What infuriates me about healthcare is when health INSURANCE companies think they know better than the Doctors on what people need or dont need. Telling patients "we're not going to pay for this because WE dont think you need it, despite your Doctor saying you do". Insurance companies shouldn't be allowed to make medical decisions just because they dont want to DO THEIR JOB and pay out.
They’ve gotten smarter about it too. They have algorithms for automatically denying coverage of many procedures within a certain cost threshold - expensive enough that paying would hurt the bottom line, but cheap enough that many people will just pay out of pocket instead of spending 20 hours on the phone over 6 weeks to fix it. If the doctor tries to sort it out herself, she has to make an appointment to have a medical expert call her (where physicians used to be able to call directly) at a certain time. If she can’t take the call immediately (assuming it’s even made) due to, you know, practicing medicine, a new appointment must be made.
Exactly! Every six months I have to fight my insurance company to medications I need to live covered! They refused to cover my antidepressant, which landed me in the psych ward when I became suicidal.
I was an emergency doctor for HCA in Florida. They forced us to make the wrong medical decisions for profit, they dangerously understaffed, it was horrible for the staff and the patients. And they've completely taken over the state so you really don't have any other options for employment. (I left Florida.)
@@nwatson2773 consider Michigan! We’d love to have more normal people! Sooo many are fleeing red states and coming up north this year, our schools are getting better funding, and our educated population will bring better employers.
The maddest I’ve ever been hearing about corporate greed is the nestle practice of going into third world countries and giving poor women free baby formula samples that last just long enough for the mother to stop producing breast milk. Forcing them into dependance on nestle products.
You clearly don’t have kids. That’s not how that works at all. Don’t by everything you’re told. Especially by those with an agenda. This channel is 100% propaganda. You can still find value and information. Just don’t be confused at what it is.
Don't forget the cases in Africa where mothers were convinced by marketing to go the formula route but the water used to feed babies was not suitable for human consumption
And Nestlé is drilling water all over Michigan at cheap prices, which will eventually lower the water table, causing people to have to drill deeper. It’s insidious.
Let's go one further: legislators and their extended families should not be able to invest in anything at all. Not even index funds. They are representatives of the American people and should have ZERO conflicts of interest.
If you really want to be angry, look at how hospitals are replacing doctors with cheaper nurse practitioners, while charging you the same. The outcomes are just like you'd expect, but at least the hospital CEO can buy another yacht.
I teach at a community college, and there is a massive cancerous growth of medical "micro-credentials", people minimally trained for limited tasks, for low pay, billed to insurance as if they are MDs. A royal scam.
Especially when you call months in advance and make a "Doctors" appointment, only to end up seeing a nurse practitioner. The bait and switch scam which makes the facility millions. Should be a law to stop this.
@@juliekring7574i dont think that had to do with the fact that the attending was a nurse. Many people die under doctors from preventable sepsis due to mistakes. Sepsis is actually one of the leading causes of deaths in hospitals. We need to highlight corporate greed not criticize certain professions.
Honestly there is no evidence that the profit motive is even a good incentive in any industry. Between wasted resources due to parallel development and the patent races that follow, the placing of profit above all else including lives and laws, the impact private capital has on politics not only through direct corruption via bribes but market manipulation by holding people's livelihoods hostage for preferential treatment, exclusivity of patents being used to monopolize life altering technology and advancements, many of which are the result of government funded research and development;, the planned obsolescence of products to ensure a constant need to consume, etc etc. All of this results in worse products, horrible business practices, corruption, and loss of lives.
Literally nothing makes me madder than our health system. Providing care as a secondary objective at best, and fleecing people for everything they’re worth just to stay alive at worst.
How happy would these greedy dirtbags be if everybody was killed by mass-murderers and school shooters? They already do not care about any of the lives that would be lost, and the money of any dead person with no living relatives is up for grabs. All they have lost are a working population who will keep them rich. If they have no conscience, then they do not have to worry about the end of the world, civilization or existence itself. With no morals to hold them back, they will be happy to have all the money and power they want when society collapses from their own mistreatment of us.
You forgot to mention, "Under the Reagan Administration (1981-1989), regulations loosened across the board, and privatization of healthcare became increasingly common."
I remember in the 90s living in NJ and there was a place called Rutgers Community Help Plan. They had their own building and inside was every specialist doctor you could think of and even a pharmacy. It was so convenient because if your doctor wanted you to see a specialist, instead of having to make an appointment at another office, he’d just walk you down the hall and introduce you. Plus, the doctor would call downstairs to the pharmacist for your medicine and it would be ready for you once you got there, no waiting. I’m not sure if that was a for profit hospital, but it was the cheapest and most efficient medical care I’ve ever experienced in my life.
Sounds like an HMO. They still exist, for instance in my area (Oregon) there’s Kaiser. The only downside is that you have to use only their doctors and services, whereas most medical insurance lets you use anyone who’s in their network.
@@Sashazur Yeah the Kaiser doctor said don't worry about that tumor on your neck because you don't have a fever. The next doctor did a sonogram but only did the thyroid and never even did the tumor. I explained to this doctor that the food is poision and she said I was possibly schizophrenic and gave me a name of a psychiatrist.
HCA has taken over two of the hospitals in the county I live in. If someone calls for an appointment to see a doctor, they are told that the first available appointment is in 60-90 days. That often means going to an HCA Emergency Room, and an ER bill is often 10 times what a doctor's visit would cost. Too many doctors??
No, the ER will be the bigger money maker for the hospital, so this is built into the system by design. It’s a very profitable scam for them. The system is working exactly as designed. There are far too few MDs in America in all specialties.
Almost all of the freestanding HCA Emergency Centers no longer have Medical Technologist on site, so no more trained Lab professionals. These centers are extremely profitable and they can charge more.
I don't know about making you angrier, but the long history of the rich destroying public education for fear of a worker uprising is nauseating. Between Reagan and Nixon teaming up to reduce and try to eliminate public funding for colleges and universities because they feared in their own words an "educated proletariat", the racist way that we use property taxes to fund education ensuring that schools in low income areas have insufficient funding to give proper education, and how the expense of higher education is used by the military to recruit desperate people hoping to break out of the financial death spiral that is the American nightmare.
This exactly - the way that historical wealth is used to create fear, misunderstanding and misinformation for marginalized communities in the name of furthering the divide they seek to create. Often by government officials who are appointed, not elected. Think about J. Edgar Hoover and the gay community.
My suggestion for a story would be about the Thedacare nurses who tried to quit and go to Ascension, but were blocked by a court injunctive order. It was eventually overturned in court with Thedacare and Ascension battling it out. One might think it's great that it worked out in the end, but I'm honestly sickened by how 1. Our only power as a worker is in our ability to withhold our labor (or decide where to take our labor) and the court really thought it acceptable ever to decide "Nah, you need to go back to work for this evil company." and 2. It took another company arguing about it to make it happen. This tells me that we're legitimately not autonomous people capable of making our own decisions, we're property for companies to fight over.
We have a group of obgyns working where I get treated. Said they were here until a certain amount of time passed before they can go back where they were.
Well it's an acknowledgement that the labor being provided can not be gone without. It's acknowledging that health care can't be tied to the free market.
Another fun instance of the government interfering in the rights of labor: Joe Biden making railroad workers keep working because it would be "too disruptive to strike." If it's too disruptive for the economy for workers to strike, then those workers should get a bigger piece of the pie. In the same vein, "essential workers." What a BS thing to call people to keep them working during a pandemic for crappy wages.
Exactly! Nobody is above the law and no business is ever too big to fail, no matter how big their chain is. We have laws and systems and Constitutional Amendments in place that the right authority figures who know better and have morals, can enforce to destroy corruption before it is too late to save democracy altogether.
Bro when it cracks off I am down, it's going to be dangerous though and a lot of good people are going to die. Society can't push personal responsibility with leaders who have no public accountability, that violates the social contract
"They couldn't exist without defrauding medicare..." Most corporate injustices are perpetuated with the government helping them commit their crimes, behind the scenes.
On November 30th of 2022 I saw my doctor about continual headache and increasing loss of movement in my right leg. She sent me to the local hospital immediately and wrote up a referral for neuro testing. They gave me a CT scan and said I'd got a subdural haematoma, a bleed between my brain and my skull that squeezed my brain by 13mm (half inch). I was sent to emergency brain surgery the next morning. I was two days in hospital and was discharged on Dec 3rd as long as I had somebody at home to look after me for the next week. My son drove me home. The headaches were gone and I had full movement in my leg. The cost to me for the whole thing? Nothing. Nothing at all. Oh yeah, one more thing, I'm in Australia. You could have proper health care in the US if you stopped voting for politicians who are owned by people like the Frists.
On December 30, 2018, I was hit by a car while walking across the road from the hospital parking garage to the emergency department of the local university hospital. I was thrown out of the crosswalk and partially onto the hospital grounds. First, bystanders had to call 911 repeatedly to get through to someone. I remember hearing a guy screaming "911 isn't answering! 911 isn't answering!" It took almost 45 minutes for the hospital's own ambulance to show up. They charged me over $800 to drive me less than what, maybe 500 feet, from the sidewalk in front of the ED doors to the doors themselves. Both my legs were broken. I had surgery to repair a compound tib/fib fracture in my right leg. I was in the hospital for 4 days. They wanted to keep me longer but the reason I'd been crossing the street that day was because my dad had been moved into hospice the day before and he'd died the morning after I had the surgery to fix my leg. I had to plead with them to let me leave to attend the funeral. The hospital bill for the four day hospital stay and surgery on one leg was just under $138,000. Then, to make matters worse, my health insurance refused to pay a penny until my car insurance company paid out "something." That blew my mind because 1: I was a pedestrian when it happened, not even in a vehicle 2: the car I'd driven that day was insured in my boyfriend's name, none of our cars were insured under my name and 3: the woman who'd hit me had been driving without insurance. (The police report I had to get to file my insurance claims showed that the police let the woman who hit me drive her uninsured car away after hitting me, by the way!) I had to spend almost a year fighting insurance companies before anyone would pay a dime. I always tell people that I suffered more with the financial/ billing aftermath than the two broken legs and losing my dad at the same time. In the meantime, I was being harassed daily by multiple companies, all demanding tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars from me. Almost 2 years after the fact, I started getting bills from physical therapy, saying that I somehow owed them money even after my PT had been approved by insurance and I'd paid my co-pay at every visit. When my health insurance found out that our car insurance company had paid $50,000 toward my expenses as part of the "uninsured motorist" part of the policy and then given me $25,000 to pay for other expenses, the fuckers sent me a letter telling me that they wanted me to send them $17,000 of that $25,000 for reasons. I ignored the letter and never heard a word back. The healthcare situation in the US is dire. I still believe things would've been better for my entire family if I'd simply died that day and they could've just cremated me for $2,000 and moved on with their lives. It's pathetic.
