How Oregon Is Ending Corporate-Run Healthcare
Welcome to the podcast Organized Money. You can listen to today’s episode on Apple on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
All over the country, corporate consolidation of doctor’s offices has exploded in recent years. Most states have long standing laws on the books forbidding corporate entities from controlling medical decision-making, but large corporations like UnitedHealth have managed to weasel their way in via loopholes. Recently, the state of Oregon passed a new bill that closed the exceptions that made these corporate takeovers possible. Today on the show Matt and Dave talk with Oregon House Majority Leader Representative Ben Bowman, who spearheaded the bill, and Hayden Rooke-Ley, Senior Fellow for Healthcare at the American Economic Liberties Project to discuss how we got here, and how the bill attempts to return medical decision-making to the physicians who actually have a stake in their patient’s wellbeing. You can read more about Rep. Bowman's bill on Matt's newsletter Big.
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Great show Dave and Matt! I wanted to add, for those very interested in the medical industry I would recommend "The Social Transformation of American Medicine" by Paul Starr. There is also the other very brilliant book by Marty Makary "Unaccountable" which is a must read if you are evaluating Providers and Physicians.
While vesting all the decision making in the hands of Physicians is a good idea I am doubtful if the Physician Community has the best interests of the public at large. Were not they the ones who brought us to this pass? Did they not take up the cudgels against Truman when he wanted to pass Medicare for all and restrict it only to Seniors? I have also read that when when Tommy Douglas in Canada was working on bringing Single Payer to Saskatchewan, American Physicians rapidly organized and went to Canada to rally against this move because they were scared that America too would move down this path. You have also mentioned maybe in this article or elsewhere as to how the American Medical Association has been involved in keeping American medicine profit oriented through various ways. One of the main ways they reduce the supply of Doctors to keep the income of Doctors high is in designing the Pre-Med curriculum in college. There are very few countries where a Bachelors is required BEFORE any student can study Medicine and that place is here in the USA. They also stuff several unnecessary tough Organic Chem courses into the Pre-Med track (Canada does not do this nor does India for instance) to dissuade students from pursuing Medical degrees. American Physicians I would argue do not care much about healing as much as about making lots of money. I for one am not shedding tears for Doctors. My reasoning is, what they were stealing from patients is now going to PE. It is hard to take a side in this.