Socialism, Corporatism--In Other Words... Lose, Lose for Patients: "Neither socialism nor corporatism is about serving individual patients--the collective or the corporation comes first. 'Health care' simply is the pretext for bringing revenue into the system."(MEDICINE & HEALTH)

• Author: Lee Vliet, Elizabeth
• Position: MEDICINE & HEALTH

Medicare-for-all medicine is the ultimate goal of progressive Democrats, fully embraced by the scheming left in the midterms. Candidates claim single-payer government-run medicine will solve all the problems of ObamaCare and our broken, purportedly free-market system.

These liberal proposals ignore or deny the massive cost burden to taxpayers of "free healthcare," the long delays, and the limited treatment options that plague every taxpayer-funded (socialized) medical system in the world, from Canada and the United Kingdom, to Cuba and Venezuela--and increasingly to Medicare and Medicaid. Some claim to have received fine medical care in such a system but, having been a patient (and had a family member as a patient) in several countries with socialized medical care, I personally can attest to the difficulty of getting proper care at all.

The U.S. system has similar problems because of the flip side of the same coin: the corporatization of medicine. High cost; long delays to see specialists; limited doctor networks; "insurance" (managed care) companies dictating clinical "guidelines" to be followed; pharmacy benefit managers causing harm to patients by adding another layer of costs and restricting access to optimal medications; and a deluge of prior authorizations and other administrative barriers are keeping patients from the medical care their doctors would like to provide.

I see these problems daily in my own practice as I help coordinate care outside my field for patients from different parts of the U.S. as they struggle with getting insurance approval for the referrals, medications, and treatment they need, often from physicians treating only one organ system or body part without coordination with the patients' other physicians. Even though I am independent of insurance contracts and able to focus on serving patients according to their individual needs, I still am restricted in testing and treatment options by what Insurance" plans and pharmacy benefit managers will pay for.

Two behemoths control medical care around the world: socialized medicine, with government-run massive bureaucracies (in Canada, UK, Europe, etc.), and corporatism, with corporate bureaucracies (such as Aetna, Anthem, Caremark, Humana, UnitedHealthcare) controlling most "health-care delivery" in the U.S., including an increasing proportion of care funded by Medicare and Medicaid. The single-payer chorus has yet to acknowledge this, or to ask whether their proposal...