The Business of Sickness: How Healthcare Became a Legalized Cartel
All of us have heard of the recent shooting of a major health carrier’s CEO. Condemning violence of any kind is, of course, important to make clear — but it raises some deeply uncomfortable issues for many people who have been affected by the healthcare system, in which insurance plays a major role.
To start, let’s imagine a system where surviving isn’t a given but a transaction — a deal shaped by price tags and sold as a commodity. A system not designed to heal but to prolong sickness. A machine that reaches its highest efficiency not when you’re strong, but when you’re at your most vulnerable. Is this just a wild conspiracy theory, or is it a reality we’ve all come to know?
Maybe, but to many — it’s healthcare in America: a Legalized Cartel running with ruthless calculation.
Hospitals, pharmaceutical corporations, and insurance companies form an unholy trifecta of greed, each feeding off the other while the average person sinks deeper into illness, debt, and despair. This isn’t happenstance; it’s the outcome of a system deliberately constructed to prioritize wealth over well-being. Every inflated hospital bill, every rejected insurance claim, every pill marked up hundreds of times, is evidence of this grim reality.
Hospitals are supposed to be pillars of our community & health, but many, especially nonprofit hospitals, function more like profit-driven corporations. They expand into monopolies, swallowing entire regions until they have total control over healthcare access. In such monopolies, prices are dictated by the institution’s dominance, with no competition to challenge exorbitant costs. The nonprofit label is just a loophole — a smokescreen that lets these institutions avoid billions in taxes while executives walk away with multimillion-dollar paychecks. Meanwhile, patients are left dealing with lawsuits for unpaid bills over basic treatments, suffering, and dying. How is this system serving the public interest?
Pharmaceutical companies push this exploitation even further. Take insulin, for instance. A drug that costs mere dollars to produce is sold at hundreds of dollars in the United States. Their justification is innovation, but that’s a lie. The system incentivizes companies to ensure chronic reliance on their products, not to cure diseases. Curing is a financial dead end. Instead, profits come from keeping people dependent. New drugs are developed not to eradicate illness but to create more customers. As a result, patients ration their medication, suffer from preventable complications, or even die because they can’t afford basic treatments.
Insurance companies, the supposed safety net, are no better. They thrive on complexity, confusion, and denial. High premiums offer no guarantee of care; they only promise more bureaucratic obstacles and more chances to reject a claim. The system is intentionally opaque because transparency would expose the reality: a rigged game where patients lose. Insurance companies are built on confusion, leveraging the bureaucratic maze of medical codes and fine print to protect their interests while patients navigate a Kafkaesque system of approvals and rejections.
The core issue isn’t about fixing the system — it’s about acknowledging that the system was never designed to heal. It was designed to generate wealth. Capitalism, in its purest, most ruthless form, has taken over healthcare. The healthcare industry doesn’t see patients; it sees dollar signs. Private equity firms swoop in, acquiring hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes, stripping them down to their essentials to maximize profit. Efficiency means cutting staff, slashing resources, and delivering subpar outcomes. It’s not about care; it’s about capital. It’s wealth care, and the only winners are the wealthy.
What makes this system even more perverse is its relationship with merit. In healthcare today, merit isn’t about skill, innovation, or patient outcomes — it’s about the ability to seize attention, secure influence, and maintain monopolies. Pharmaceutical companies spend billions lobbying Congress, ensuring that no legislation — no matter how well-intentioned or bipartisan — jeopardizes their profits. The system they’ve built is fortified, with layers of legal loopholes, patent protections, and political influence. Those who control the narrative and the legislation control the system, and they protect it at all costs.
The most grotesque reality is that this system depends on us staying sick. Prevention doesn’t fuel profits. Keeping people healthy means less chronic treatment, fewer prescriptions, and smaller bills — and that’s a problem for an industry that profits from chronic illness. Instead, we get short-term fixes: band-aids for symptoms, endless prescriptions, and a healthcare structure that prioritizes temporary solutions over long-term well-being.
So, where does that leave us? Are we bound to a future where our health is just another transaction, one more point on a profit ledger? Or is there a way out? Technology, particularly AI, offers a glimpse of a better system. If implemented correctly, AI could streamline healthcare, reduce costs, and democratize access. But let’s be real — those who benefit from the current system won’t let that happen easily. They’ll turn even AI into a tool for profit maximization rather than care delivery.
The Legalized Cartel is more than a healthcare issue. It’s a mirror of a society that places profit over people, ambition over empathy, and capital over care. Until we challenge that system, until we dismantle the structures that thrive on exploitation rather than healing, we’ll remain in its grip. Paying with our wallets, sacrificing our health, and ultimately, compromising our lives.
We need a system that puts people first — not profits, not monopolies, not patents. It’s time to question everything: who healthcare serves, what healthcare truly means, and whether we’ll continue living in a system where survival is a transaction and sickness is a commodity. The choice is ours — if we dare to make it.
Don’t take my word for anything — research for yourself. It impacts us all.
