Marty Makary: “The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care - and How to Fix It”

re: follow the money
re: Marty Makary MD
re: “Unaccountable: What Hospitals Won't Tell You and How Transparency Can Revolutionize Health Care”
re: Overdiagnosis is Damaging Health and Happiness America

For the first time, I feel like I have a real grasp of how the medical industry is so broken; I had no idea of the numerous structural con games that cause health care to cost vastly more than it ought.

The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care - and How to Fix It, by Marty Makary @AMAZON

Marty Makary website, and Marty Makary, M.D., M.P.H. at Johns Hopkins

Read it (even skim it) if only for your own self-interest in avoiding life crushing medical costs, which many of us face at some point. It might pay for for itself 10000 times over, if not for you then your family or someone you know.

Anyone who has been alive for 4-5 decades has a high probability of having been screwed by the medical system (financially and/or direct harm). A lot of us have been exploited, and had to battle powerful organizations price-gouging and thereby causing massive harm. Even if we were lucky enough to not have suffered direct harm.

The structural fixes to the broken sytem are in many cases not at all complicated. But the political will to fix things can only come from knowledge, and in that regard a copy of this book ought to be read by every member of Congress. Maybe enough would actually care to act? Well... maybe not. But there is a non-zero chance. Plenty of wealthy people out there like to virture signal with conventional charitable gifts—here’s your chance to do real and systemic good.

With so many non profits out there allegedly working for public health (eg Gates Foundation and many others), why don’t they “run” with a book like this (with tons of research behind it)... perhaps because their mission is less than genuine?

I pity the many good-hearted and ethical doctors who work in this corrupt and venal system, most of whom have no idea they are in bed with exploiters of humanity. But that’s on them, because willful ignorance is a choice. IMO, a doctor who does not understand or have interest in costs is a doctor willfuly harming patients. Rationalizations to the contrary are irresponsible because if you sign up to help people, you ought to do that.

Also by Marty Makary: “Unaccountable: What Hospitals Won't Tell You and How Transparency Can Revolutionize Health Care”