Our health care system is collapsing before our eyes and we don’t seem capable of responding. My regular physician (who was board certified in cardiology and internal medicine) closed his group practice, “fired” about 2/3 of his patients and started a “concierge practice” with two colleagues that doesn’t accept insurance and only the more affluent could afford. They are accessible 24×7 thereby avoiding some ER visits and in true emergencies, assist in arranging “expedited access” to one or two local hospital ERs.
We always had a two-tier health care system based on income and education but in a post-Covid world, the differentials are even more extreme as thousands of traditional independent family and primary care practices are bought out by the big hospital chains and converted into assembly line medicine. Even those, however, are better than those with NO primary care who use the ER as the last resort. Instead, we are celebrating new legislation that will give certain seniors lower drug costs beginning in 2026 on only a dozen or so commonly used generic medications out of over 1800 in the Pharmacia listings.
