I’m going to let you in on a secret:

Doctors are as fed up with the US healthcare system as patients are. We’re exhausted from fighting an uphill battle to get insurance companies to cover necessary care. We’re being threatened and bullied online by unhappy patients. We’re being “supervised” by hospital administrators with business degrees who have never touched a patient.

As of 2022, an estimated 1 in 5 US physicians was planning to exit their clinical practice. Many are leaving to practice in other countries. Those who can afford it are retiring. Some, like me, are transitioning to cash/membership based practice models. Some are opening med-spas and hormone therapy clinics to escape the administrative hassles and low reimbursement of primary care. Some are going to work in tech, pharma or selling their souls to insurance companies to become “resource utilization” specialists: a euphemism for denying care to patients in order to boost shareholder profits.

As more doctors leave practice, they will be replaced by diploma-mill midlevel “providers”. Many of the institutions that train these people have no standardized mechanism to verify their qualifications. But they are cheaper and more readily available than physicians. Which is great for venture-capitalist healthcare corporations but bad for patients.

***Please note, I will not tolerate harassment of myself or my readers in the comments. Disrespectful commenters have been and will continue to be blocked.