The healthcare system in the US has been plagued with various forms of corruption and morally abhorrent practices since its inception. Most of these factors aren't know to most Americans, who have a very simplistic understanding of how our system was created and how it works. The influence of money and power has shaped many aspects of the system from how medical schools function, what they teach, and who they train to the formation of the American Medical Association and how it pushed its rival associations out of the picture.
Large scale changes in the types of health problems facing the American public began in the 1960s with the recognition of auto-immunity and the meteoric rise in prevalence of auto-immune conditions, which remain poorly understood and for which treatments are not very effective or reliable. A similar rise in prevalence in atopic diseases- diseases involving allergic and allergy-type responses- began not long afterwards, beginning in the 1980s. Cancer rates have skyrocketed, and there has never been an area of research in which more money has been spent and yet so few advances have actually been made. Many of what are claimed to be advances have more to do with playing with statistics and altering definitions than with actual improved patient outcomes.
Medical research has increasingly been funded by sources with vested interests in the outcome, calling into question the neutrality and validity of the results. Research has become slewed towards drug development rather than other types of prevention and treatment which might be more effective and safer but are less profitable. The encroachment of private investment into medicine has reached its peak destructiveness in the form of private equity investments that are doing little more than buying up hospitals, medical practices, pharmacies, insurance companies, and other medical businesses, raiding them for their assets, and then leaving the carcasses in bankruptcy. This has jeopardized the safety of most Americans and led to more deaths and serious harm than we will ever know, just so that the already obscenely rich can become slightly richer.
Sanders Says Senate Hearing Will Put 'Greed on Display' With or Without Healthcare CEO
A company called Steward Health Care has made massive profits, paid its private owners millions in dividends, and the CEO Dr. Ralph de la Torre paid himself $4 million and purchased a mega yacht thought to be worth $40 million, while incurring massive debt and driving all 31 of its hospitals into bankruptcy.
Further, "On Thursday, CBS News reported that in 2017 Steward executives including de la Torre illegally conspired with Maltese officials in order to secure a hospital contract, according to a whistleblower. While a spokesperson for the executive denied any wrongdoing, whistleblower Ram Tumuluri alleged in a complaint to the U.S. Congress that "in touting Steward's supposed competitive advantage in Malta... de la Torre boasted that he could issue 'brown bags' to government officials if necessary to close transactions."
