Now that a few Dems in the US Senate have caved to the FPA (the Fascist Party of America, once called the Republican Party) about saving the ACA (it’s weird that politicos from that FPA hate the ACA so much when most of their constituents in their red states love it…and need it!), it might be the time to once again discuss the lamentable status of US healthcare that will continue to drag down the American economy if it isn’t fixed.
There have always been two major problems US healthcare reform faces: Ever since tricky Dicky Nixon’s days spent scheming with the Kaiser Permanente CEO on how to exploit American consumers, and even before, US healthcare has been a system for profit, not a service: Medical schools limit their number of grads so physicians can maximize what they charge (law of supply and demand—minimize the supply to increase the demand!); clinics and hospitals overcharge for everything from aspirins to heart surgeries, passing on what insurance companies don’t or won’t pay for to patients (who, all too often, are bankrupted by the exorbitant remaining costs); and those same insurance companies try to guarantee that there are more healthy people than sick ones in their pools they can rip off so they can make money while insuring everyone (they just raise premiums if there aren’t, of course). In other words, healthcare in America is generally an example of exploitative capitalism at its worse!
The second problem seems simpler to solve but is actually more difficult: Politicians are just too damn lazy and stupid to wade through the many abusive negative details besotting American consumers’ healthcare to find reasonable and positive solutions. The ACA (aka Obamacare) was more like a patch put on a bald old tire; it depended on insurance pools and some cost controls (both attacked by American fascists, who have whittled away at the ACA because they couldn’t get rid of it all at once), but it wasn’t Medicare for All. (Medicare is just a bigger patch, of course, or maybe a retread that’s no fix either, but it’s the best we can now offer to seniors: Most people over sixty-five have health problems, so the idea of an insurance pool isn’t even that appropriate!) Moreover, politicians aren’t too damn lazy and stupid when it comes to enriching themselves by heeding lobbyists who try to make sure that the insurance companies, the drug companies, and networks of hospitals and doctors can continue to rip off the American public.
These two major problems of US healthcare are connected, of course. How do we solve them? In theory, it’s not hard: First, remove politicians from the game; they’re completely useless for solving most serious problems, but especially something as complex as healthcare. Second, make healthcare a basic service, not something to enrich some people and organizations at the expense of other people’s suffering. The fascists will never want these solutions, of course; the privileges of the rich and powerful must be maintained even if people are dying! Most Dem politicians don’t want to consider them either (so their caving wasn’t surprising?); “oh my,” too many pols say, “aren’t government services just communism?”
But if something isn’t done to solve these two problems associated with US healthcare, there’ll be even more hell to pay! People who are dying can react, rebel, and support a social revolution…maybe by violently attacking insurers, doctors, and medical institutions’ personnel and justly turning them also into patients in need of a good health service? (Violence is always a possible solution—probably not a very civilized one, but people often get desperate!)
We can offer government-sponsored transportation services—buses, subways, and trains at the federal, state, and local levels—and they all solve some complex problems we continue to attack bit by bit. The same goes for hunger and homelessness. (Trump and other fascists hate such social services because they think they should only be for the fascist-blessed elites!) Why can’t we offer reasonably satisfactory healthcare services? Medicare isn’t perfect, but it’s an important part of the solution. Why can’t we use Medicare as a model to create a Medicare for All?
Let the nation’s rich bastards like Trump and his fellow fascists have their expensive private healthcare plans! They offer often unnecessary frills beyond basic healthcare. (Gold toilets in private hospitals’ one-patient suites? Watch out for the Top Secret documents that will be flushed down them!) The average joe will get along just fine without all those frills. They do that in the UK, where the NHS there does an acceptable job without the frills; most European countries have similar basic healthcare systems. (This belies Bill Maher’s erroneous belief that socialism never works! There’s a time and place for it, and it must be controlled!) Those countries also control the cost of drugs, exams, hospitals, and physicians far better than we do in the US. Call it socialized medicine if you want, but it’s the reasonable way to do things to solve the two problems I’ve analyzed here. Hell, if you have a better way, state it publicly; let’s debate it! Just don’t waste your time talking about it with your doctor, other hospital staff, or local politicians, who all have the profit motive driving their own choices!
Let’s have a true healthcare revolution in this country! It’s time for one!