@@mw4507 The docs aren't making the vast amount of the money here. The hospital owners are. Dr Glaucomflecken tends to skewer insurance companies and for-profit hospitals in his skits, they're surprisingly educational.
After working as a nurse for 44 years all I can say is unless you need emergency surgery, or are having a heart attack etc stay far away from hospitals and doctors.
Sad truth just think how worse it's going to get. Years ago I read here in Australia our public hospitals which have been built and fully funded by our taxes were being sold off, Why? I thought they made the story up because all we hear is how great our healthcare system is and that's far from the truth and most have no idea. Then Covid has for me just confirmed the serious trouble we are in. People still don't realize or just don't care they have been sold down the river without a paddle. No one is coming to help save you next time the trial period is over.
HCA cost taxpayers a fortune after they forgot my husband. On 3/13/2017 he walked in and ended up brain damaged and paralyzed. Their psychiatrist said he was faking and told the staff not to help him. Within three days he had an infected with MRSA bedsore. He presented with all the symptoms of brain damage ! I have had him home for over five years because there is no where safe for him to be.
My aunt recently died as a result of an infection obtained at a hospital during a normal everyday surgery. An infection known to be caused by unclean utensils. Many families have stories to tell like this. My little brother has a lifelong infection because of the same exact issue-- unclean utensils.
They're definitely both moral black holes steeped in inhumanity, but I think the MIC takes the cake. They pollute from high heaven to the bottom of hell, spend as much of our taxes as they like, support decisions that bring harm to our troops, and stoke fighting in the name of "national interests that have no value to the common person.
I had the misfortune of working for HCA from 1988 to 1991 and again from 1993 to 1998 in Florida. During my second stint the company merged with Columbia. That means the company culture went from bad to worse. Years later I read a book by one of the accountants who blew the whistle on their Medicare fraud. Also years later the CEO of Columbia/HCA Rick Scott, was elected governor of Florida and is now a US Senator. The capitalist owner class owns everything in America including the government. We, the poor/working class exist solely for the enrichment of the 1 percent.
Say it is not so. The 1 percent is not the center of the universe! Democracy is not dead yet, or else we would already slowly be working towards death camps if nobody could fix anything wrong with the United States.
Rick Scott's Medicare fraud is still the biggest in US history and he's had no punishment whatsoever. On the contrary, rewarded with lucrative government postions his victims elect him to!!
A thing that makes me angry and sad and is possibly even less sexy than health care is the way how in my city (and many others) thousands of excellent civil service careers have been outsourced to private companies, city owned convention centers and parks buildings once ran by civil servant employees with benefits, unions, and pensions are now operated by management companies, who have hired stage hand companies and pushed out IATSE, hired ARAMARK and fired civil servant chefs and caterers, and hired out the janitorial and operations to the lowest bidder. These used to be careers. If you’re working at the city owned ballpark and need the ball field lights turned on you call someone 8 states away! If you’re working downtown at the roadhouse theater you call yet a different person in a different state to adjust the thermostat… I live in one of the poorest cities in America and we can’t wait to send our meager dollars out of state while destroying good civil service jobs at the same time.
@@Novusod I know right? I worked for a stagehand company that contracted with our local city owned arena, and had previously worked for the city. City employees run out of overtime every year so we invented a solution for them where we would take on the operations work (not stagehand work) employ some of their city employees and supplement with our own staff. We paid $8 and $9 dollars an hour, $11 for a city employee so they’d get their same rate and bill back around $17 for each person. Contract labor came out of a different budget so the city skirted their OT rule and outsourced the labor to their own employees for a little less than a 50% increase, such savings! 😄😄😄
the fact that legislators are allowed to hold external assets in a "blind trust" despite them being an obvious conflict of interest is such a monumental failure of modern democracy, among many other things that make our government functionally worthless to average people
I think it was the stock market that really started this whole landslide. Think about it say a "John Smith the 3rd" whose parents' own say National Carpet Cleaners, went into politics there would be less of an interest to "bend" laws to "support" National Carpet Cleaners, since its family run and would not benefit other people or businesses. But if that National Carpet Cleaners had stocks on the stock market, not only would the "important" people who owned the stocks support the "bend" it would allow other "law makers" to cash in on that "reasonable investment" since they could buy stocks in National Carpet Cleaners AND then "bend" the laws to "help support" National Carpet Cleaners.
I'm so sick of people in positions of power who benefit from the suffering of others not facing any consequences. Econmoic crime should be more harshly punished than any sort of physical crime. A murder, as terrible as it is, only directly hurts one person, this hurts thousands and millions. Unacceptable, the worse things get the closer an inevitable reckoning will come and I really don't want to live through that, can we please just start fixing these issues.
don't hate the player, hate the game. but, the fact you don't want a reckoning suggests you're doing all right in the game... so when you whine on the internet, "come on guys, let's fix this", it's just an embarrassing display.
@@minamur Yeah I agree the game is the problem, the inactive structures are misaligned, people are do crimes are not appropriately or justifiably punished. Time and time again we wee this and its only seems to have been getting worse in the last decade. Obviously these are complex issues, but when cases aggresgious enough to be obvious come up and are even still dismissed it gets by blood boiling. As for your last comment, we live in a system where complaining about it literally is how things can be solved, what do you think political will is? I might be doing ok in the game, but I'm not doing well enough to rewrite the rules myself my guy. I'll agree with you a bit though, pointless complaining is often just as frustrating to me as the problem being complained about, but still I want it to be known to the world that I'm not ok with it, because plenty of people are ok with many bad things. That's all, just a rant, just a vent, its not that deep bro I don't think I'm changing the world or anything, but I do hope to add my voice to others or at least make people aware that I am a real person or really exists who really feels this way. Beleive it or not I have the ability to vote, that's where change gets made, or at least what change I can affect
@@minamurwithout the players, the game wouldn't exist. The only reason the game is as badly screwed up as it is now, is Because of the the Players. So yes, absolutely Hate the idiots that keep supporting the game.
@@minamurThat's disingenuous, the reckoning may include things like the elderly in hot parts of the country dying from overheat or cold parts dying from lack of heat, children die from preventable illnesses, disabled people dying from lack of Access to basic needs and life sustaining medications, the reckoning will begin to hit those groups first, you may not care if you're not in those groups but maybe someone you care about is or maybe the side of blood in the streets may prove too much if we wait until it's too late to do anything it will be too late like that bridge that collapsed but then maybe it's only worth however many people it will actually kill that actually be able to sue or their next of can be able to sue so maybe you're the one who doesn't care
Every single one of these issues the government got involved and Fecked everything up even more. Especially healthcare. One example, medical patents. Companies like Pfizer lobby to keep their drugs from ever getting a generic and their patents to be shared. What are thousands of dollars for a drug should be $20 but our gov keeps allowing patent extensions for these life saving drugs. Hell just look at how the gov has lied about Covid vaccines being effective and so forth while they knew it wasn’t. How anyone can trust centralized gov at this point is beyond me.
@@Troonielicious If you mean how do you get someone to do that labor of gathering food that will be distributed to everyone, the answer is by ensuring that they get the other necessities for life from the labor of other people just as other people are getting a necessity for life from their labor. The carpenter builds the house, the farmer produces the food, the electrician ensures that the lights work, and without the need for profit they can all work and enjoy the fruits of their labor together. This is how society was before greed and violence were used to create private property, not to be confused with personal property.
Frist bragging that exploiting the taxpayers, the sick and the injured = making healthcare "more efficient" sounds just like Mr Potter in It's a Wonderful Life. People watching that movie every single Christmas, and stubbornly not making the connection to corporate greed and larceny in real life, are turning this country into Potterville.
love that quote! Its funny whenever I look at right vs left it is like confusing yes I want less government involvement , but NOT if it allows things like this to thrive. Anyone that thinks trusting xyz to police themselves is insane whether it be Health, Police, Business won't just do the right thing because hey they care. Ron Reagons quote man is not free unless governement is limited, ok but free to take advantage of others? OK so keep the government out when I come take something from you because I'm stronger no no then you want the government to protect you so how is that different when these people need help and protection.
Great story, but I have a better one. After a three-decade career as a civil engineer, I became a part-time tutor for our local community college. One student with two years of coursework at a 4.0 applied for the ultra-sound medical technician program. There were 84 applicants for 16 positions. He did not get in. In a second attempt, there were 82 applicants for 15 slots. A lottery was held and he still did not get in. I emailed the president of the college who referred me to the head of the college's medical program. She responded that the American Medical Association would not accredit their ultra-sound program if they graduated more than 15 technicians! Accreditation should be based on the competence of instruction and availability of learning materials, not the number of graduates. The free market should be the determining factor for the pursuit of a career. We need a "right to study bill" for doctors, nurses, and medical technicians to prevent the shortage of medical expertise. The shortage will be greater when many baby boomers retire. I hope you will investigate this problem and make a video with your findings.
Don't get fried by these corporate goons. We have to work together because wage labor is renting yourself via "self ownership". Employment is literally renting another human being as if they're property. The employer-employee relationship is a very insidious dynamic. Employment is a rental contract, like if you rented capital (say, a chainsaw from Home Depot), you pay rent for the "time preference" (basically the cost of time) for a piece of property. Capitalism is based on a principle of self ownership, which sounds empowering, until you realize that most people don't own capital goods other than themselves, and must rent out the authority over themselves as pieces of "human capital". This is a process of dehumanization where human beings are valued for their return on investment as capital goods. This is why, at the very least, capitalism needs unions and safety nets (or abolishment), or else the system won't value people for their human value. Importantly we must also think about our sick, elderly, and disabled people, as they can't provide competitive economic return for the investor class to value. We must figure out a way to change this economic system if we wish to value each other.
Before factories and corporations the working class worked as contractors or sold goods at the market. Even serfs worked for a lord in exchange for protection from raiders. They _could_ leave but it might kill them.
12:59 "they never used anti-competitive practices to destroy competition. so there's more hospitals, more doctors" to me this seems like typical American mistake, wishing private competition in a healthcare field. while, quite the opposite to creator who made this video, I would expect that mode to produce cartel and rise prices for everyone. after all, America is land of the free. free wasps, that is: white anglo saxon predators. healthcare cannot work if it's mostly privatized, they'll always squeeze patients as much as they can, because people will pay any amount for health. at the same time us. has what, 20 aircraft carriers that are never used.
