Healthcare systems differ widely — single-payer, socialized medicine, insurance mandates, hybrids — but all share one fundamental flaw: incentives reward disease care, not health. Prevention receives barely 1% of total spending. Hospitals maximize revenue through more cases, more procedures, and higher severity, not better outcomes. The result: unnecessary surgeries, inflated use of X-rays and catheterizations, and overtreatment driven by financial structures rather than patient benefit.
Countries like Germany show massive overcapacity, while the U.S. spends the most yet has the lowest life expectancy and highest infant mortality. Surgeries for joints, backs, and coronary vessels are often performed without real need — and second opinions overturn the majority of them. Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical industry, deeply embedded in defining diseases and shaping evidence, is the third-largest cost driver and part of the same misguided incentive system.
This episode reveals how political, financial, and structural incentives distort modern medicine — and why the current model inevitably produces too many operations, too little prevention, and very poor value for patients.
More information at https://haraldschmidt.online
Contact: harald.schmidt@mac.com
