How Profit Took Over Medicine
In 2013, Robert Yoho went through a devastating period after two young patients died unexpectedly at his surgical center. The shock pushed him into months of intense research, reading the medical literature for hours each week to understand what had happened. Autopsies later showed that the deaths came from unpredictable complications, but his investigation uncovered something larger and more disturbing: a healthcare system shaped less by patient safety than by corporate profit.
That search changed how he viewed modern medicine. He found that many common drugs, surgeries, and screening tests were far less helpful than patients had been led to believe. Some provided tiny benefits, some had never been properly shown to improve long-term health, and many caused harm that was minimized or hidden. Expensive treatment often survived not because it worked well, but because it paid well.
Medicine still performs genuine miracles. Trauma surgery, organ transplants, insulin for the right patients, antibiotics for serious bacterial infections, and some cancer treatments can save lives. But these true successes sit inside a much larger system where routine care is often driven by billing opportunities, sales tactics, and habits that persist long after evidence has weakened.
The result is a country that spends far more on healthcare than other wealthy nations while getting worse overall results in life expectancy and chronic disease. A large share of treatment is ineffective, unnecessary, or actively harmful. That mismatch between spending and outcomes points to a system designed to generate revenue first and sort out patient benefit later.
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