From the Health Justice Monitor, current news in context from Jim Kahn, Emeritus Professor of Health
Policy, Epidemiology, and Global Health at the University of California, San Francisco, and Don McCanne, a retired family practitioner who dedicated the 2nd phase of his career to speaking and writing extensively on single payer and related issues.
Private Equity Takeover of Emergency Care = Moral Hazard
Three activist physicians fighting to wrest the harmful control of emergency departments from private equity offer their heartfelt perspectives in this excellent short video.
“I’m A Doctor: Corporate Greed Is Killing Your ER”
12-minute video
YouTube – More Perfect Union
March 18, 2024
The following are quotes from physicians in this video:
> “When we could no longer actually take care of the patients the way we would want our grandmothers treated, that’s when we started having problems.”
> “Physicians are experiencing burnout and moral injury at unprecedented rates.”
> “We have this kind of sacred relationship with patients, and we take an oath to take care of patients. And I think that that really is at odds with the goals of a corporation.”
> “The fact that investors or companies are coming into this place, that is just for patients, right? It’s just for people who are in trouble or are scared or dying to come into that space and to say, how can we make money here? Feels to me unholy. It should just be a public utility, just like you should be able to have access to safe drinking water. You should be able to have access to electricity like you should be able to have access to good emergency care whenever you need it.”
Comment by: Don McCanne
Although the private equity encroachment on medicine is receiving appropriate publicity these days, this compelling video will help you build the case in your mind as to why we have to end this phenomenon. We must replace the private equity takeover with the system which those of us who chose health care as a career thought we were entering – a universal, affordable, accessible, equitable system that places the patient above all else. We know that this system is attainable through the single payer model. Share the video with a friend, too.
No more corporate greed when we know that is not the route to patient health.