Years ago, when my son was going from medication to medication as the doctors tried to find SOMETHING that would work, we eventually got to something that was going to cost us about $240 a month, even with our free provincial medical coverage. The doctor admitted it was a lot for poor families, but said it was over $2,000 a dose in America, so we should really consider ourselves lucky. I always go back to that horrible moment when I think about "for profit health care", and wonder how many kids with ANA-neg JIA just get a wheelchair and a pat on the head in the States.
Most people in the US who need wheelchairs don't even get them. There is a rule that if you can get around your own house without one, or even if the doors of your house are too narrow to navigate with one, insurance won't pay for it. Obviously thats ALOT of people. Wheelchairs are thousands of dollars without insurance assistance, and it's very hard to get one secondhand. It took me AGES to find a cane second hand and I really never did, I was literally told to go down to the river and get a big stick if I needed a cane so bad. What I really need is a walker or wheelchair, but that'll never happen. I had given up looking for a cane when I found a decent one for $40 at a novelty store of all places. It's very low quality but all I can afford. My point is that alot of people with that condition probably dont get ANYTHING to help here in the US.
@@oleanderhawthorne510sometimes getting a “non medical” version is better, thanks to this whole for profit system any item deemed “medical” gets price hiked. Like a shower seat is 60-100 dollars at Walgreens. It’s just a plastic chair. I ended up ordering a cheapie on Amazon and only spent 20 bucks. Shit, I got a $682 bill for Neosporin and a bandaid once.
@@gildedpeahen876 i second this, wheelchairs are far from complex equipment and are made from cheap, plentiful materials. They simply charge you to the very limit of what you could possibly pay since you're forced into the situation. A wheelchair probably costs them 20-30 dollars to manufacture.
@@gildedpeahen876 I've had a major medical issue since I was 16 that requires me to get infusions every 6 weeks.the name brand costed about 8000 dollars a pop. A single IV bag that probably cost them a dollar to make has forced me to live on Medicaid in poverty for 10 years. I have no bright future ahead of me, not because of my own skills or intelligence, but because bureaucrats and the medical sector value money over the sanctity of human life. I broke my back shortly after having a bowel resection, both before I was 18, and they denied me for disability for years. If it was feasible to meter and charge people for the air they breathe, I'm fully confident they would do so.
This is very close to what a roofing company I used to work for does, or probably a lot of contractors. I’ve had a family owned roofing company for over 40 years but just over the last 10 years these other company’s have been coming in calling them selves restoration company’s. They only work for insurance company’s. I learned that through the insurance they could make close to twice what a family owned company could make just by billing directly through the insurance. And a lot of it is done by back charging after the work has started. But I learned first hand a lot of the work they back charge for never gets done, or didn’t really need repaired. I think this in turn makes everyone have to pay higher insurance in order to pay these company’s for all the extra work they “say” they are doing.
@@mw4507 Also, about 48,000 people a year die from lack of health insurance. We pay almost 3x per person what the next most expensive country does (Switzerland) for care, and people are allowed to die anyway.
There is no such thing as middle class, it is a capitalist myth designed to divide the working class so they fight amongst themselves while the capitalist class takes all the money. The only two economic classes are capitalist, ie leech, and working class.
Yes, you can get better vertical integration, and thus profits, by putting as much in the same building as possible. Having a full hospital that only uses about half of their machines on any given day is much more costly for the corporation than having people drive a day in any given direction, or giving them an air ambulance ride (very expensive, and thus profitable)
I’m nearly 72 years old and I have watched the diminishment of the purpose of healthcare over my lifetime. This is an EXCELLENT REPORT and provides the specific knowledge I needed to explain to my family NOT to support CORPORATE GREED in any way they can!! THANk YOU!!!
Because the side that promotes armed citizens to prevent corrupted government oppression are also the ones encouraging massive corporations to oppress the citizens backed by the government - and they have convinced 40% of citizens that this is actually a good idea giving all the prosperity to the elite few.
Biden was pretty brutally honest, that age is passed. If citizens legitimately wanted to fight the US gov of today, they'd need TANKS and LOGISTICS. Not ARs. Jan 6th was fine and dandy, but if that had gone differently we do have a stupid amount of millitary bases, kind of full of ordinances. I lived next to three in the first bit of my life. Moved, now I'm still 100 miles from one.
Do y'all know the story of Quaker Oats intententionally poisoning kids with radiation to see if their oat meal could cure them? Or how a lot of large corps sell the same stuff in grocery stores at farmers markets, just with a higher price?
Back when Medicare was reimbursing using the "Cost plus" method, there were mom & pop home health companies all across the country that were run like an "all you can eat buffet". Some of these little home health companies owned private planes. They booked the expense as "part of the cost" for Medicare.
I would like you to look into why 70% of processed foods have Dextrose as a cheap sugar substitute in the last 15 years compared to in the 1960s thru 1990s. The Mayo Clinic says it's not digestible by the intestines in most people. It is also heavily banned in most other countries. Why does the US use Dextrose so damn much? How did this get started? I can't eat anything with Dextrose because it gives me serious diarrhea that could kill me. When I say Dextrose is in EVERYTHING, I mean it. (all donuts in grocery stores (even boxed ones and the singles. McDonald's, all their breaded foods, Wendy's, same, Taco Bell, why is there Dextrose in the chicken and beef? That's probably why everyone says, "Taco Bell gives me the shits", it's the Dextrose! Domino's Pizza, the crust and sausages have Dextrose. Tyson breaded chicken. 95% of frozen pizzas, Dextrose. Chinese/Japanese take out, the sauces have Dextrose. Canned Campell's Soups, the sausage or chicken has...you guessed it Dextrose! WTF?) To be safe I have look at every single ingredient label, even in fast food chains before I buy anything. Could you please make an in-depth video on the damage, confusion and greed in the industrial use of Dextrose? Why can't they just use basic sugar like it was in the 1950s to the 1990s? What the hell happened? Thank you.
It's not only dextrose, there are many other substitutes of sugar, which are more damaging to our bodies than sugar itself, some of them are not even officially considered as sugar, like 'maltodextrin' (glucose polymer) - this one is making much more high glucose spikes in the blood than sugar. Right now (especially in America) the only way to be healthy person is absolute refusal of buying/eating any high-processed food. Even in supposedly 'healthy' foods there is so many things that should not be there in the first place, that they should not be considered as food at all... Why they are doing this? Civilization diseases are one of the most profitable, you will have client until he ore she is dead...
I'm surprised you didn't mention how the HCA influenced the creation of the Board Certification standard for doctors. A system basically designed to ensure there are fewer doctors by making healthcare education and certification more difficult and expensive than it already was.
I don't know if this will make you mad but it is what I am dealing with right now. A small traffic control company that was forced to go union to protect their workers. Now it specializes in injured workers. My wife got injured and LNI took the case, then dragged their feet so we got a lawyer to navigate LNI's rules. Out of courtesy we contacted the employer and informed them we have a lawyer, but it was to only go after LNI so that things would go smoother. You see LNI hadn't approved Physical therapy for my wife's injury, that took almost a month after surgery. This was strange because the Physical therapist and doctor wanted the PT to start immediately, so we were advised to get a lawyer. Once a lawyer was involved suddenly the company started bullying and manipulating my wife. Now to be fair the accident was no fault one in a million, there was no way anyone could have prevented it. So I was baffled by the companies actions. My wife asked around the company only to find out a lot of people were either on LNI, injured, or partially disabled. This all lead us to find out about the preferred worker program, the company was getting money for these employees and treated every injury as an opportunity. There is so much more to this that I haven't said. Some having to do with a person getting their case dropped, another being made to pay for a damaged vehicle that they were injured in that the party who was at fault already paid for. The corruption and manipulation of labor laws to bully and intimidate the workers at this place is startling to me. This company was either merged or acquired by a Canadian National company so that this can now happen at an even larger scale. That part of my story, tried to keep it as anonymous as I could.
I'm of Medicare Advantage age. The hospital chain St Luke's is EVERYWHERE in my area, and additional locations are popping on a yearly basis. Service seems lousy too. I got a physical early this year. It was so superficial. The only time to doc touched me was with a stethoscope. I asked the doc about nutritive education. I got a "deer in the headlights" look. I developed vertigo. The ENT suggest neurological exam. I'd be called. So far, nadda. I'm inquiring for the 3rd time today when I'm going to be called. I went through an investigation process that induces vertigo with monitors all over me. The results, inconclusive. I had a high white blood count a few years ago. I was sent to a hemotologyst. They said I might have cancer. I looked into Google to find out causes. One was the ingestion of the mineral lithium. I was taking a lithium supplement. I immediately stopped taking it. They had me come in in a month. I asked how my WBC was. The hemo looked downhearted, said, "its normal." Yet, they bring me in every 6 months for another exam... Presently, I seek, and get my medical advice from UA-cam and Google. I get all my dietary guidance from UA-cam and am getting positive results. I learned that doctors get a cursory one hour lecture on nutrition in medical school. I also learned that most medical schools are owned by Big Pharma, which explains why they know all about drugs to treat symptoms, and nothing about getting healthy with nutrition and exercise. Basically, we are all on our own when it comes to being healthy, and maintaining our health. I could rant on and on. This video filled in a lot of blanks that I had. We are now all cash cows for a huge business. I wonder if psychological services, neurological, are low profit.
The AMA is an additional problem in the US health care disaster . Restricting the number of MDs to create a "shortage" of doctors. Makes it difficult to switch docs cuz there are too few & they're overbooked.
What's the deal with Employer sponsored health insurance and Richard Nixon? "Can't quit your job because you'll lose your health insurance. Oh no!" Would love a story on this.
damn! why is it always some family taking control of things?! there was a time all colleges and hospitals (and health insurance companies) were required by law to be non-profit. While i'm not against for profit institutions in these sectors i do feel like there needs to be some choice between non-profit and for profit. with colleges i feel it has a bit of that. Hospitals don't have a chance though. Also remember folks, non-profit institutions still can earn a profit and grow, but there's a limit to it. I really want to see more money going to the doctors, nurses, admin staff at hospitals than shareholders and executives.
Seeing how a brother from the HCA, Frist Family, literally became a senator to manipulate legislation and congressional hearings to help secure their profits makes me believe that _Harrison Bergeron_ had it right when citizens were just selected at random to serve as government officials. Our government is literally a Tecnocratic Oligarchy.
There's more. As an add-on to this story. Rick Scott, former governor of Florida and now US senator of Florida was CEO at the time of that largest Medicare Fraud. He left with a golden parachute. I'm sure he's helping out his HCA in his Senate position. Scott is also extremely interested in running for President. We don't want him to be President for all the reasons that HCA is a terrible company.
No one is talking about how the US gov is letting Anthem (Elevance) buy up all the local ins companies across the country. They have a pretty wide swathe of monopoly in a lot of highly populated states.
