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Hightower Lowdown
Even a dead fish can go with the flow. -- Jim Hightower
April's Lowdown
The great American medicine show, a spectacle of deceit, manipulation, and flimflammery
Butterflies waft across a beautiful field of spring flowers. A delightful young family bicycles joyously down a country lane. A couple on a park bench leans sensually into each other. A 40-something woman's face radiates with both perfect beauty and internal happiness. "All's right with the world," is the message... as long as you've taken your dosages of Lunesta, Celebrex, Cialis, and Botox.
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In This Issue
It's not one bad apple in the corporate barrel
Don’t focus on enron, focus on the system
Also in this issue:
- America’s other war
- Bush’s jobs bait-and-switch
- Environmental uglies
- Can’t keep a good man down
- Brave new health care
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Brave new health care
More and more American doctors are abandoning the age-old Hippocratic notion that general medical practitioners have a responsibility to respond to the health-care needs of the whole community. These upwardly mobile GPs are chucking the bulk of their patients and re-opening as “boutique” practices that cater exclusively to the well-off.
How well-off? To get into a boutique doctor’s office, you have to pay an annual fee ranging from $4,000 to $20,000 per family member. That’s in addition to what you pay for your health insurance. The elites who can afford boutique medicine truly get royal treatment, including having 24-hour cell-phone access to their doctor, getting same-day office appointments, having some exams done in their homes or health clubs, and having their doctor go with them to see specialists.
That’s swell for them, but meanwhile these exclusive practices are dumping thousands of non-rich patients, saying “Adios, chump.” It would be one thing if only a few concierge offices were popping up here and there, but there’s a rising surge of such practices with names like MDVIP. Some entrepreneurial doctors are even franchising the system in cities all across the country.
Under this system, the rich are different from you and me — they get health care. Our wealthy society shouldn’t be pushing more exclusivity in medicine, but instead striving to provide good health care for all — no matter what your income