HEALTH

 Ralph Nader - At least 5000 people a week die in hospitals in the U.S. due to “preventable problems,” concluded a peer-reviewed study by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine physicians in 2016. This is just one of numerous such studies of hospital-induced infections, overuse of antibiotics, medical malpractice or what is called “medical error,” prescribing bundles of drugs that backfire, “accidents,” deskilling and understaffing.

There has been no mass mobilization by either government officials or industry executives to address this staggering toll of at least 250,000 fatalities a year...

Avoidable casualties also arise from the sweeping denial of insurance coverage for ill or injured patients by greedy unregulated or underregulated health insurance companies maximizing profits and bonuses for CEOs. Many insurance companies are now using AI to help wear down consumers.

About two thousand Americans a week lose their lives because they cannot afford health insurance to cover prompt diagnosis and treatment costs. System-driven patterns of denial of benefits by health insurers also cause deaths and injuries. The companies have algorithms that automatically delay or deny needed procedures without even seeing a patient’s medical records or speaking with the patient’s physician.

Insurance policies are full of fine print deductibles, co-pays, waivers and exclusions that drive consumers and their doctors up the wall. Insurance premiums are paid by patients or employers ahead of time with advertised assurances.

In the past two months, consumers have been overwhelmed by a blizzard of television ads by giant insurers e.g., Aetna, Cigna, and Humana for their Medicare (dis)Advantage plans aimed at elderly beneficiaries. The ads are loaded with “freebies” that paint the companies as charities instead of cunning commercial marketers. In reality, denial of benefits is higher for these plans than for traditional Medicare. Moreover, these plans push patients into narrow networks of physicians and hospitals and subject them to dreadful over-use of “prior authorization.” The latter means some remote company doctor or medical professional decides whether a physician with a patient can be reimbursed for a specific treatment. This results in overwhelming paperwork for the doctors, immense profits for the companies and degraded treatment for patients.

Some health insurers are removing executive bios from their websites after the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare's CEO