Life expectancy isn't so simple. Have you been outside at all in the past 10 years? We're telling fat people that their beautiful and completely healthy. It's "fatphobic" to want to work-out or even encourage others to work-out. A lot of our health issues do not stem from the healthcare system being fucky (trust me I know it is). We over medicate and undermine our bodies at every turn.
I get extremely angry when watching your channel. That is a compliment. Great work shining a light on the exploitation of regular working class people by the corporate oligarchy.
Welcome to 4profit predatory America❕ Horrifying but informative story that tells us why the American healthcare system is so much more costly that in other countries. I was reading the transcript and noticed how many times you used initials instead of the full name - much appreciate if you don't do that bc we have to try and figure out what those initials stand for.
What got my ire was learning about non profit HBO's becoming for profit entities thereby making the principals multi-hundred millionaires virtually overnight. The most noteworthy is Blue Cross Blue Shield.
I've worked in healthcare the past decade+ and the more I learn about American 'healthcare' the more I am genuinely sickened. Like others have said, for profit hospitals and care is inhumane, immoral, unethical and one of the most horrible innovations of capitalism.
One can argue that the problem is due to health insurance. Insurance is something you hope not to use, such as auto or homeowner's insurance. Because so many people have insurance, providers have no incentive to keep prices down. The insurance company pays.
Next video recommendation: veterinary industry corporations like vca, mars, blue Pearl. Corporate takeovers of the veterinary emergency & specialty hospitals is ruining my profession. Patient care is compromised when licensed skilled nurses leave and new untrained people come in while the public is unaware. These people are running anesthesia…. And doing cpr. Please help expose the evil greed of corporations exploiting the love we have for our furry family members. The costs have increased by more than 30% since takeover too so they are paying less for less skilled staff AND increasing prices to pay their stockholders
Could you even imagine living in a world where we weren't ruled by greed?like being a doctor not for money but you genuinely want to help the human race be better,money is the root of all evil it literally destroys nations and has takin over the world and I'm afraid it will never truly go away
Until we evolve beyond the "me want shiny things" phase, it will never change. Jesus came and said his thing around 28-36ad. From about that point until the fourth century most Christian groups were primarily following Jesus direct scripture from the gospels and using the yet non-codified other New Testament books as ancillary text, but the gospels were always the dominant among all other books. If Jesus said it in the gospels and he instructed you to do it, you did it. That is why early Chrisitan's lived exactly as Jesus instructed. They lived communally, giving everything to the community, helping the poor and weak among them and building better communities. Then the moneymen showed up (Constantine & Athanasius), codified the damn books they wanted into the Bible, and gave Pauline doctrine prominence over the teachings of Christ. See, nothing new, been pulling this crap since forever.
Thank you for making this video. Ever since I became an adult and got interested in politics around 2015, I always had the same, old question of how this healthcare mess first started. I remember Adam Ruins Everything had an episode on healthcare but that one seemed to just brush over the origins and blame it on some chargemaster thing. And other videos left me with more questions than answers.
Great content, I'm a lifelong critic of US healthcare, and I wasnt aware of this story. I've seen a couple of other excellent pieces your channel has done lately, great reporting and I really like your tone, we can all use a little humor to make the horrible medicine go down. I've subscribed. And thank you! This content and others in what appears to be a flowering of useful and prosocial fact-based channels on UA-cam gives me hope.
The company that I work for hasn't paid me or my wife (who also works there) for two months, they haven't reimbursed over 6000 in expenses and by German law, we are not allowed to stop working until 3 months have passed. Also, if the company goes bankrupt, we have no recourse... So yeah, talk about the corporate undermining of Germany's once great social system!!!
I ate a Taste of KFC 4 piece meal recently. I don't know what came out of me but I had to vacate the house after opening all the windows and spraying an entire can of febreeze.
Health care should not be for profit. When profit is involved patients will suffer. increase cost, the share holders are the ones who get the most benifts, $$$$$$
Another aspect which makes this worse is the Stark law. It prevents physicians from referring to any service they have a financial stake in. So if a physician owned a private lab they can’t refer all of their patients to that lab for blood work. But you know who isn’t covered by Stark? The hospital system! So they can require a physician to refer internally to their own lab or imaging or specialists. But a private practice physician would be prosecuted for doing the same thing. This might be worth a video by itself. It’s related to the topic of why physicians aren’t allowed to unionize to counterbalance the large hospital and insurance chains.
That line about not being able to exist without exploiting Medicare is the most interesting one to me. That even though they are supposedly run for profit, they aren't focused on giving customers the most bang for their buck, they are focused on getting the most money they can from Congress. That's why healthcare sucks.
The only thing I’m worried about in More Perfect Union is that it’s preaching to the choir, many of us being outraged with the writer instead of this channel being found by mostly people who don’t agree.
Honestly as someone who has at least one chronic health condition that isn't diagnosed because I can't afford to get testing done I can't think of anything that could be worse than this!
There are many nurses who have complained of HCA's very low patient to nurse ratio. Also the other ways they cut corners and leave patients in jeopardy. Travel nurses will typically avoid an HCA hospital. Now there are other bad ones, of course, but I hear this over and over. So now I know the reason why. It's really pathetic!
What really p-s me off is that my father went to prison in the 1990s for just the kind of business practice that these criminals get rich from. But then we didn't have a family member in congress.
Charging the kick-backs to Medicare ... wow. That blew my mind (doubly-so when I thought about the scale on which it was happening, and the damage it was doing to quality of care).
Corporations should cover 100% of all employees medical costs. If we have to sell ourselves as indentured wage-slaves, our masters should at least be responsible enough to protect their exploited investments.
It's more like maintaining livestock. There is no ROI for certain maintenance. Slaughter is the best business case. Employers' interests are not sufficiently aligned with workers' interests. Healthcare should not be provided by employers.
What infuriates me about healthcare is when health INSURANCE companies think they know better than the Doctors on what people need or dont need. Telling patients "we're not going to pay for this because WE dont think you need it, despite your Doctor saying you do".
Insurance companies shouldn't be allowed to make medical decisions just because they dont want to DO THEIR JOB and pay out.
They’ve gotten smarter about it too. They have algorithms for automatically denying coverage of many procedures within a certain cost threshold - expensive enough that paying would hurt the bottom line, but cheap enough that many people will just pay out of pocket instead of spending 20 hours on the phone over 6 weeks to fix it. If the doctor tries to sort it out herself, she has to make an appointment to have a medical expert call her (where physicians used to be able to call directly) at a certain time. If she can’t take the call immediately (assuming it’s even made) due to, you know, practicing medicine, a new appointment must be made.
That's getting into the cost plus medicare scenario where the insurance providers can't trust the medical staff.
Exactly! Every six months I have to fight my insurance company to medications I need to live covered!
They refused to cover my antidepressant, which landed me in the psych ward when I became suicidal.
thank goodness for medical tourism then. Healthcare system here is so fucked it's more sensible to go visit another country and use theirs instead.
@@Claire-xn1cw One could absolutely argue that you do not need antidepressants to live.
I was an emergency doctor for HCA in Florida. They forced us to make the wrong medical decisions for profit, they dangerously understaffed, it was horrible for the staff and the patients. And they've completely taken over the state so you really don't have any other options for employment. (I left Florida.)
Good to know! I want to leave Florida ASAP!
And I thought California is a fucked-up state to live in... Damn
@@nwatson2773 consider Michigan! We’d love to have more normal people! Sooo many are fleeing red states and coming up north this year, our schools are getting better funding, and our educated population will bring better employers.
And conservatives keep saying how everyone is moving to Florida. 🤦
To be honest with the 4 months I spent there last year, I'm not sure Florida is a good choice to get mental health services either.
The maddest I’ve ever been hearing about corporate greed is the nestle practice of going into third world countries and giving poor women free baby formula samples that last just long enough for the mother to stop producing breast milk. Forcing them into dependance on nestle products.
You clearly don’t have kids. That’s not how that works at all. Don’t by everything you’re told. Especially by those with an agenda. This channel is 100% propaganda. You can still find value and information. Just don’t be confused at what it is.
Don't forget the cases in Africa where mothers were convinced by marketing to go the formula route but the water used to feed babies was not suitable for human consumption
Can you link these stories to me? That is the most insane shit I've read today and I'm not shocked that Nestle was involved in that
@@nickhard7615 It’s made up internet shit. It’s spread by people too lazy to google search but all the energy to regurgitate.
And Nestlé is drilling water all over Michigan at cheap prices, which will eventually lower the water table, causing people to have to drill deeper. It’s insidious.
A perfect example why legislators should not be able to be invest in what they regulate.
Let's go one further: legislators and their extended families should not be able to invest in anything at all. Not even index funds. They are representatives of the American people and should have ZERO conflicts of interest.
@@SuperSmashDolls Representatives of the American people. Hahahahaha - proof-positive that the brainwashing is complete.
If you really want to be angry, look at how hospitals are replacing doctors with cheaper nurse practitioners, while charging you the same.
The outcomes are just like you'd expect, but at least the hospital CEO can buy another yacht.
A girl died of sepsis because she was treated by a nurse practitioner instead of a doctor! Sepsis! A super preventable way to die!
I teach at a community college, and there is a massive cancerous growth of medical "micro-credentials", people minimally trained for limited tasks, for low pay, billed to insurance as if they are MDs. A royal scam.
Especially when you call months in advance and make a "Doctors" appointment, only to end up seeing a nurse practitioner. The bait and switch scam which makes the facility millions. Should be a law to stop this.
@@juliekring7574i dont think that had to do with the fact that the attending was a nurse. Many people die under doctors from preventable sepsis due to mistakes. Sepsis is actually one of the leading causes of deaths in hospitals. We need to highlight corporate greed not criticize certain professions.
Things that shouldn't be For Profit; Healthcare, Prisons, Energy, Water, Etc.
@wyltedleaves YES!
I must add internet.
Honestly there is no evidence that the profit motive is even a good incentive in any industry. Between wasted resources due to parallel development and the patent races that follow, the placing of profit above all else including lives and laws, the impact private capital has on politics not only through direct corruption via bribes but market manipulation by holding people's livelihoods hostage for preferential treatment, exclusivity of patents being used to monopolize life altering technology and advancements, many of which are the result of government funded research and development;, the planned obsolescence of products to ensure a constant need to consume, etc etc.
All of this results in worse products, horrible business practices, corruption, and loss of lives.
Prison yes, energy and water yes.
The Military.
Literally nothing makes me madder than our health system. Providing care as a secondary objective at best, and fleecing people for everything they’re worth just to stay alive at worst.
