Updated by: June 5, 2026
The Broken Symbol
In 1902 a US Army officer made a mistake.
He was looking at a medical textbook and saw a symbol, a winged staff with two serpents coiled around it. He assumed it was a medical symbol and proposed it as the insignia for the US Army Medical Corps.
It wasn’t a medical symbol. It was the caduceus, the staff of Mercury, Roman god of commerce, travelers and thieves.
The correct symbol of medicine is the Rod of Asclepius, a single serpent, no wings, no commerce. It has been used by physicians since antiquity. The World Health Organization uses it. Most of the developed world uses it correctly.
America largely doesn’t.
Today the caduceus appears on the insignia of the US Army Medical Department, the Office of the Surgeon General and the US Public Health Service. A survey of US healthcare logos found that 76% of commercial healthcare organizations use the caduceus. The people focused on healing tend to use the correct symbol. The people focused on commerce tend to use Mercury’s staff.
The numbers tell the story. The US has the lowest life expectancy among comparable wealthy nations while spending nearly twice as much per person on healthcare. Total US healthcare spending is projected to reach $5.56 trillion in 2026, approximately 18% of the entire US economy. Despite that extraordinary spending, the US remains the only high-income country where a substantial portion of the population has no health insurance at all.
More money. Worse outcomes. Millions uninsured.
So, hundreds of thousands of Americans now do what Mercury would do. They travel. To Mexico, Thailand, India, Costa Rica, Hungary. A hip replacement costs $40,000 in the US. The same procedure in Thailand costs around $12,000 with comparable quality outcomes. Dental work, cardiac surgery, cancer treatment, fertility treatment, all significantly cheaper abroad, in countries that largely use the correct healing symbol.
The god of commerce built a system so expensive that his other domain, travel, has become the solution.
The next time you see a caduceus on a hospital, a pharmaceutical company or a health insurance provider, you’ll know whose symbol it actually is.
Paul Mercuri
Wake Up Here Founder
