The Healthcare Heist: How Physicians and Patients Can Unite to Transform Healthcare
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Discover the Revolution That Will Transform American Healthcare
What if the battle for healthcare reform has been misdirected all along? What if doctors and patients aren’t adversaries, but allies fighting a common enemy?
In The Healthcare Heist, hospice physician and award-winning podcaster Jordan Grumet, MD, exposes the uncomfortable truth: America’s healthcare crisis isn’t caused by doctors or patients — it’s engineered by the third parties who profit from keeping them divided. From insurance companies denying life-saving treatments to pharmaceutical giants charging $3,000 for medications that cost pennies to produce, from venture capitalists buying up medical practices to government regulations that force doctors to stare at screens instead of patients, the system has been hijacked by entities that provide no care yet extract maximum profit.
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Through compelling real-world stories — an Olympic gold medalist forced to crowdfund her medical bills, a grieving widower unable to access mental healthcare, a young physician whose career ends with a frivolous lawsuit — Grumet reveals how corporate greed, regulatory overreach, and malpractice exploitation have created an “intimacy gap” that threatens the sacred doctor–patient relationship.
But this isn’t just another book lamenting healthcare’s problems. Grumet offers a revolutionary solution: shared storytelling as the bridge to unity and change. When doctors share their trauma, burnout, and struggles, and when patients understand the forces working against their caregivers, a powerful alliance emerges — one capable of reclaiming healthcare from those who have stolen it.
Part exposé, part call to arms, part healing manifesto, The Healthcare Heist is essential reading for:
Patients frustrated by insurance denials, astronomical bills, and rushed appointments Healthcare providers suffering from burnout and moral injury Anyone who believes healthcare should serve people, not profits Leaders and policymakers seeking genuine solutions to the healthcare crisisIn These Pages, You Will Discover:
How third parties exploit both physicians and patients for billions in profit Why the “doctor as enemy” narrative serves corporate interests The real reasons behind physician burnout and patient dissatisfaction How electronic medical records enrich tech companies while hampering care Why the malpractice system protects lawyers more than patients The power of storytelling to bridge the intimacy gap and spark revolutionThe Healthcare Heist combines rigorous analysis with deeply human stories, offering both diagnosis and cure for America’s ailing healthcare system. Grumet writes with the authority of a practicing physician, the insight of a financial expert, and the heart of a storyteller who understands that genuine change requires not just policy reforms, but a fundamental reimagining of the doctor–patient relationship.
This is your invitation to join the revolution. Because the healthcare system won’t fix itself — but together, we can transform it.
About the author
Jordan Grumet, MD
Jordan Grumet, MD, is a practicing hospice physician, award-winning podcaster, and author who brings a unique dual perspective to healthcare and personal finance. Born in Evanston, Illinois, in 1973, Grumet was inspired to pursue medicine following the unexpected death of his father, an oncologist — a loss that profoundly shaped his understanding of both healing and financial security.
After earning his medical degree from Northwestern University, Grumet practiced internal medicine in Northbrook, Illinois, for over two decades before transitioning to hospice care, where he currently serves as associate medical director at Unity Hospice. His experiences at the intersection of medicine and finance have given him unparalleled insight into the systemic forces affecting both patients and providers.
Grumet is the creator and host of the Earn & Invest podcast, which launched in 2018 and earned the prestigious Plutus Award for Best New Personal Finance Podcast in 2019, with consecutive nominations in 2020 and 2021. His writing explores the profound connections between financial independence, wellness, and living a meaningful life through his blog In My Humble Opinion and his work on financial independence at DiverseFI.
He is the author of Taking Stock: A Hospice Doctor’s Advice on Financial Independence, Building Wealth, and Living a Regret-Free Life (Ulysses Press, 2022) and The Purpose Code (Harriman House Press, January 2025). Through his books, podcasts, and storytelling, Grumet has built a passionate following among those seeking to integrate medical wisdom with financial freedom and purposeful living.
Grumet’s work has been featured across multiple platforms, including Substack, Instagram, X, Facebook, and LinkedIn, where he continues to share insights that bridge the worlds of medicine, finance, and personal fulfillment. The Healthcare Heist represents his most ambitious and urgent work yet — a call to revolution that draws on decades of frontline medical experience and his commitment to authentic storytelling as a catalyst for change.
Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part One: When Patients Become Customers
- Is Your Doctor Your Frenemy? (The Patient’s View)
- When All Else Fails, Blame the Doctor
- Big Insurance Means Big Money
- Big Pharma, Big Drama
- Are Doctors Overpaid?
