" One shall not be stunned by the new political deportment for perpetually reflecting specific initiatives on the healthcare system, as is nothing but the connection of the dots of lobbyism, corporate medicine, unions, interest groups, and medical board's bureaucracy." — Adam Tabriz, MD.
The Axis of Modern-day Slavery
Tyranny of Money, Power, and Control and its Implication on 21st-century Medical Practice.
Every individual's life is a journey. Unlike other voyages with unpredictable haven, the human endeavor has a predictable beginning and end with the uproar in between. What happens in our lives is what we make off from the day we are born until death. We are selfish individuals, secure in groups, confident when appraised, and successful in leading a group.
We enjoy the profile we belong to, as rewarding together with convenient, withal would struggle to support our uniqueness.
Human fascination with Power and control is an instinctive trait, as aptitude and dominance are inherent tools to keep humans ahead of the game. It renders them competitive. If the possibility of failure is as solo, he will ally, yet then struggles to find a way to dominate the pack until the mission is accomplished to please his inner try.
When ethically obliged, a person would consider the group's intuition within the undertaking, yet, unsurprisingly and not early through the mission, dominance must be secured irrespective of the collateral destruction. Still, most controversial selfishly is the prerogative of humankind to entertain the profile he engages, distinctively rejects criticism even if for the deserving cause, or a casual to be wrong.
As the unconditional constituency of humanity, we will have to voluntarily and personally stride to instruct ourselves to infringe such instincts, yet to find ourselves distracted by those in the mainstream of our culture.
Not beyond the soul journey, some compete, take shortcuts, and some take control of their environs through Power, politics, and monopoly. As we have seen in the passages of political biographies and present-day dogmatic headings, supremacy and grandiosity are peculiar traits of many leaders.
The elements of Power are many, but some universally delineated are the monetary and political authorities with six major societal power influencers. The Power of Reward functions as the ability to offer prizes when others fulfill a wish; on the contrary, coercive Power obliges with the ability to deliver reprimands by order of the leaders as the adverse consequences of an illegal action. Referent Power is where the role models are the critical element of leadership.
A celebrity icon, if elected, irrespective of their knowledge and ability, carries significant weight in delivering a call to action, which can be more dangerous than the sum of all the abusive individual potentials. The Power of Legitimacy is gripping where the control guaranteed by the positional authority of the leadership is the central player in a system at risk of monopoly and favoritism.
Expert Power, as we contemplate as "Knowledge is power," is where skills or knowledge serves as the primary power source. Lastly, the Informational Power, the most transient of all powers, is that once you give your information away, you give your Power away. Thus, it's different from other forms of control because it's grounded in what you know about the content of a specific situation.
To regain or prevent future loss of informational Power, leaders have traditionally used the means of eliminating the person or persons, which is common in today's prevailing scandals of politics and journalism.
Other forms of Power are independently collaborative. But, in today's societal environment, almost all potentialities serve the purpose of two uppermost power players, political and economic forces.
The Ordinance of Power
To prevail, the power agent ordains the design of a mechanism by which he can regulate and guide the system's operation to reward his zeal. To gain control, one would need to hold and instrument the necessary exercise of power and authority within a society that allows for the administration of public resources and establishes procedures within that community.
Whether political Power over social tenets or economic Power by ensuring enough prolific resources at the grasp that give the capacity to make and enforce financial decisions, such as allocating capital and apportioning properties and services. One should also remember that for such a power to prevail (as historically proven), the centralization of clout is the key to its strategic dominance over the sovereignty of the majority as minor individuals.
It conventionally befalls governments to what end the Power of lawful authority is implemented by a de facto political executive to which federal states, local authorities, and smaller units are considered the subject. In a national framework, centralization occurs in the transfer of Power to a typically sovereign "res publica," where everyone has the urge to control. Still, few can carry it out. Still, the chosen wage their way to success, henceforth hold.
Money is the catalyst of all powers! It can overcome the potentiality of the vacuum by way of a tactical approach. When one or more of the vertex elements of the power triangle is constrained, fiscal Power would be able to compensate for the deficit. This phenomenon is currently applied in the modern monopoly and kickback rituals.
As justified, money is the primary compensation for all. Nonetheless, with increasing political influence, one may need lesser bankrolling to secure Power.
Axis of Contemporary Slavery and its current General Application
The axis of modern Slavery is to bear to all aspects of our sociopolitical lives. Imagine the world we live in representing an over-inflated leaky "hot air balloon" floating in the air by the collective efforts of its occupants. Everyone as the constituents of our world must contribute to keeping our economy in constant motion, like a balloon, to prevent it from shrinking.
