CODE BLUE, Covid-19, and the Collapse of the Medical-Industrial Complex in America

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Presenter: Mike Magee, MD, Medical Historian and Health Economist, President's College, University of Hartford

Description: This is an educational and highly visual 1-hour slide presentation that describes the evolution of the Medical-Industrial Complex leading to system-wide failure when challenged by the Covid-19 pandemic. Code Blue explains American health care’s changes in the immediate post-WWII period and how these led to an ever more formalized profit-driven operation that deals every one in on the spoils - except the patient.

Code Blue makes the case that health care is not “too complex to understand” as Trump contended, nor “the best health care system in the world”, but instead a public health and economic time-bomb described by Warren Buffett as “the tapeworm feeding on the U.S. economy.”

Based on his recently published book (Grove Atlantic/2019/Kirkus Star review) medical historian and journalist, Mike Magee, MD answers the following questions: How did America become the only developed nation to deny universal coverage and health care as a right? Why are our costs the highest while our quality measures remain the lowest? How did health care become a business and what role did WW II play in this evolution? Who's pulling the strings, and who are the villains and heroes in this story? And most importantly, why was our country so ill-prepared for the Covid-19 pandemic and what should we as a country do about it now?

Mike Magee MD is the author of CODE BLUE: Inside the Medical-Industrial Complex which received a Kirkus Star review. He is a medical historian and health economist at the President’s College at the University of Hartford. He has held similar roles in a range of academic institutions. He was an Honorary Master Scholar at NYU School of Medicine, and a Distinguished Alumnus award recipient from the University of North Carolina. Beginning as a country doctor in western New England, he rose to the highest levels of his profession holding senior executive positions at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia, and as head of global medical affairs for Pfizer. He is editor of the blog HealthCommentary.org. Full CV available at www.mikemagee.org.