Yea even Medicare is more like a coupon not including all the copay etcs
How happy would these greedy dirtbags be if everybody was killed by mass-murderers and school shooters? They already do not care about any of the lives that would be lost, and the money of any dead person with no living relatives is up for grabs. All they have lost are a working population who will keep them rich. If they have no conscience, then they do not have to worry about the end of the world, civilization or existence itself. With no morals to hold them back, they will be happy to have all the money and power they want when society collapses from their own mistreatment of us.
In economics, I believe they call that an 'inelastic good/service.'
I'm pissed off that people even call it "care", when in my experience, it's literally either abuse or dismissal. Every. Damn. Time.
@@LiterallyCensoredDailyme and my family have had nothing but great experiences
You forgot to mention, "Under the Reagan Administration (1981-1989), regulations loosened across the board, and privatization of healthcare became increasingly common."
Including ethics requirements at universities.
Reagan was a scourge on society!
I noticed that too. Classic neoliberalism - deregulation and free trade screwed us all
.. and everyone touts the greatness of Reagan, he was simply a puppet for big business!
😭 it all goes back to Reagan
I remember in the 90s living in NJ and there was a place called Rutgers Community Help Plan. They had their own building and inside was every specialist doctor you could think of and even a pharmacy. It was so convenient because if your doctor wanted you to see a specialist, instead of having to make an appointment at another office, he’d just walk you down the hall and introduce you. Plus, the doctor would call downstairs to the pharmacist for your medicine and it would be ready for you once you got there, no waiting. I’m not sure if that was a for profit hospital, but it was the cheapest and most efficient medical care I’ve ever experienced in my life.
Sounds like an HMO. They still exist, for instance in my area (Oregon) there’s Kaiser. The only downside is that you have to use only their doctors and services, whereas most medical insurance lets you use anyone who’s in their network.
@@Sashazur Yeah the Kaiser doctor said don't worry about that tumor on your neck because you don't have a fever. The next doctor did a sonogram but only did the thyroid and never even did the tumor. I explained to this doctor that the food is poision and she said I was possibly schizophrenic and gave me a name of a psychiatrist.
HCA has taken over two of the hospitals in the county I live in. If someone calls for an appointment to see a doctor, they are told that the first available appointment is in 60-90 days. That often means going to an HCA Emergency Room, and an ER bill is often 10 times what a doctor's visit would cost. Too many doctors??
No, the ER will be the bigger money maker for the hospital, so this is built into the system by design. It’s a very profitable scam for them. The system is working exactly as designed. There are far too few MDs in America in all specialties.
Almost all of the freestanding HCA Emergency Centers no longer have Medical Technologist on site, so no more trained Lab professionals. These centers are extremely profitable and they can charge more.
The AMA is complicit.
I don't know about making you angrier, but the long history of the rich destroying public education for fear of a worker uprising is nauseating. Between Reagan and Nixon teaming up to reduce and try to eliminate public funding for colleges and universities because they feared in their own words an "educated proletariat", the racist way that we use property taxes to fund education ensuring that schools in low income areas have insufficient funding to give proper education, and how the expense of higher education is used by the military to recruit desperate people hoping to break out of the financial death spiral that is the American nightmare.
They didn't want American citizens to be the best they could be.
This exactly - the way that historical wealth is used to create fear, misunderstanding and misinformation for marginalized communities in the name of furthering the divide they seek to create. Often by government officials who are appointed, not elected. Think about J. Edgar Hoover and the gay community.
@@Spock_Rogers forget the labels they don't want any HUMANS besides their family to thrive
I recall a graduate level philosophy of education course. We discussed keeping teens in highschool so as not to dilute the number of workers.
Only thing making this fact worse, is that its so blatantly obvious to see if only one starts simply questioning the narrative
My suggestion for a story would be about the Thedacare nurses who tried to quit and go to Ascension, but were blocked by a court injunctive order. It was eventually overturned in court with Thedacare and Ascension battling it out. One might think it's great that it worked out in the end, but I'm honestly sickened by how 1. Our only power as a worker is in our ability to withhold our labor (or decide where to take our labor) and the court really thought it acceptable ever to decide "Nah, you need to go back to work for this evil company." and 2. It took another company arguing about it to make it happen. This tells me that we're legitimately not autonomous people capable of making our own decisions, we're property for companies to fight over.
We have a group of obgyns working where I get treated. Said they were here until a certain amount of time passed before they can go back where they were.
I believe ascension was mentioned 🤔
Well it's an acknowledgement that the labor being provided can not be gone without. It's acknowledging that health care can't be tied to the free market.
One who is awake.
Another fun instance of the government interfering in the rights of labor: Joe Biden making railroad workers keep working because it would be "too disruptive to strike." If it's too disruptive for the economy for workers to strike, then those workers should get a bigger piece of the pie. In the same vein, "essential workers." What a BS thing to call people to keep them working during a pandemic for crappy wages.
The public needs to stop operating as if these kinds of people are bulletproof.
Exactly! Nobody is above the law and no business is ever too big to fail, no matter how big their chain is. We have laws and systems and Constitutional Amendments in place that the right authority figures who know better and have morals, can enforce to destroy corruption before it is too late to save democracy altogether.
I won't act like they're bulletproof...especially against real bullets.
Bro when it cracks off I am down, it's going to be dangerous though and a lot of good people are going to die.
Society can't push personal responsibility with leaders who have no public accountability, that violates the social contract
The people need faces. We Need to know who these people are. There hiding behind politicians.
i hate that corporations don't die from bullets though
"They couldn't exist without defrauding medicare..."
Most corporate injustices are perpetuated with the government helping them commit their crimes, behind the scenes.
They're one and the same.
On November 30th of 2022 I saw my doctor about continual headache and increasing loss of movement in my right leg. She sent me to the local hospital immediately and wrote up a referral for neuro testing. They gave me a CT scan and said I'd got a subdural haematoma, a bleed between my brain and my skull that squeezed my brain by 13mm (half inch). I was sent to emergency brain surgery the next morning. I was two days in hospital and was discharged on Dec 3rd as long as I had somebody at home to look after me for the next week. My son drove me home. The headaches were gone and I had full movement in my leg. The cost to me for the whole thing? Nothing. Nothing at all. Oh yeah, one more thing, I'm in Australia. You could have proper health care in the US if you stopped voting for politicians who are owned by people like the Frists.
Since the Citizens United decision all politicians are owned by people like the Frists.
On December 30, 2018, I was hit by a car while walking across the road from the hospital parking garage to the emergency department of the local university hospital. I was thrown out of the crosswalk and partially onto the hospital grounds.
First, bystanders had to call 911 repeatedly to get through to someone. I remember hearing a guy screaming "911 isn't answering! 911 isn't answering!" It took almost 45 minutes for the hospital's own ambulance to show up. They charged me over $800 to drive me less than what, maybe 500 feet, from the sidewalk in front of the ED doors to the doors themselves.
Both my legs were broken. I had surgery to repair a compound tib/fib fracture in my right leg. I was in the hospital for 4 days. They wanted to keep me longer but the reason I'd been crossing the street that day was because my dad had been moved into hospice the day before and he'd died the morning after I had the surgery to fix my leg. I had to plead with them to let me leave to attend the funeral. The hospital bill for the four day hospital stay and surgery on one leg was just under $138,000.
Then, to make matters worse, my health insurance refused to pay a penny until my car insurance company paid out "something." That blew my mind because 1: I was a pedestrian when it happened, not even in a vehicle 2: the car I'd driven that day was insured in my boyfriend's name, none of our cars were insured under my name and 3: the woman who'd hit me had been driving without insurance. (The police report I had to get to file my insurance claims showed that the police let the woman who hit me drive her uninsured car away after hitting me, by the way!)
I had to spend almost a year fighting insurance companies before anyone would pay a dime. I always tell people that I suffered more with the financial/ billing aftermath than the two broken legs and losing my dad at the same time. In the meantime, I was being harassed daily by multiple companies, all demanding tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars from me. Almost 2 years after the fact, I started getting bills from physical therapy, saying that I somehow owed them money even after my PT had been approved by insurance and I'd paid my co-pay at every visit.
When my health insurance found out that our car insurance company had paid $50,000 toward my expenses as part of the "uninsured motorist" part of the policy and then given me $25,000 to pay for other expenses, the fuckers sent me a letter telling me that they wanted me to send them $17,000 of that $25,000 for reasons. I ignored the letter and never heard a word back. The healthcare situation in the US is dire. I still believe things would've been better for my entire family if I'd simply died that day and they could've just cremated me for $2,000 and moved on with their lives. It's pathetic.
@@JW-vi2nhit's a truly evil system. These greedy healthcare corporations are horrendous.
Indeed
@@JW-vi2nh crazy smh
Medicine for profit is criminal to start with. This is sickening.
If people can’t make money doing an activity they will stop doing an activity. You will have all these doctors quitting or moving to a free county.
Yeah, that and education! How are these for profit just boggles my mind!
@@mw4507
The docs aren't making the vast amount of the money here. The hospital owners are.
Dr Glaucomflecken tends to skewer insurance companies and for-profit hospitals in his skits, they're surprisingly educational.
Of course they sound like Frisk who is the Mob Boss of Spidermans NY! 👀
@@mw4507lmao are you implying the profits made by these corporate ghouls trickle down to the doctors? You're either too ignorant or too gullible.
You know something went wrong in the country When a fast food restaurant has effect on the countries healthcare
That's been the case since fast food has been around. You think the obseity in this country isn't related to fast food?
Look at the colonels gravestone for an idea of what's going on
After working as a nurse for 44 years all I can say is unless you need emergency surgery, or are having a heart attack etc stay far away from hospitals and doctors.
Right on.
Amen.🎉
My mother, retired registered nurse, has been telling me this for years.
At least, stay away from HCA!
Sad truth just think how worse it's going to get.
Years ago I read here in Australia our public hospitals which have been built and fully funded by our taxes were being sold off, Why? I thought they made the story up because all we hear is how great our healthcare system is and that's far from the truth and most have no idea. Then Covid has for me just confirmed the serious trouble we are in. People still don't realize or just don't care they have been sold down the river without a paddle. No one is coming to help save you next time the trial period is over.
It would not be shocking to determine that the American medical industrial complex has cost more lives than the military industrial complex.
American lives yes overall human lives the military is still on top when it comes to that.
HCA cost taxpayers a fortune after they forgot my husband.
On 3/13/2017 he walked in and ended up brain damaged and paralyzed. Their psychiatrist said he was faking and told the staff not to help him. Within three days he had an infected with MRSA bedsore. He presented with all the symptoms of brain damage ! I have had him home for over five years because there is no where safe for him to be.
My aunt recently died as a result of an infection obtained at a hospital during a normal everyday surgery. An infection known to be caused by unclean utensils. Many families have stories to tell like this. My little brother has a lifelong infection because of the same exact issue-- unclean utensils.
