By Renee Kohanski, M.D.
Psychiatrist
The horrific murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson at the hands of Luigi Mangione at the end of 2024 was a wake-up call for the talk media industry.
There is widespread deep and growing distress in America over our devolving health care system and it is manifesting national RAGE. Regardless, neither the conversation sparked by the 2024 election nor talk radio and its related media platforms that same year gave the situation its due.
As a working member of both the health care (practicing physician) and talk media (podcaster and guest) communities, I say it is time that we approach this subject with the focus and urgency it demands.
Hippocrates says First Do No Harm. There is something horribly wrong in the areas of medicine in general, psychiatry in particular, and man versus man at large. This emerges in the bigger picture of a devolving society that can no longer articulate even its basic core values.
In medicine and psychiatry (for starters), we have shifted the individual’s experience as a respected and valued patient to a worthless cog in a faceless, monstrosity machine. We have morphed from a field of involved healthcare professionals to corporate drones in a healthcare system. Our family physician, who smacked our behinds to get us breathing as we entered the world, is now some nine-to-fiver who may or may not remember to run a stethoscope across our chest to hear a heart sound. Don’t forget your prescriptions on the way out the door at the end of your six-minute visit and remember to dial 911 or go to your nearest emergency room if you have a true emergency.
Twisted sociological fallout: In our unabashed ignorance, a disturbingly significant segment of the population has the gall to the think some head of a major insurance company is to blame for all this or that a cold-blooded killer, who may possibly also be suffering from a major mental illness, could – in some alternate universe – be a hero. Let’s all wake up and stop pretending this is normal or okay.
Mind you, it’s not that it’s all doom and gloom, but there’s no denying the radical shift in the entire construct of the rapidly disappearing patient-doctor relationship. We are now part of a Borg-like amorphous healthcare system that doesn’t necessarily think the needs of its individual patients are paramount.
Communcations prescription: In the talk media space, we must address the public’s spiraling rage over this brewing infection by increasing the dose of conversation and enlightening information so evidently needed. We missed that opportunity in 2024.
Renee Kohanski, M.D. is a practicing general and forensic psychiatrist in New Jersey and Connecticut. She is a Diplomate of the American Board of Physicians and Surgeons, the National Board of Physicians and Surgeons, and serves as a Director for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. She is a longtime talk media expert guest, and her medical podcasts are available on Spotify. To contact Dr. Kohanski or arrange for her to appear as a guest, she can be reached via email at wellness@rkdoctor.com.