the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
April 20, 2026
Hospitals in Maryland have collected as much as three billion dollars from patients to invest in unregulated, untaxed malpractice insurance funds. State regulators looked the other way for decades but recently proposed to “study” the issue over the next two years.
“Malpractice” is a euphemism for the intolerably high level of avoidable infections and injuries patients suffer in hospitals, mostly because of the dangerous level of understaffing, which worsened with the COVID pandemic. Accidental deaths and injuries of patients in Maryland hospitals tripled from 2019 to 2022 to almost 800 per year. Nationally, almost two million hospital patients become accidentally infected every year. Tens or hundreds of thousands of hospital patients nationwide die by accident each year.
Often these horrors could be avoided simply if staff had enough time between patients to wash their hands, a medical practice known for 150 years. But in recent years, one in four nursing positions has been vacant in a state like Maryland, with serious shortages in other positions like respiratory therapists and laboratory technicians. Swamped with impossible patient loads, corners get cut, and disaster strikes.
Hospitals do not react to this problem by hiring more staff. No, they take the capitalist route of raising prices, to be able to set aside money to pay for lawsuits. But this gives them huge kitties of money to invest, with a steady flow of premiums coming in from patients. And they register these in-house or “captive” insurance plans in … the Cayman Islands, oceans away from regulation and taxation!
Regulated malpractice insurance companies in Maryland report around five percent profit on premiums, and more than 10% return on investments. What higher profits do the unregulated hospital funds make? Only they know, pending the state’s proposed two-year “study!”
In the capitalist system, a hospital is not a building where patients get medical care. No, under capitalism a hospital is a flow of income to be maximized over expenses in order to make more profits. This should not be.