Your Money or Your Life: Health Care in America

The session’s first speaker, Dr. Giuseppe del Priore, is the VP of research and chairman of the IRB at New York Downtown Hospital. He talked about his own struggles as a doctor, looking at the on-the-ground effects on cancer patients. “The insurance structure completely changes the doctor-patient relationship.” Del Priore described his battles with his patients’ insurance companies. The power is thoroughly in the hands of the insurer to set up roadblocks or outright deny coverage, he said.

Dr. Claudia Fegan works for the Cook County Health system and is also an author and past president of Physicians for National Health Care. Fegan said insurance companies view providing health care as a loss. This business model has been catastrophic for patient care, she said. “We do ration care, not on the basis of need but on the basis of who can afford it. No one is rich enough to pay for their own health care if something catastrophic happens…all of us are one serious illness, one accident away.”