Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhuman.
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Second National Convention of the Medical Committee for Human Rights, Chicago, March 25, 1966.
It is the year 2018, and yet not a day goes by when a patient is unable to receive good care or a doctor questions their career choice. How have we arrived at this tragic state of affairs? The answer is that our for-profit health care system is the principal cause, not only of poor patient care, but also of physician burnout. Only with a single-payer system, anchored not in the mores of capitalist plunder, but with the understanding that quality government-funded health care is an inalienable right, can both doctors and patients extricate themselves from this suffering.
Even amongst patients that are insured, restrictive health care plans force millions of Americans to work with doctors that they do not wish to work with. No less disconcerting is the fact that Americans are often compelled to stop working with doctors that they have known for years and do not wish to leave. In conjunction with a complicated health condition I have seen dozens of different doctors over the past two years. Should my insurance suddenly change, this painstakingly constructed system of specialists could come crashing to the ground. Moreover, being forced to leave a doctor that you have known for years is a shame, not only because no one will know your medical problems…