I write as a retired public sector and non-profit health care lawyer and can confirm that, like so many other professional and business sectors in our country, outsized corporatization badly distorts incentives, skewing against what is in the public good. While I don’t at all like that system, I do appreciate those pro bono efforts that …
I write as a retired public sector and non-profit health care lawyer and can confirm that, like so many other professional and business sectors in our country, outsized corporatization badly distorts incentives, skewing against what is in the public good. While I don’t at all like that system, I do appreciate those pro bono efforts that really do work for the good. Reading this brought to mind a young Black man who came up from the working class, was able to get into Harvard, then went to a large firm as he felt, and I think rightly, that he needed to learn how that part of the world worked. While there, he took on a number of pro bono cases, including a client who had been unfairly sentenced to life as a young teenager. He went on to become the first Black Congressperson in the overwhelmingly white swing district where I lived at the time, ousting his terrible predecessor. I do not mean to say by this that our legal “system” overall, as with our health care “system” and so many more, work as they should, but only that, while definitely not so in terms of what is discussed here, pro bono work can and does do good.
BTW, on the subject of corporatization or business and how it skews incentives (to put it mildly), anyone interested in how this plays out in the health care industry generally might appreciate this in-depth look at United Health Care. https://prospect.org/health/2023-08-02-health-cares-intertwined-colossus/ more directly relevant to our issues here, I am also eager for Gerald Posner to report out further on his investigation of Big Pharma incentivizing promotion of puberty blockers. Here’s a fascinating bit of what he’s uncovered so far: https://twitter.com/geraldposner/status/1685706608729280514
I write as a retired public sector and non-profit health care lawyer and can confirm that, like so many other professional and business sectors in our country, outsized corporatization badly distorts incentives, skewing against what is in the public good. While I don’t at all like that system, I do appreciate those pro bono efforts that really do work for the good. Reading this brought to mind a young Black man who came up from the working class, was able to get into Harvard, then went to a large firm as he felt, and I think rightly, that he needed to learn how that part of the world worked. While there, he took on a number of pro bono cases, including a client who had been unfairly sentenced to life as a young teenager. He went on to become the first Black Congressperson in the overwhelmingly white swing district where I lived at the time, ousting his terrible predecessor. I do not mean to say by this that our legal “system” overall, as with our health care “system” and so many more, work as they should, but only that, while definitely not so in terms of what is discussed here, pro bono work can and does do good.
BTW, on the subject of corporatization or business and how it skews incentives (to put it mildly), anyone interested in how this plays out in the health care industry generally might appreciate this in-depth look at United Health Care. https://prospect.org/health/2023-08-02-health-cares-intertwined-colossus/ more directly relevant to our issues here, I am also eager for Gerald Posner to report out further on his investigation of Big Pharma incentivizing promotion of puberty blockers. Here’s a fascinating bit of what he’s uncovered so far: https://twitter.com/geraldposner/status/1685706608729280514