Elizabeth Spiers on the rage at the U.S. healthcare system, and the understandable desire to hold someone – anyone – accountable.
When you’re stuck in the pediatric oncology ward watching your child die because insurance thinks the doctor’s recommended treatment plan is too experimental, or when you’re watching someone you love experience unremitting pain that no one will treat or pay for, or you simply find yourself buried in mountains of paperwork and bills when you’re too sick to navigate it, who do you blame? Who can be held accountable? Everyone intuitively understands that there are individual people responsible for this state of affairs and no real mechanisms to prevent them from causing harm.