I’ve been a physician for over 2 decades.
I've watched patients walk into my office on 8 medications. Overweight. Exhausted. Hopeless. And every single one of them had been "treated" for years.
Here's what nobody in healthcare wants to say out loud:
We are not in the business of making people well. We are in the business of managing disease. There's a difference. A massive one.
The average primary care visit lasts 15 minutes. In that window, a physician is expected to review labs, address complaints, manage medications, update records, and somehow have a meaningful conversation about the patient's actual life.
It doesn't work. It was never designed to work.
I've had patients reverse type 2 diabetes with food. Not a special supplement. Not surgery. Food. But our healthcare system doesn't reimburse for that conversation. It reimburses for the prescription.
The problem isn't that we don't have the science. We've had the science for decades.
The problem is that the system was built to treat symptoms, not root causes.
And until we redesign the incentives, we'll keep getting the same results: sicker patients, burnt-out doctors, and a $4.3 trillion annual healthcare bill that keeps climbing.
I didn't leave the traditional system because I stopped caring. I left because I started caring too much to keep pretending it was working.
