HJNO Mar/Apr 2025

OPINION The tragic murder of the United Health- care CEO in New York several weeks ago and the national dialogue that followed have exposed a contentious credibility crisis for the five major underwriters of U.S. healthcare insurance — CMS, Aetna, Humana, Cigna, and United Health- care — and their insured policy holders. The central focus of this crisis has identified an intensely frustrated insured patient population after its encounters with a corporate-centered healthcare delivery model, one that is ever more ex- pensive and one that prioritizes market share expansion, corporate profitabil- ity, and obscene administrative c-suite compensation and bonus packages. OPINION It should come as no surprise that re- stricted patient access to mainstream therapies and specialty care negotiated by insurance and hospital executives is often the source of patient and physician frus- trations with the current delivery system. In addition, when hospital-insurer nego- tiations reach an impasse, so does patient care, leaving a patient scrambling to find another provider to assume their care. Welcome to “Take It or Leave It”healthcare delivery! Where or to whom does an ill pa- tient and their family turn for assistance? Sadly, America’s endeavor to provide 21st-century, post-COVID healthcare has resulted in a delivery model devoid of its core focus — its reason for being. Over