Four years of med school, overruled by a rubber stamp.
A doctor holds a chest x-ray. You can see ribs, lungs, a whole human being on that film. Behind him a suit is pressing a red rubber stamp into it: NOT MEDICALLY NECESSARY. The suit hasn’t glanced at the film once. The stamp already says what it’s going to say, and it was going to say that before the patient walked in. Insurance as a system where the person making the call has the least medical training in the room, a stamp that has never once said yes, and a doctor whose face looks like he stopped arguing about it three years ago.