A new Gallup poll found that Americans now have the lowest-ever views of the U.S. health system

[markodochartaigh]

56. There certainly is excellent medical care in the US.

But the quality varies very widely and I see, and hear about, things today which would never have happened when I first became a registered nurse forty years ago. My sister is a nurse practitioner and her husband a nurse anesthetist and his niece is a registered nurse.

This is all anecdotal from Texas, Florida, and California, but the levels of competence and care seem to have slidden precipitously, especially in the last two decades. I think that it is obvious to most people on the patient care side of the system that the MBA's who see health care as just another way to extract wealth from clients, and who believe that "if you can run a McDonald's, you can run a hospital" are a cancer in the system. But the general low-level management of hospitals seems to have much lower levels of competence than a few decades ago.