Physician, Heal Our Health Care

By KEN WINKES

Who better than a doctor to diagnose an illness? nnDr. John Geyman, Chairman of the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Washington from 1976-1990, has been doing just that for over half a century.

For much of that time, Dr. Geyman applied his diagnostic skills to one ailment that often makes a physician’s zeal to heal so frustrating: The healthcare system itself is sick. Too often, it is our for-profit healthcare system that inflicts the greatest harm.

In more than a dozen clearly written books and pamphlets that closely examine the ways we deliver health care— from private insurance to Medicare and Medicaid, to the Affordable Care Act—he has repeatedly identified the system’s many shortcomings.

That it is broken is not news. Even after the introduction of the ACA with its subsidies that sweetened the profit pot for private insurers, healthcare in the United States remains expensive and inefficient. In 2024 more than 26 million Americans are still uninsured.

Why is fixing it so hard? After all, according to a recent Gallup poll, more than half of Americans believe our government should guarantee the right to healthcare. Why do the wishes and the will of the people matter so little?

In his most recent two books Dr. Geyman strays from the field of medicine to find the answer.

“Are We the United States of America?” and “Corporate Power and Oligarchy” were published in 2022 and 2024. Reading them together, their kinship is apparent, and though neither book explicitly concerns our nation’s healthcare system, it’s no stretch to see that the divisions in our society and the heavy hand of corporate power both stand in the way of the healthcare reform Americans need and deserve.

In “Are We the United States of America?” Dr. Geyman shares his fear that we are not. The splintering is so obvious we don’t need red and blue electoral maps to tell us. In straightforward words and easy-to-comprehend charts, the good doctor tells us why and how it has happened. Seven of the first short chapters document the divisions that are tearing us apart: the demographic changes, the economic inequality that increased even more during the COVID years, more instability and less security in the workplace, the flood of disinformation, and underlying it all as both cause and effect, the elevation of corporate profiteering over the common good and the political polarization that has ensued.

Reading “Are We the United States of America?”, it’s hard to escape the lesson that, uncontrolled by government regulation or private morality, unbridled self-interest has overwhelmed our sense of community and the common good. Though Dr. Geyman does not say it this way, greed is the disease that is killing us.

If there were any doubt of that diagnosis, “Corporate Power and Oligarchy” lays it to rest. Again, in clear prose, graphs and charts, Dr. Geyman shows what has happened over the last 40 years. In that period, for just one instance, (between 1980 and 2016) the share of income received by the bottom 50% declined from 20 to 13 percent, by itself a surefire formula to promote social discontent.

How did it happen? In that period, corporations grew larger and more consolidated. Rampant monopoly returned to the marketplace. The growth of private equity was astonishing. Between 2000 and 2020 private equity’s assets ballooned from under one trillion to more than seven trillion dollars. Each development placed more power in fewer and fewer hands, smoothing the path to corporate capture of government and to outright oligarchy.

The Citizens United decision in 2010 further cemented the tie between money and power. If money is speech, and in Mitt Romney’s words, “corporations are people,” those with the most money will always have the loudest voice.

In an oligarchy, the will of the people means little. We have a jerry-rigged healthcare system because it’s profitable for the few. And we have voter suppression and gerrymandering because a functioning democracy is oligarchy’s arch enemy.

It’s impossible to treat a disease if we don’t identify it. Call “Corporate Power and Oligarchy” Dr. Geyman’s final diagnosis of the acute illness raging in our body politic.

If we don’t get capitalism under control; if we don’t resuscitate our dying concern for community and the common good, our nation’s prognosis is very grim.

Note: In the spirit of full disclosure, I know Dr. John Geyman and admire him greatly. Now in his 90s, he is a remarkable man who has lived a remarkable life.

“Are We the United States of America?” by John Geyman, 207 pages, Copernicus Healthcare, 2022.
“Corporate Power and Oligarchy” by John Geyman, 244 pages, Copernicus Healthcare, 2024.

Ken Winkes is a retired teacher and high school principal living in Conway, Wash.

From The Progressive Populist, April 15, 2024

Populist.com