Healthcare’s Downfall? Follow the Money....

Dr. Jessica Edwards is a board-certified family medicine physician, founder of Zahra Medical, and a former health policy fellow. With a career spanning telehealth innovation and community care—and personal experience as a parent navigating the U.S. healthcare system—she offers an unfiltered perspective on how profit-driven policies and administrative overhauls have impacted patients, providers, and public trust.

In this compelling segment from The Humanity of Fame, host Kali and Dr. Edwards trace a timeline that begins with the 9/11 attacks and ends in the era of private equity takeovers in healthcare. What started as a push for better access to digital medical records has, over the years, spiraled into a system where profits often outrank patients.

Dr. Edwards breaks down how well-intentioned policy—like electronic health records—was co-opted by corporations, leading to a mass exodus of seasoned physicians, declining patient outcomes, and the rise of impersonal, business-run healthcare. She also highlights the dangerous influence of corporate reps, conflicts of interest, and how money—not medicine—became the driver of the system.

Key Takeaways:

• The post-9/11 push for digital medical records and how it opened the door for privatization.
• How doctors were financially penalized or forced out for not complying with rapid policy shifts.
• The 2008 ban on doctor-owned hospitals and its ripple effects on healthcare quality.
• Why private equity acquisition led to a 25% drop in patient satisfaction scores.
• The recurring theme: “Follow the money.” How profit motives continue to disrupt care.

Guest Contact:
🌐 ZahraMedical.com
📣 Follow Dr. Edwards for evidence-based insight, policy awareness, and advocacy around patient-first healthcare.

Find out more about Kali and the show HERE: https://humanityoffame.com/

Transcript

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When 9-11 happened, I've heard a lot of the stories from the doctors, you know, I live in, you know, New York now and did residency in Jersey. When people were going into the hospitals, there was no way for doctors to find out, you know, what kind of blood type somebody had. They might be in a coma and they can't reach them or they needed emergency surgery. They don't know what they're allergic to and they're just doing stuff. And so there were doctors who testified before Congress, hospitals and things like that. And they said, listen, like we, this is 2011, 2001, excuse me. We've got to have a way to be able to get medical records for people through the computer. And so it was passed that basically started requiring, you know, doctors' offices, hospitals, things like that to switch over to electronic health records. There was funding given out for companies to create electronic health records. The point of them communicating with each other, doctors who were in my dad's generation, like they already saw what was coming when the legislation got passed. When centers for Medicare and Medicaid were like, if you don't have an electronic record by this time and you build Medicare, you're going to get a fine. And a lot of them either kept doing paper charts and just paid the fine or they started getting approached by private equity groups that wanted to buy their practice. And they say, you know what? We'll handle the computer. Don't worry about the computer anymore. We're, you know, just come to work. We'll buy your practice. We'll handle all the admin stuff. And a lot of them got way less than they bargained for. And a lot of the older doctors just ended up leaving medicine. They were getting bought out. Next thing you know, hospitals were in 2008, I think the Obama administration or during the Obama administration, they passed legislation that doctors can no longer own hospitals. And just saw all of that just kind of go downhill. You just started to see the healthy outcomes just get worse and worse. Patient satisfaction scores get lower and lower. I think there was a study done after private equity initially started taking over health care. The patient satisfaction rates dropped by 25%. Satisfaction. Okay. And you just see that, you know, it's been sort of like, oh, well, we're going to let this rep come into the hospital because they want to sell us this thing. And yeah, we're going to do this dinner. And like, it's so many different conflicts of interest. The fact that you said sell. And earlier you said follow the money. A lot of it keeps coming. It keeps circling back. It does. It circles back all the time. And it comes down to whether money, funding, quick sale, merger, all of it comes down to money. It all comes down to money. Always.