The Medical Industrial Complex Is Broken, and We’re All Just Supposed to Accept It

The medical industrial complex has gotten completely out of fucking control. And what blows my mind is this: where are the protests for this? We protest police brutality. We protest political corruption. We protest corporate greed. But somehow we’ve collectively decided that the labyrinthine, bloated, gatekept nightmare that is modern American healthcare is just… normal. I call bullshit.

Here’s the dirty secret no one likes to say out loud: this system is not designed around care. It’s designed around bureaucracy. Endless, suffocating bureaucracy stacked on top of more bureaucracy, with just enough “clinical” language layered in to make it sound legitimate. It’s a maze, and the rules aren’t there to help you heal, they’re there to control access, limit liability, and keep the machine fed.

I’ve been through enough medical trauma to earn the right to say this plainly. I’ve survived multiple cardiac arrests. I have a defibrillator implanted in my body. I’ve done the physical rehab, the emotional reckoning, the life reconstruction that comes after you nearly die more than once. I know my body intimately now, in a way you only do after it betrays you and then, somehow, keeps going. And yet, despite all of that, I still can’t just say, “Hey, something is wrong with my knee, it’s full of fluid, it wakes me up at night, and I need an orthopedic specialist to look at it.”

No. That would be too fucking easy.

Instead, the system demands that you feed the lower troughs first. You start with a primary care provider, someone who may or may not be competent, may or may not listen, and may or may not have more than ten minutes to give a shit. Then, if you’re lucky, they refer you to another doctor. Often the wrong one. Then maybe another referral. Then maybe imaging. Then maybe, eventually, you land in the office of someone who actually specializes in the thing that’s wrong with you.

Maybe.

This isn’t medicine. It’s ritualized inefficiency. It’s a gatekeeping system that treats patients like liabilities instead of human beings. Pain that wakes you up at night doesn’t move the needle. Functional impairment doesn’t move the needle. Being able to articulate what’s wrong, intelligently, calmly, and accurately, doesn’t move the needle. What matters is whether you followed the maze correctly. Whether you checked the right boxes. Whether you showed the proper deference to the hierarchy.

And let’s talk about insurance, because that’s the biggest scam of all. We’re told insurance exists to provide access to care. But in reality, it exists to manage access, to slow it down, reroute it, and make it just inconvenient enough that people give up, live with pain, or convince themselves it’s not that bad. What the fuck am I paying for if I can’t directly access the care I clearly need? Why is my money good enough every month, but my judgment about my own body isn’t?

The unspoken rule of this system is simple: the more you advocate for yourself, the more you’re seen as “difficult.” Ask too many questions and you’re labeled anxious. Push too hard and you’re labeled demanding. Know too much and you’re treated with suspicion. The system prefers compliant patients, quiet, deferential, grateful for scraps. God forbid you come in informed, assertive, and unwilling to be dismissed.

What makes this even more infuriating is that none of this is inevitable. Other systems exist. Other models exist. We just don’t use them here because they would require admitting that the current structure serves administrators and insurers far better than it serves patients. So instead, we normalize suffering. We normalize delay. We normalize being told to wait weeks or months while our bodies scream that something isn’t right.

I’m done normalizing it.

I’m done pretending this is acceptable. I’m done pretending that being angry about it makes me unreasonable. This isn’t about impatience, it’s about access, dignity, and the basic right to competent care without having to beg, navigate a maze, or perform compliance theater.

The medical industrial complex isn’t broken by accident. It’s broken by design. And until more of us start calling that out, loudly, unapologetically, and without being shamed into silence, nothing is going to change.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to try to find the one doctor who actually knows what the fuck they’re doing.