Part III: Sick by Design

Part III: Sick by Design – How Shareholder Health Care Profits from Human Suffering

I think most of us want to believe that healthcare exists to make people well. That hospitals are sanctuaries and doctors are healers. That the system, for all its flaws, is fundamentally trying to help.

But when I peel back the glossy brochures and the soothing language of “care,” I find something much colder at the centre of it all: a corporate machine engineered not to heal, but to monetise illness.

Under the logic of corporate personhood, healthcare has been transformed into an industry where our pain, our diseases, and our dependency have become revenue streams. In this third part of the series, I want to show how corporations in the health system—from insurance companies to pharmaceutical giants—are legally bound not to prioritise our health, but to maximise shareholder returns.

This isn’t just about greed. It’s a structural reality, it’s legal, and it’s harming people.

Health Care as a Business, Not a Right

I often look to the United States as the most extreme, though increasingly globalised, example of what happens when the corporate form takes over medicine.

• The U.S. spends more per capita on healthcare than any other country.
• Yet, it ranks poorly on nearly every health outcome, from infant mortality to life expectancy.
• The system is plagued by inefficiency, inequality, and inaccessibility, despite being flush with cash.

Why is this? I believe it’s because the system isn’t designed to promote health. It’s designed to generate profit. And thanks to corporate personhood, the key players in this system aren’t human caregivers—they are legal entities whose highest duty is to their shareholders, not their patients.

Insurance: Deny First, Profit Always

Health insurance companies are among the most profitable corporations in the world. From my perspective, they are not in the business of “covering care.” They are in the business of collecting premiums and denying payouts.

Their business model seems quite straightforward:

1. Take your money in monthly premiums.
2. Use algorithms and bureaucracy to deny or delay your claims.
3. Invest the money they’re holding to earn additional income.
4. Reward executives with huge bonuses for keeping costs (your care) down.

This is why so many of us spend hours fighting over claims, coverage, and surprise bills. It’s not a bug in the system; it’s a feature.

And because these corporations are “persons” under the law, they use their political “voice”—money—to lobby against universal healthcare and price transparency laws, ensuring they are never forced to serve the public good.

Big Pharma: Innovation or Exploitation?

Pharmaceutical companies often portray themselves as heroic innovators. And while real innovation certainly exists, the priorities of drug corporations are shaped by one question: what’s profitable?

This leads to what I see as disturbing incentives:

• Develop drugs for chronic conditions, not cures, because lifelong customers mean recurring revenue.
• Inflate prices exponentially, especially in markets with no legal price caps.
• Patent slight variations of existing drugs to block cheaper generics.
• Spend more on marketing and lobbying than on research and development.

The infamous case of insulin illustrates the moral bankruptcy of this system. Its inventors sold the patent for $1, believing it belonged to the world. Today, thanks to corporate ownership and patent games, insulin prices have skyrocketed, forcing patients to ration a life-saving drug.

These corporations are protected by their “personhood,” allowing them to spend billions influencing politicians and rewriting intellectual property laws to maintain control over medicine.

Hospitals: Healing or Harvesting?

Many of us still see hospitals as community institutions. But a growing number are owned by for-profit chains and private equity firms that treat them as investment assets, not places of care.

This often means:

• Cutting “unprofitable” services like maternity wards or mental health clinics.
• Merging with other hospitals to eliminate competition and drive up prices.
• Overcharging for routine procedures and supplies.
• Incentivising more tests and surgeries, not necessarily better outcomes.

Doctors and nurses often enter the field to help people, but I see them working in a system that actively punishes care and rewards revenue. Burnout is rampant, and patients can become “billable units.”

Sickness Is Profitable. Health Is Not.

The most damning truth, as I see it, is that a healthy population is bad for business.

Think about it:

• Prevention is not profitable. It doesn’t require pills or long-term care.
• Holistic wellness—good nutrition, exercise, mental health—doesn’t enrich corporations.
• Community-based care threatens centralised, high-cost systems.

So what happens? Junk food is subsidised while whole food is expensive. Preventive care is underfunded while emergency rooms are overflowing. We are encouraged to manage symptoms rather than curing the root causes.

When a single corporate “person” is allowed to sell the junk food that makes you sick, the drug that manages your sickness, and the insurance that denies your coverage, you get a vertically integrated system of suffering. And every part of it is legally protected.

How Corporate Personhood Enables This

A human doctor who consistently harmed patients would lose their license. A CEO who knowingly caused mass suffering might be prosecuted. But a corporation?

• It cannot be jailed.
• It cannot feel empathy.
• It cannot be shamed.

Corporate personhood provides the legal cover for this entire structure. It shields executives, sanitises exploitation, and turns every public health crisis into a business opportunity.

What Real Health Care Could Look Like

I imagine a system where:

• Health is considered a public good, not a private investment.
• People, not corporations, shape medical priorities.
• The profit motive is removed from basic care, pharmaceuticals, and insurance.
• Prevention, nutrition, and mental health are fully integrated and accessible.

This isn’t a fantasy. Countries that treat health as a right already achieve better outcomes at lower costs. But we won’t get there by regulating around the edges. We need to go to the root of the problem. And to me, that root is corporate personhood.

Conclusion: The Patient Will Never Recover Until the System Is Changed

There is no fixing healthcare without confronting the corporate logic that governs it. As long as corporations are legally considered people, with political power and profit obligations, our sickness will continue to be their business model.

The system isn’t broken; it’s working exactly as it was designed.

So we have to ask ourselves: should something without a body have control over ours? Should something that cannot bleed decide who gets to live?

If we want to live in a society that values health over profit and people over artificial persons, we must “kill the corporation”—before it finishes killing us.