They're definitely both moral black holes steeped in inhumanity, but I think the MIC takes the cake. They pollute from high heaven to the bottom of hell, spend as much of our taxes as they like, support decisions that bring harm to our troops, and stoke fighting in the name of "national interests that have no value to the common person.
And the best part, corporate food makes you sick, so then you need to turn to corporate healthcare to manage the illnesses the food gave you.
Any time you create a profit center in a social service/area it goes bad - healthcare and education are excellent examples
Americans try to make profit from...well... everything.
I had the misfortune of working for HCA from 1988 to 1991 and again from 1993 to 1998 in Florida. During my second stint the company merged with Columbia. That means the company culture went from bad to worse. Years later I read a book by one of the accountants who blew the whistle on their Medicare fraud. Also years later the CEO of Columbia/HCA Rick Scott, was elected governor of Florida and is now a US Senator. The capitalist owner class owns everything in America including the government. We, the poor/working class exist solely for the enrichment of the 1 percent.
Say it is not so. The 1 percent is not the center of the universe! Democracy is not dead yet, or else we would already slowly be working towards death camps if nobody could fix anything wrong with the United States.
oh wow. #DarkMatter2525 made a video about that guy .
Whats the name of the Book?
Rick Scott's Medicare fraud is still the biggest in US history and he's had no punishment whatsoever. On the contrary, rewarded with lucrative government postions his victims elect him to!!
@@christinejohnson4068 Undercover by John W. Schilling. Sorry I took so long to reply.
I would happily sacrifice Arby's for a better healthcare system.
whoa whoa whoa lets not be hasty :)
@@k-STL-2023-zk6wx I'd sacrifice Arby's AND KFC for a better healthcare system.
@@madsniperD check yourself before you wreck yourself
I fail to see how these things can't coexist.
A thing that makes me angry and sad and is possibly even less sexy than health care is the way how in my city (and many others) thousands of excellent civil service careers have been outsourced to private companies, city owned convention centers and parks buildings once ran by civil servant employees with benefits, unions, and pensions are now operated by management companies, who have hired stage hand companies and pushed out IATSE, hired ARAMARK and fired civil servant chefs and caterers, and hired out the janitorial and operations to the lowest bidder. These used to be careers. If you’re working at the city owned ballpark and need the ball field lights turned on you call someone 8 states away! If you’re working downtown at the roadhouse theater you call yet a different person in a different state to adjust the thermostat… I live in one of the poorest cities in America and we can’t wait to send our meager dollars out of state while destroying good civil service jobs at the same time.
But it lowers taxes. /s
@@Novusod I know right? I worked for a stagehand company that contracted with our local city owned arena, and had previously worked for the city. City employees run out of overtime every year so we invented a solution for them where we would take on the operations work (not stagehand work) employ some of their city employees and supplement with our own staff. We paid $8 and $9 dollars an hour, $11 for a city employee so they’d get their same rate and bill back around $17 for each person. Contract labor came out of a different budget so the city skirted their OT rule and outsourced the labor to their own employees for a little less than a 50% increase, such savings! 😄😄😄
I had no idea. Tx for the upsetting reality.
Corporations should NOT OWN Healthcare or Food Manufacturing
or housing, or our money, or anything for that matter.
Unfortunately they do!!
the fact that legislators are allowed to hold external assets in a "blind trust" despite them being an obvious conflict of interest is such a monumental failure of modern democracy, among many other things that make our government functionally worthless to average people
I think it was the stock market that really started this whole landslide.
Think about it say a "John Smith the 3rd" whose parents' own say National Carpet Cleaners, went into politics there would be less of an interest to "bend" laws to "support" National Carpet Cleaners, since its family run and would not benefit other people or businesses.
But if that National Carpet Cleaners had stocks on the stock market, not only would the "important" people who owned the stocks support the "bend" it would allow other "law makers" to cash in on that "reasonable investment" since they could buy stocks in National Carpet Cleaners AND then "bend" the laws to "help support" National Carpet Cleaners.
I'm so sick of people in positions of power who benefit from the suffering of others not facing any consequences. Econmoic crime should be more harshly punished than any sort of physical crime. A murder, as terrible as it is, only directly hurts one person, this hurts thousands and millions. Unacceptable, the worse things get the closer an inevitable reckoning will come and I really don't want to live through that, can we please just start fixing these issues.
BIG MOOD
don't hate the player, hate the game. but, the fact you don't want a reckoning suggests you're doing all right in the game... so when you whine on the internet, "come on guys, let's fix this", it's just an embarrassing display.
@@minamur Yeah I agree the game is the problem, the inactive structures are misaligned, people are do crimes are not appropriately or justifiably punished. Time and time again we wee this and its only seems to have been getting worse in the last decade. Obviously these are complex issues, but when cases aggresgious enough to be obvious come up and are even still dismissed it gets by blood boiling.
As for your last comment, we live in a system where complaining about it literally is how things can be solved, what do you think political will is? I might be doing ok in the game, but I'm not doing well enough to rewrite the rules myself my guy.
I'll agree with you a bit though, pointless complaining is often just as frustrating to me as the problem being complained about, but still I want it to be known to the world that I'm not ok with it, because plenty of people are ok with many bad things.
That's all, just a rant, just a vent, its not that deep bro I don't think I'm changing the world or anything, but I do hope to add my voice to others or at least make people aware that I am a real person or really exists who really feels this way. Beleive it or not I have the ability to vote, that's where change gets made, or at least what change I can affect
@@minamurwithout the players, the game wouldn't exist. The only reason the game is as badly screwed up as it is now, is Because of the the Players.
So yes, absolutely Hate the idiots that keep supporting the game.
@@minamurThat's disingenuous, the reckoning may include things like the elderly in hot parts of the country dying from overheat or cold parts dying from lack of heat, children die from preventable illnesses, disabled people dying from lack of Access to basic needs and life sustaining medications, the reckoning will begin to hit those groups first, you may not care if you're not in those groups but maybe someone you care about is or maybe the side of blood in the streets may prove too much if we wait until it's too late to do anything it will be too late like that bridge that collapsed but then maybe it's only worth however many people it will actually kill that actually be able to sue or their next of can be able to sue so maybe you're the one who doesn't care
Food, water, housing, healthcare, should not be tied to employment.
Every single one of these issues the government got involved and Fecked everything up even more. Especially healthcare. One example, medical patents. Companies like Pfizer lobby to keep their drugs from ever getting a generic and their patents to be shared. What are thousands of dollars for a drug should be $20 but our gov keeps allowing patent extensions for these life saving drugs. Hell just look at how the gov has lied about Covid vaccines being effective and so forth while they knew it wasn’t. How anyone can trust centralized gov at this point is beyond me.
All necessities for modern life should be provided as part of being a citizen
How do you get people to pick up you vegetables? Lol
@@Troonielicious You pay them a living wage via taxdollars.
@@Troonielicious If you mean how do you get someone to do that labor of gathering food that will be distributed to everyone, the answer is by ensuring that they get the other necessities for life from the labor of other people just as other people are getting a necessity for life from their labor.
The carpenter builds the house, the farmer produces the food, the electrician ensures that the lights work, and without the need for profit they can all work and enjoy the fruits of their labor together. This is how society was before greed and violence were used to create private property, not to be confused with personal property.
Frist bragging that exploiting the taxpayers, the sick and the injured = making healthcare "more efficient" sounds just like Mr Potter in It's a Wonderful Life. People watching that movie every single Christmas, and stubbornly not making the connection to corporate greed and larceny in real life, are turning this country into Potterville.
How it should be: Rugged individualism for the rich, socialism for the poor.
Reality: Socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor.
I don't think I'm rugged enough to live in America anymore :(.
love that quote! Its funny whenever I look at right vs left it is like confusing yes I want less government involvement , but NOT if it allows things like this to thrive. Anyone that thinks trusting xyz to police themselves is insane whether it be Health, Police, Business won't just do the right thing because hey they care. Ron Reagons quote man is not free unless governement is limited, ok but free to take advantage of others? OK so keep the government out when I come take something from you because I'm stronger no no then you want the government to protect you so how is that different when these people need help and protection.
Great story, but I have a better one. After a three-decade career as a civil engineer, I became a part-time tutor for our local community college. One student with two years of coursework at a 4.0 applied for the ultra-sound medical technician program. There were 84 applicants for 16 positions. He did not get in. In a second attempt, there were 82 applicants for 15 slots. A lottery was held and he still did not get in. I emailed the president of the college who referred me to the head of the college's medical program. She responded that the American Medical Association would not accredit their ultra-sound program if they graduated more than 15 technicians! Accreditation should be based on the competence of instruction and availability of learning materials, not the number of graduates. The free market should be the determining factor for the pursuit of a career. We need a "right to study bill" for doctors, nurses, and medical technicians to prevent the shortage of medical expertise. The shortage will be greater when many baby boomers retire. I hope you will investigate this problem and make a video with your findings.
AMA is a union for doctors, to keep supply low and prices high.
The AMA is definitely on the take in this mess
Don't get fried by these corporate goons. We have to work together because wage labor is renting yourself via "self ownership". Employment is literally renting another human being as if they're property. The employer-employee relationship is a very insidious dynamic. Employment is a rental contract, like if you rented capital (say, a chainsaw from Home Depot), you pay rent for the "time preference" (basically the cost of time) for a piece of property. Capitalism is based on a principle of self ownership, which sounds empowering, until you realize that most people don't own capital goods other than themselves, and must rent out the authority over themselves as pieces of "human capital". This is a process of dehumanization where human beings are valued for their return on investment as capital goods. This is why, at the very least, capitalism needs unions and safety nets (or abolishment), or else the system won't value people for their human value. Importantly we must also think about our sick, elderly, and disabled people, as they can't provide competitive economic return for the investor class to value. We must figure out a way to change this economic system if we wish to value each other.
The US will completely fail before Americans can gain any meaningful system here. The US is too broken to even try to fix.
@@Alley-dw2flThis is why some people advocate for something like a default
It’s easy to say there’s something wrong. Do you have any realistic solution?
@@paulb8030taxing the rich is a start
Before factories and corporations the working class worked as contractors or sold goods at the market. Even serfs worked for a lord in exchange for protection from raiders. They _could_ leave but it might kill them.
*How Capitalism ruined America's healthcare*. It would have happened somehow, it was inevitable.
12:59 "they never used anti-competitive practices to destroy competition. so there's more hospitals, more doctors"
to me this seems like typical American mistake, wishing private competition in a healthcare field. while, quite the opposite to creator who made this video, I would expect that mode to produce cartel and rise prices for everyone.
after all, America is land of the free.
free wasps, that is: white anglo saxon predators.
healthcare cannot work if it's mostly privatized, they'll always squeeze patients as much as they can, because people will pay any amount for health.
at the same time us. has what, 20 aircraft carriers that are never used.
