Navigating the Power Differential: A Physician’s Perspective

Healthcare in the U.S. often feels less like a covenant and more like a negotiation conducted on a tilted table, where insurers hold the rulebook and patients hold the receipt for their pain. The “two-midnight rule” and similar fixes were meant to tame arbitrary denials, yet the system keeps sprouting fresh loopholes because the incentives rewarding avoidance are stronger than the regulations demanding care. Clinicians and case managers end up playing a daily game of civil resistance—documenting, appealing, and sometimes threatening complaints to agencies like CMS—not because they enjoy conflict, but because advocacy has become part of the job description. We should stop pretending this is a personality problem solved by being nicer on the phone; it’s a structural power differential that lets financial logic second-guess medical judgment in real time. Until we rewire that logic so profit depends on health outcomes instead of claim rejections, morality will keep showing up as an underfunded volunteer in a money-run courtroom.