One would expect the whole world to contribute correspondingly to the struggle, but realistically neither convenient nor conceivable for everyone to contribute to the collective efforts of all and sundry. Not everyone in the chorus can sojourn to stride in such a scenario. What keeps everyone balanced is the societal interaction amid their journey, directly mitigated by the axis of economic, political, and fiscal power' where some would take the shortcut to part in less of the burden and thereby benefit the most.
On the extreme, by the modern struggle, the principle of still is the people's ownership, allowing individuals or entities under such leadership to own, buy and sell persons to sustain fiscal mission without the aptitude to pull out one-sidedly from arrangement and works without remuneration.
One may argue that Slavery is solely based on the virtue of direct trade of the person or human trafficking. Still, it would be too hypocritical to assume, given the nature of the consequences of the action, that the risk of homelessness and suffering or starving to death if the modern slave attempts to escape from such a system is unfounded.
Historically, it has been the multitude of government's position to hold the ultimate control over the axis. Still, with the emergence of over growing modern corporate system, such a trend has become more or less a matter of formality than the rule. Partnerships between private corporations and government entities have evolved into a circumstance of necessity within the aptitude of power play.
Slavery is the extreme totalitarian headship at the feudal spectrum as much as a legitimate need for leadership. It requires control, Power, and wealth. Authoritative leadership feeds on an inherent evil human trait called greed. But, like a derailed train, it will crash before it stops.
Modern Day Slavery and its Application to the Healthcare and Medical Practice
Governments, insurance, and pharmaceutical entities have captured the healthcare industry's significant pipelines of economic and political power lines. They have disrupted billions of dollars worth of the healthcare market and strategically aligned at the deflating healthcare balloon's driver's seat, so they have successfully maintained the healthcare system's control.
Their economic disposition within the healthcare industry situates the colossal corporations in a perfect orientate for lobbying encouragement.
Entities, government, or private and their respective leaderships have used numerous forms of social powers such as Reward, Coercive, Referent, Legitimate, Expert, and Informational regularly to persuade individual citizens of their "sheepskin over wolf" missions.
To be clear, even though leadership is essential, it would pertain to a person rather than an entity or a group of persons in an entity, requiring checks and balances, accountability, and transparency in place for legitimate execution.
Some claim healthcare is broken, whereas it is structured and rigidly built with unilateral benefits to the Slavemasters of the 21st century.
"When economic power is centralized as an instrument of political power, it creates a degree of dependence. Hardly distinguishable from Slavery; thus, let's avoid politicizing our health and wellness based on the same concept."
We live in a giant empty socioeconomic hot air balloon perpetually leaking. Billions of dollars in sweat and blood earnings of the modern citizens are being wasted away, serving the unsubstantiated business requirements of corporate monopoly and dollar figures of their annual spreadsheets.
Healthcare is indeed personal, and it has to be empowered intrinsically. There is a fundamental lack of leadership in our healthcare system. What makes up genuine patient care is within the context of personalized healthcare, where patients and physicians independently work together for individual care.
A centralized system would only prevail under the conviction of an administration's contentious ownership of the social values and people, historically recognized under the socialist philosophy.
Communism, collective population health, and corporatism are no less totalitarian than the traditional version of common Slavery, with one fundamental metamorphosis, wherein the latter, the master, is within proximity of the enslaved person, the state of affairs that ensures the health and wellbeing of its subservient. On the contrary, modern slaves are remote and out of sight, deprived of personal conscience's advantages.
Corporations own public data, control how we live, and have the tools to manage our goods, thoughts, and health. Through big data, economic as well as political empowerment, large entities have been able to conquer and apply the concept of the axis of modern-day Slavery in healthcare, where they have merely been able to control the "three major pipelines" of the centralized industry — Patient's prescription drugs, Physician reimbursement, and the public governance.
Solution!
The need for leadership is a must, but not necessarily within the milieu of consolidated corporate bureaucracy. In a collective exploit, everyone contributes independently, willingly, and relative to the best of their talent. Under such a scenario, transparency, individual accountability, and high-level checks and balances are required to ensure an environment devoid of favoritism, bribery, and legal kickback practices.
That is something we, the contemporary slaves of the corporate world, are yet to see in our lifetime. It is the reality unless we come to terms with the fact that no particular person or entity is knowledgeable and wise enough to rule the others beyond the tone of acting as the frontrunner to speak for everyone within their perimeter of preferences, known as "individual liberty."
There is a prerequisite to decentralize the healthcare system, Spread outpatient data to individual owners, depoliticize medicine, and endow individuals, be it the patient or physician, the same.
Set up full transparency along the chain of bureaucracy and operations, high-level culpability; reduce micromanagement, and give patients and physicians healthcare freedom.