That's just factually incorrect, almost every country has non-profit health care. The United States is just the most blatant and extreme example
Years ago, when my son was going from medication to medication as the doctors tried to find SOMETHING that would work, we eventually got to something that was going to cost us about $240 a month, even with our free provincial medical coverage. The doctor admitted it was a lot for poor families, but said it was over $2,000 a dose in America, so we should really consider ourselves lucky.
I always go back to that horrible moment when I think about "for profit health care", and wonder how many kids with ANA-neg JIA just get a wheelchair and a pat on the head in the States.
Most people in the US who need wheelchairs don't even get them. There is a rule that if you can get around your own house without one, or even if the doors of your house are too narrow to navigate with one, insurance won't pay for it. Obviously thats ALOT of people. Wheelchairs are thousands of dollars without insurance assistance, and it's very hard to get one secondhand. It took me AGES to find a cane second hand and I really never did, I was literally told to go down to the river and get a big stick if I needed a cane so bad. What I really need is a walker or wheelchair, but that'll never happen. I had given up looking for a cane when I found a decent one for $40 at a novelty store of all places. It's very low quality but all I can afford. My point is that alot of people with that condition probably dont get ANYTHING to help here in the US.
@@oleanderhawthorne510sometimes getting a “non medical” version is better, thanks to this whole for profit system any item deemed “medical” gets price hiked. Like a shower seat is 60-100 dollars at Walgreens. It’s just a plastic chair. I ended up ordering a cheapie on Amazon and only spent 20 bucks. Shit, I got a $682 bill for Neosporin and a bandaid once.
@@gildedpeahen876 i second this, wheelchairs are far from complex equipment and are made from cheap, plentiful materials. They simply charge you to the very limit of what you could possibly pay since you're forced into the situation. A wheelchair probably costs them 20-30 dollars to manufacture.
@@StreetForged ain’t it messed up? I hate that our society has made life so hard for 99.9% of people just so .01% can have more money than the gods
@@gildedpeahen876 I've had a major medical issue since I was 16 that requires me to get infusions every 6 weeks.the name brand costed about 8000 dollars a pop.
A single IV bag that probably cost them a dollar to make has forced me to live on Medicaid in poverty for 10 years. I have no bright future ahead of me, not because of my own skills or intelligence, but because bureaucrats and the medical sector value money over the sanctity of human life.
I broke my back shortly after having a bowel resection, both before I was 18, and they denied me for disability for years. If it was feasible to meter and charge people for the air they breathe, I'm fully confident they would do so.
This is very close to what a roofing company I used to work for does, or probably a lot of contractors. I’ve had a family owned roofing company for over 40 years but just over the last 10 years these other company’s have been coming in calling them selves restoration company’s. They only work for insurance company’s. I learned that through the insurance they could make close to twice what a family owned company could make just by billing directly through the insurance. And a lot of it is done by back charging after the work has started. But I learned first hand a lot of the work they back charge for never gets done, or didn’t really need repaired. I think this in turn makes everyone have to pay higher insurance in order to pay these company’s for all the extra work they “say” they are doing.
As a former HCA nurse I can confirm they are a terrible company
If we had nationalized healthcare I would be a healthy middle class person enjoying retirement.
Nope, half or more of your income would go to taxes.
@@mw4507 Not true at all.
@@mw4507
Nationalized healthcare would actually be cheaper. Multiple studies agree. We're getting ripped off by private healthcare.
@@mw4507
Also, about 48,000 people a year die from lack of health insurance. We pay almost 3x per person what the next most expensive country does (Switzerland) for care, and people are allowed to die anyway.
There is no such thing as middle class, it is a capitalist myth designed to divide the working class so they fight amongst themselves while the capitalist class takes all the money. The only two economic classes are capitalist, ie leech, and working class.
Are these same people guilty of closing unprofitable local hospitals causing long distance health care?
Yes, you can get better vertical integration, and thus profits, by putting as much in the same building as possible. Having a full hospital that only uses about half of their machines on any given day is much more costly for the corporation than having people drive a day in any given direction, or giving them an air ambulance ride (very expensive, and thus profitable)
Maybe not directly, but they had a hand in it.
so you're telling me we've been in the Bad Timeline ever since the moment Kentucky Roast Beef didn't happen smh.
I always knew Arby's was sinister
No, this was KFC's fault.
@@LithFox Arby's, as something that exists, feels strange an uncanny and out of place.
@@Sn0wjunk1e It was founded in Ohio.
I’m nearly 72 years old and I have watched the diminishment of the purpose of healthcare over my lifetime. This is an EXCELLENT REPORT and provides the specific knowledge I needed to explain to my family NOT to support CORPORATE GREED in any way they can!! THANk YOU!!!
My husband worked as an RN for an HCA hospital in Gainesville, FL and it was one of the worst jobs he's had.
Eat the rich. Part of this complete breakfast.
Thank you for giving all of Nashville a way to explain why having “Frist” plastered all over town is actually really sad.
Healthcare, housing, food, childcare should be affordable and shouldn't be turned into a for-profit scheme.
I dont understand why we have a country full of armed civilians but we allow the government to commit horrible corrupt acts
Because derp
Cuz all these dummies are distracted by culture wars. They're more mad at bud lite than at their oppressors that's robbing them blind.
Because the side that promotes armed citizens to prevent corrupted government oppression are also the ones encouraging massive corporations to oppress the citizens backed by the government - and they have convinced 40% of citizens that this is actually a good idea giving all the prosperity to the elite few.
Because the government has machine guns and people who think shooting at civilians is fun.
Biden was pretty brutally honest, that age is passed. If citizens legitimately wanted to fight the US gov of today, they'd need TANKS and LOGISTICS. Not ARs.
Jan 6th was fine and dandy, but if that had gone differently we do have a stupid amount of millitary bases, kind of full of ordinances. I lived next to three in the first bit of my life. Moved, now I'm still 100 miles from one.
Do y'all know the story of Quaker Oats intententionally poisoning kids with radiation to see if their oat meal could cure them? Or how a lot of large corps sell the same stuff in grocery stores at farmers markets, just with a higher price?
Insurance ties directly into this with their hospital network forcing people to receive treatment from specific providers.
This story is just as infuriating as you say it is,, it hurts to imagine what could've been,,,
This is fascinating. You should look into for profit nursing homes. They are just as corrupt.
Something that might make you even more upset than this is how the fossil fuel companies are actively trying to hinder human progress.
How so?
@fatboitino2 They buy and copyright inventions that can be used to compete with them. Pretty much putting all that reaserch into limbo
@@CastleRaccon yeah, a lot of businesses do that. Definitely hurts us as a whole
Not to mention how car manufacturers hard blocked trains and a city layout that favors bikes or walking pedestrians.
I work security in a hospital, and can't afford healthcare despite being insured. The hospital doesn't even take our insurance (we're all contracted).
Back when Medicare was reimbursing using the "Cost plus" method, there were mom & pop home health companies all across the country that were run like an "all you can eat buffet". Some of these little home health companies owned private planes. They booked the expense as "part of the cost" for Medicare.
Still better than the current situation. At least those shops had a million other shops competing for business
That legislation needs to be scrapped to allow for universal healthcare 😡
Let's try passing Medicare for all before we scrap the one program we have and end up w nothing
Greed destroys everything.
20 cents out of every dollar I spend goes to health insurance premiums-- JUST the premiums. God bless 'Murca!
I would like you to look into why 70% of processed foods have Dextrose as a cheap sugar substitute in the last 15 years compared to in the 1960s thru 1990s. The Mayo Clinic says it's not digestible by the intestines in most people. It is also heavily banned in most other countries. Why does the US use Dextrose so damn much? How did this get started? I can't eat anything with Dextrose because it gives me serious diarrhea that could kill me.
When I say Dextrose is in EVERYTHING, I mean it. (all donuts in grocery stores (even boxed ones and the singles. McDonald's, all their breaded foods, Wendy's, same, Taco Bell, why is there Dextrose in the chicken and beef? That's probably why everyone says, "Taco Bell gives me the shits", it's the Dextrose! Domino's Pizza, the crust and sausages have Dextrose. Tyson breaded chicken. 95% of frozen pizzas, Dextrose. Chinese/Japanese take out, the sauces have Dextrose. Canned Campell's Soups, the sausage or chicken has...you guessed it Dextrose! WTF?)
To be safe I have look at every single ingredient label, even in fast food chains before I buy anything. Could you please make an in-depth video on the damage, confusion and greed in the industrial use of Dextrose? Why can't they just use basic sugar like it was in the 1950s to the 1990s? What the hell happened? Thank you.
It's not only dextrose, there are many other substitutes of sugar, which are more damaging to our bodies than sugar itself, some of them are not even officially considered as sugar, like 'maltodextrin' (glucose polymer) - this one is making much more high glucose spikes in the blood than sugar. Right now (especially in America) the only way to be healthy person is absolute refusal of buying/eating any high-processed food. Even in supposedly 'healthy' foods there is so many things that should not be there in the first place, that they should not be considered as food at all... Why they are doing this? Civilization diseases are one of the most profitable, you will have client until he ore she is dead...
I want both universal healthcare AND Arby's
Is that too much to ask?
I mean... UHC is _already_ fucking matchsticked as "having your cake and eating it too" in this hellhole, so...
Arbys will send you into that healthcare system. That is Cancer/Fat “food”.
I'm surprised you didn't mention how the HCA influenced the creation of the Board Certification standard for doctors. A system basically designed to ensure there are fewer doctors by making healthcare education and certification more difficult and expensive than it already was.
I don't know if this will make you mad but it is what I am dealing with right now. A small traffic control company that was forced to go union to protect their workers. Now it specializes in injured workers. My wife got injured and LNI took the case, then dragged their feet so we got a lawyer to navigate LNI's rules. Out of courtesy we contacted the employer and informed them we have a lawyer, but it was to only go after LNI so that things would go smoother. You see LNI hadn't approved Physical therapy for my wife's injury, that took almost a month after surgery. This was strange because the Physical therapist and doctor wanted the PT to start immediately, so we were advised to get a lawyer. Once a lawyer was involved suddenly the company started bullying and manipulating my wife. Now to be fair the accident was no fault one in a million, there was no way anyone could have prevented it. So I was baffled by the companies actions. My wife asked around the company only to find out a lot of people were either on LNI, injured, or partially disabled. This all lead us to find out about the preferred worker program, the company was getting money for these employees and treated every injury as an opportunity. There is so much more to this that I haven't said. Some having to do with a person getting their case dropped, another being made to pay for a damaged vehicle that they were injured in that the party who was at fault already paid for. The corruption and manipulation of labor laws to bully and intimidate the workers at this place is startling to me. This company was either merged or acquired by a Canadian National company so that this can now happen at an even larger scale. That part of my story, tried to keep it as anonymous as I could.
