“Squeezing every drop from professionals and patients drives good profits but worsens care.”
In an op-ed at Seacoast Online, Dr. Patty Hymanson, a neurologist and former Maine state representative, shares how increasing pressure to increase profits, often at the expense of giving the care patients need, led her to stop practicing medicine to run for office as a state legislator. She applauds the Maine Medical Association’s statement on reform of the U.S. health care system, released last fall, which calls for systemic change and supports publicly funded, universal health care.
“Our health care system, for most people, is sick,” Hymanson writes. “How can complex changes be grafted on to a sick system? This is especially true when the sick system has grown by encouraging branches that make the most profit.”