Selling body parts without consent and billing desperate parents $97,599 for air transport among worst examples

Summary

The Lown Institute’s 2024 Shkreli Awards highlighted 10 instances of egregious healthcare profiteering.

Winners included UnitedHealth for pressuring doctors to inflate medical coding and Steward Health Care for prioritizing profits over patient care, leading to bankruptcy and reduced healthcare access.

Other offenders included Zynex Medical’s fraudulent billing for supplies, Memorial Medical Center’s alleged upfront payment demands for cancer treatment, and Medicare’s mass billing for urinary catheters.

The awards aim to expose systemic dysfunction and push for reform in the profit-driven U.S. healthcare industry.

  • ZeroCool@slrpnk.net
    57·
    2 days ago

    and push for reform in the profit-driven U.S. healthcare industry.

    There’s nothing to reform. We don’t have a healthcare system we have a health insurance system, which is operating exactly as intended. The only solution is to burn the whole fucking thing down and start over.

    • ZeroCool@slrpnk.net
      24·
      2 days ago

      Sign me up! We get healthcare, and Canada can finally end its 30+ year Stanley Cup drought. Turning the US into Southern Canada is the only way either scenario is going to happen at this point. Everybody wins!

      • medgremlin
        8·
        2 days ago

        Hey now…South Canada already refers to Minnesota. Y’all can get your own new nickname.

          • medgremlin
            2·
            1 day ago

            I’m pretty sure the Twin Cities metro is north of Toronto as well which would mean most of the population of Minnesota is north of most of the population of Canada.

        • ZeroCool@slrpnk.net
          2·
          2 days ago

          Yep, the last time a Canadian team won the Stanley Cup Final was in 1993 when the Montreal Canadiens beat the LA Kings

          • chingadera@lemmy.world
            2·
            1 day ago

            Damn. I was born close to that year. I even knew that date and was like “pfffft that’s not 30 years ago”