- Is The Slice of Pie Large Enough?
- What Happens When Trust Is Lost?
- Does a Spoonful of Sugar Really Help the Medicine Go Down?
- The Research and Development Myth
- The Rising Profitability of Pharmaceutical Companies
- Toward Building a Better System
- How Sure Are You About Insurance?
- Health Insurance: A Massive Wealth Transfer
- Toward Building a Better System
- Is Healthcare Any of Your Business?
- Standards of Care
- The Corporate Takeover
- Higher Costs, Worse Care
- Why Physicians Are Selling Out
- How Private Equity Gets Around Compliance
- Are Doctors to Blame?
- Toward Building a Better System
- Part Two: How Your Doctor Became a Pawn
- Your Doctor Is Also Struggling (The Doctor’s View)
- Questionable Competence
- Limited Access to Care
- Incentives
- Physician Burnout
- Who Defines the Standard of Care? (Competence)
- Francine’s Story
- A Promise to Myself
- The Spoils of War
- The Culpability Myth
- Who Are the Winners
- The Bonds of Allyship
- Toward Building a Better System
- Are We Beholden to Our Electronic Mistresses? (Access)
- A Brief History of Electronic Medical Records
- The Government Steps In
- What Is the Return on Investment?
- Why We Haven’t Invested Wisely
- The Big Business of Electronic Health Records
- Toward Building a Better System
- Have We Been Legislated Out? (Incentives)
- The False Claims Act
- The Anti-Kickback Statute
- Stark Laws
- Overreaching State Laws That Dictate Practice
- I Was Legislated Out
- Toward Building a Better System
- Part Three: Toward Building a Better System
- The Intimacy Gap
- The Hand Holder
- A Judicious Measure of Obtuseness
- The Decline of Primary Care
- House Calls
- The Digital Disconnect
- Distance versus Detachment
- Empathy Is a Precursor to Intimacy
- Stories Bridge the Intimacy Gap
- The Magic of Shared Storytelling
- The Day Medicine Broke My Chief
- Storytelling and Post-Traumatic Stress
- The Empathy Gap
- Allyship Redefined
- Ten Ways Physicians Share Patient-Centered Stories
- How To Share Our Stories in Real Time
- Hidden Depths
- Narrative Nuance
- Physician Storytellers Through the Ages
- Best Practices for Medical Storytelling
- How Stories Become Reality: Transforming Our Healthcare System
- A Universally Beloved Doctor
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
- Being Mortal
- Rebel Health
- In My Humble Opinion
- Lipstick on a Pig
- The Revolution Starts Now
- Imagine If You Can
- Glossary
- Some Contemporary Physician Writers and a Few of Their Notable Titles
- References
Words of praise
Patients and doctors are the only ones who really have the ability and the incentive to fix our broken healthcare system. They can no longer neglect their massive power to effect change in the system. Dr. Grumet has defined their opponents in this battle for their money and their very lives. Now it’s time for them to use every tool in the arsenal to take back control, including shared storytelling.
As a veteran ER Physician of ‘The Pitt,’ I have seen the once-sacred physician–patient relationship become sadly fractured and transactional. In corporate, ‘bottom line’ medicine and volume-based healthcare, doctors are interchangeable providers and patients are customers on an assembly line. In The Healthcare Heist, Dr. Grumet unleashes the power of shared storytelling to restore humanity to healthcare. This book hits Goliath right between the eyes.
As a physician who has served on the literal front lines of combat, I know that true resilience requires trust, unity, and an unwavering commitment to the mission. The Healthcare Heist brilliantly exposes how corporate profiteers have intentionally fractured the alliance between doctors and patients, leaving our medical system’s foot soldiers defenseless. Dr. Grumet offers a powerful, actionable strategy to rebuild this broken infrastructure and reclaim medicine through shared storytelling and mutual empathy.
This book captures the exact ethos we champion every day on the KevinMD blog: the necessity of the physician’s voice. Dr. Grumet eloquently proves that when doctors have the courage to share their vulnerability and their struggles, they can inspire a grassroots revolution to save American healthcare.
Jordan Grumet does what the best physician authors do: He uses his own story to tell a much bigger one. The Healthcare Heist is part memoir, part indispensable primer on a system that has lost sight of patients, health, and the people delivering care, including doctors. Grumet names the dysfunction and points the reader toward something better.