I'm of Medicare Advantage age. The hospital chain St Luke's is EVERYWHERE in my area, and additional locations are popping on a yearly basis.
Service seems lousy too. I got a physical early this year. It was so superficial. The only time to doc touched me was with a stethoscope. I asked the doc about nutritive education. I got a "deer in the headlights" look.
I developed vertigo. The ENT suggest neurological exam. I'd be called. So far, nadda. I'm inquiring for the 3rd time today when I'm going to be called. I went through an investigation process that induces vertigo with monitors all over me. The results, inconclusive.
I had a high white blood count a few years ago. I was sent to a hemotologyst. They said I might have cancer. I looked into Google to find out causes. One was the ingestion of the mineral lithium. I was taking a lithium supplement. I immediately stopped taking it. They had me come in in a month. I asked how my WBC was. The hemo looked downhearted, said, "its normal." Yet, they bring me in every 6 months for another exam...
Presently, I seek, and get my medical advice from UA-cam and Google. I get all my dietary guidance from UA-cam and am getting positive results.
I learned that doctors get a cursory one hour lecture on nutrition in medical school. I also learned that most medical schools are owned by Big Pharma, which explains why they know all about drugs to treat symptoms, and nothing about getting healthy with nutrition and exercise.
Basically, we are all on our own when it comes to being healthy, and maintaining our health.
I could rant on and on.
This video filled in a lot of blanks that I had. We are now all cash cows for a huge business.
I wonder if psychological services, neurological, are low profit.
The AMA is an additional problem in the US health care disaster . Restricting the number of MDs to create a "shortage" of doctors. Makes it difficult to switch docs cuz there are too few & they're overbooked.
This sounds pretty much like they’re (GOP) wanting to do with the school system as well.
What's the deal with Employer sponsored health insurance and Richard Nixon?
"Can't quit your job because you'll lose your health insurance. Oh no!"
Would love a story on this.
damn! why is it always some family taking control of things?! there was a time all colleges and hospitals (and health insurance companies) were required by law to be non-profit. While i'm not against for profit institutions in these sectors i do feel like there needs to be some choice between non-profit and for profit. with colleges i feel it has a bit of that. Hospitals don't have a chance though. Also remember folks, non-profit institutions still can earn a profit and grow, but there's a limit to it. I really want to see more money going to the doctors, nurses, admin staff at hospitals than shareholders and executives.
Seeing how a brother from the HCA, Frist Family, literally became a senator to manipulate legislation and congressional hearings to help secure their profits makes me believe that _Harrison Bergeron_ had it right when citizens were just selected at random to serve as government officials. Our government is literally a Tecnocratic Oligarchy.
It's going to take some sort of complete collapse and/or a revolution.
The only guarantee is that it's going to be very, very painful.
There's more. As an add-on to this story. Rick Scott, former governor of Florida and now US senator of Florida was CEO at the time of that largest Medicare Fraud. He left with a golden parachute. I'm sure he's helping out his HCA in his Senate position. Scott is also extremely interested in running for President. We don't want him to be President for all the reasons that HCA is a terrible company.
0:01 dude, looks like Roger from American Dad dressed as a secretary, it's the hair.
calling him out on the first second is wild
Lmao
No one is talking about how the US gov is letting Anthem (Elevance) buy up all the local ins companies across the country. They have a pretty wide swathe of monopoly in a lot of highly populated states.
Most haven't a clue. I didn't.
Some if not most Americans: Our healthcare is expensive because it's better.
Life expectancy in America: huh?
Life expectancy isn't so simple. Have you been outside at all in the past 10 years? We're telling fat people that their beautiful and completely healthy. It's "fatphobic" to want to work-out or even encourage others to work-out. A lot of our health issues do not stem from the healthcare system being fucky (trust me I know it is). We over medicate and undermine our bodies at every turn.
@@RumblyGL lol
@@Voingous You say lol but what I have said is true. They are telling people being fat is healthy and alright.
@@RumblyGL haha alright
I get extremely angry when watching your channel. That is a compliment. Great work shining a light on the exploitation of regular working class people by the corporate oligarchy.
Welcome to 4profit predatory America❕
Horrifying but informative story that tells us why the American healthcare system is so much more costly that in other countries.
I was reading the transcript and noticed how many times you used initials instead of the full name - much appreciate if you don't do that bc we have to try and figure out what those initials stand for.
Do American Medical Association monopoly, no one else has covered them.
What got my ire was learning about non profit HBO's becoming for profit entities thereby making the principals multi-hundred millionaires virtually overnight. The most noteworthy is Blue Cross Blue Shield.
I've worked in healthcare the past decade+ and the more I learn about American 'healthcare' the more I am genuinely sickened. Like others have said, for profit hospitals and care is inhumane, immoral, unethical and one of the most horrible innovations of capitalism.
One can argue that the problem is due to health insurance.
Insurance is something you hope not to use, such as auto or homeowner's insurance.
Because so many people have insurance, providers have no incentive to keep prices down. The insurance company pays.
America's healthcare system is all about profit not curing patients. As a patient you are a profit source.
Next video recommendation: veterinary industry corporations like vca, mars, blue Pearl. Corporate takeovers of the veterinary emergency & specialty hospitals is ruining my profession. Patient care is compromised when licensed skilled nurses leave and new untrained people come in while the public is unaware. These people are running anesthesia…. And doing cpr. Please help expose the evil greed of corporations exploiting the love we have for our furry family members. The costs have increased by more than 30% since takeover too so they are paying less for less skilled staff AND increasing prices to pay their stockholders
Could you even imagine living in a world where we weren't ruled by greed?like being a doctor not for money but you genuinely want to help the human race be better,money is the root of all evil it literally destroys nations and has takin over the world and I'm afraid it will never truly go away
Until we evolve beyond the "me want shiny things" phase, it will never change. Jesus came and said his thing around 28-36ad. From about that point until the fourth century most Christian groups were primarily following Jesus direct scripture from the gospels and using the yet non-codified other New Testament books as ancillary text, but the gospels were always the dominant among all other books. If Jesus said it in the gospels and he instructed you to do it, you did it. That is why early Chrisitan's lived exactly as Jesus instructed. They lived communally, giving everything to the community, helping the poor and weak among them and building better communities. Then the moneymen showed up (Constantine & Athanasius), codified the damn books they wanted into the Bible, and gave Pauline doctrine prominence over the teachings of Christ. See, nothing new, been pulling this crap since forever.
Thank you for making this video. Ever since I became an adult and got interested in politics around 2015, I always had the same, old question of how this healthcare mess first started. I remember Adam Ruins Everything had an episode on healthcare but that one seemed to just brush over the origins and blame it on some chargemaster thing. And other videos left me with more questions than answers.
Great content, I'm a lifelong critic of US healthcare, and I wasnt aware of this story. I've seen a couple of other excellent pieces your channel has done lately, great reporting and I really like your tone, we can all use a little humor to make the horrible medicine go down. I've subscribed. And thank you! This content and others in what appears to be a flowering of useful and prosocial fact-based channels on UA-cam gives me hope.
The company that I work for hasn't paid me or my wife (who also works there) for two months, they haven't reimbursed over 6000 in expenses and by German law, we are not allowed to stop working until 3 months have passed. Also, if the company goes bankrupt, we have no recourse... So yeah, talk about the corporate undermining of Germany's once great social system!!!
I ate a Taste of KFC 4 piece meal recently. I don't know what came out of me but I had to vacate the house after opening all the windows and spraying an entire can of febreeze.
Thanks for bringing this stuff to light in such a delightful way. The love of money is the root of all sorts of badness.
Health care should not be for profit. When profit is involved patients will suffer. increase cost, the share holders are the ones who get the most benifts, $$$$$$
Nothing in healthcare and medicine should be ‘for profit’.
Another aspect which makes this worse is the Stark law. It prevents physicians from referring to any service they have a financial stake in.
So if a physician owned a private lab they can’t refer all of their patients to that lab for blood work.
But you know who isn’t covered by Stark?
The hospital system!
So they can require a physician to refer internally to their own lab or imaging or specialists. But a private practice physician would be prosecuted for doing the same thing.
This might be worth a video by itself. It’s related to the topic of why physicians aren’t allowed to unionize to counterbalance the large hospital and insurance chains.
I would dearly miss Arby’s mozzarella sticks, but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make for everyone to have healthcare.
That line about not being able to exist without exploiting Medicare is the most interesting one to me. That even though they are supposedly run for profit, they aren't focused on giving customers the most bang for their buck, they are focused on getting the most money they can from Congress. That's why healthcare sucks.
The only thing I’m worried about in More Perfect Union is that it’s preaching to the choir, many of us being outraged with the writer instead of this channel being found by mostly people who don’t agree.
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The healthcare provider-big pharma-insurance collusion makes me sick
Thank you for the effort it took to bring this to light!
Honestly as someone who has at least one chronic health condition that isn't diagnosed because I can't afford to get testing done I can't think of anything that could be worse than this!
There are many nurses who have complained of HCA's very low patient to nurse ratio. Also the other ways they cut corners and leave patients in jeopardy. Travel nurses will typically avoid an HCA hospital. Now there are other bad ones, of course, but I hear this over and over. So now I know the reason why. It's really pathetic!
Serious question, if these hospitals use a church affiliation like “Methodist” or “Baptist” are they now tax exempt?
Good qs.
What really p-s me off is that my father went to prison in the 1990s for just the kind of business practice that these criminals get rich from. But then we didn't have a family member in congress.
Charging the kick-backs to Medicare ... wow. That blew my mind (doubly-so when I thought about the scale on which it was happening, and the damage it was doing to quality of care).
Corporations should cover 100% of all employees medical costs.
If we have to sell ourselves as indentured wage-slaves, our masters should at least be responsible enough to protect their exploited investments.
Our healthcare should not be tied to employment.
It's more like maintaining livestock. There is no ROI for certain maintenance. Slaughter is the best business case. Employers' interests are not sufficiently aligned with workers' interests. Healthcare should not be provided by employers.
Imagine if KFC replaced your leg with a chicken leg because you didn't had the money to pay them.
This has me filled with an unmanageable amount of rage and there’s nothing constructive I can do with this hatred.
This is the way I live my life.
The government needs to pass a act that Nationalized the healthcare system in America.
Lol. We tried that, Republicans won’t let us.
For profit prisons absolutely the worst thing I can think of.
Yeah. It is pretty bad.
Maybe but Biden got rid of all of them to my knowledge.