How Insurance Companies Have Come to Dominate American Healthcare

Summary

The article argues that insurance companies have become the dominant force in American healthcare, wielding more influence over clinical decisions, drug pricing, hospital consolidation, and patient access than physicians or medical institutions. It traces how perverse incentives in the system reward insurance companies for denying care, maximizing profits, and shaping the entire healthcare ecosystem around their financial interests rather than patient outcomes. The author contends that this power imbalance has fundamentally corrupted American medicine.