or (more recent development) giant private equity funds. There is also a hot trend for Emergency "Provider" groups to be bought out by large private equity funds. Both corporations and equity funds have fiduciary duty only to their…
Sad, awful truth is that in the US today the majority of hospitals are owned either by giant corporations or (more recent development) giant private equity funds. There is also a hot trend for Emergency "Provider" groups to be bought out by large private equity funds. Both corporations and equity funds have fiduciary duty only to their investors. This helps to explain the replacement of ER physicians with Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants (cheaper), along with paring overall staffing down as far as they can get away with legally. Most minor things treated by NPs and PAs do just fine, but I shudder to think of NP or PA management of major medical or trauma cases without having an experienced physician for backup. I've seen it evolve before my eyes (I'm a retired ER physician with 30 years full time experience in high volume ERs). The American people are being used as cash cows, with no real options till maybe after the fact, trying to negotiate an exorbitant bill down to something realistic (good luck). Your story about the injured knee and treatment via private physicians/hospitals holds the key to bringing American medicine back down to earth, but the corporations and private equity funds play hardball and have made it exceedingly difficult for private practitioners. Majority of physicians have had their practices bought out by giant corporate hospitals/private equity funds, and they become "employees" rather than independent professionals. They discover that they must "follow the narrative, follow the algorithms" or be out of a job and maybe rendered unimployable. That's a big part of the reason so many physicians stayed silent or just went along with the fatally flawed "vaccine"/lockdown regime. I'm retired now, but just doing a little light part time work doing mostly physicals, and don't care if I get fired at this point. We got a taste of "single payor" with the vaccine mandates, and a bigger vicarious taste of "single payor" medicine witnessing the outrageous new reality in Canada during and after the truckers' protest. Don't fall for "single payor". If "single payor" enacted, only a matter of time till rigid algorithms will be imposed, including "ineligibility" for this or that treatment with no chance of appeal.
The right to die could ever-so-easily become "duty to die". I could write more, but this is enough.
Private equity has gotten into insurance as well. Quit a company that had been backed by PE last year because EBITDA is the overriding concen. Clients and employees take a very distant 2nd and 3rd.
Sad, awful truth is that in the US today the majority of hospitals are owned either by giant corporations or (more recent development) giant private equity funds. There is also a hot trend for Emergency "Provider" groups to be bought out by large private equity funds. Both corporations and equity funds have fiduciary duty only to their investors. This helps to explain the replacement of ER physicians with Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants (cheaper), along with paring overall staffing down as far as they can get away with legally. Most minor things treated by NPs and PAs do just fine, but I shudder to think of NP or PA management of major medical or trauma cases without having an experienced physician for backup. I've seen it evolve before my eyes (I'm a retired ER physician with 30 years full time experience in high volume ERs). The American people are being used as cash cows, with no real options till maybe after the fact, trying to negotiate an exorbitant bill down to something realistic (good luck). Your story about the injured knee and treatment via private physicians/hospitals holds the key to bringing American medicine back down to earth, but the corporations and private equity funds play hardball and have made it exceedingly difficult for private practitioners. Majority of physicians have had their practices bought out by giant corporate hospitals/private equity funds, and they become "employees" rather than independent professionals. They discover that they must "follow the narrative, follow the algorithms" or be out of a job and maybe rendered unimployable. That's a big part of the reason so many physicians stayed silent or just went along with the fatally flawed "vaccine"/lockdown regime. I'm retired now, but just doing a little light part time work doing mostly physicals, and don't care if I get fired at this point. We got a taste of "single payor" with the vaccine mandates, and a bigger vicarious taste of "single payor" medicine witnessing the outrageous new reality in Canada during and after the truckers' protest. Don't fall for "single payor". If "single payor" enacted, only a matter of time till rigid algorithms will be imposed, including "ineligibility" for this or that treatment with no chance of appeal.
The right to die could ever-so-easily become "duty to die". I could write more, but this is enough.
Private equity has gotten into insurance as well. Quit a company that had been backed by PE last year because EBITDA is the overriding concen. Clients and employees take a very distant 2nd and 3rd.