-Revised 2-5-2019
President Obama said when he ran for office that everyone would have access to affordable health care. Now, not half way into the Trump presidency, we have something quite different, namely a “mandatory health insurance” plan. Through it all we remain one of only about thirty countries in the world without total health coverage from birth, spend more on health care than any country in the world, and rank, so far as medical success goes, somewhere in the middle of the pack.
What does this all mean? Clearly, this means that the insurance companies and the chairmen of the boards of the major hospitals and HMOs have lobbies stronger than our will–and our good old common sense. Nobody discussing the issue seems to want to admit that in order to solve the problem two things must be done. First, we need to get rid of insurance’s involvement, and second, we need price controls on prescription drugs and medical services. As it stands we remain slaves to an unnecessary middle man, the insurance industry. So far, in the battle between human health and profiteering, insurance and the other moneymakers and “capitalists” are winning, and winning big .
Instead of controlling prices in the pharmaceutical industry and for medical services we get higher costs, shoddier service, and we wait just as long as those who get medical care for free. Rather than simplify the process, and make medicine more about healing again than about who will be paying and how, and rather than making people feel secure and fit and able to work, and giving them a peace of mind knowing their savings will be free from the ravages of the slightest medical emergency, instead we compound the problem. It is like trying to put out a fire by throwing gasoline on it.
Insurance was the problem in the first place and it remains the primary obstacle to universal health care. Do we need this middle man? Let’s be clear and honest first of all: medicine is an unfair business. For the most part doctors and hospitals need not compete and advertise for business. Nobody wants to use the services, they do because they have to. Shopping for medicine and medical treatment is not like buying a car or a house, or even a candy bar, as those in the health business do not have to prove the value of their products and services, they do not need to advertise and compete to earn your dollar. Medical professions and their vendors and managers rake it in even when times are tough. In fact, during depressions, recessions, and such similar hard financial times, their business increases. While nearly every other enterprise scrounges for dollars during these competitive days, the income of the new Medical-Industrial Complex thrives even further, courtesy of the stress-induced and related types of new illnesses.
The ideal way to begin a new system would be to impose some sort of price controls on pharmaceuticals and services, and to make it so that the working family could afford to pay for its illnesses with cash like they do every other bill; as is, and much attributable to the combination of insurance paying and monopolies within the industry, the prices that have skyrocketed out of hand. This increase pertains to not just the cost of a routine doctor visit, the least of the problem, but moreso the cost of using machines, staying in a hospital, all the vendors and suppliers used by doctors and treatment centers, and those related procedures and tests that are indispensable to many diagnoses and treatments. As it stands the way-out-of-line prices are not so much as even scrutinized, and once again the only people who gain through this “new system” we have now are those who are in the medical and insurance businesses.
Where Obama instilled a system playing right into the hands of greedy capitalists, Trump’s position, one which seeks to overturn the mandatory government-subsidied insurance scam, would not be much better, as he also wants to give the prospects of our health care back over to insurance. Nobody seems to understand that without insurance the common man would be unable to pay the extravagant fees and costs charged by medicine. The result of no mandatory insurance to foot the bill would therefore force the industry, like any other business, to have to lower its prices, and actually compete for your patronage, or never get paid at all. As is, instead of ditching the idea of this increasingly more parasitic insurance, a “business” which thrives on fear and misfortune anyway, the monkeys in charge of our lawmaking (and uneducated apes would indeed vote for other monkeys…) are apparently fine with it being constantly jammed into every aspect of our existence.
If I open a candy store and want your business I have to do the little things to keep your business. I have to remember who you, my customers, are; I have to provide you quick and efficient service; I must provide you with good products at a good price, and treat you always with respect. In the medical business, none of this is common nor, apparently, necessary. Service, despite the whining anti-universal health care arguments to the contrary, is some of the slowest in all industries, and ours, in the USA, perhaps the slowest in the world, it being not uncommon for people to wait months for routine procedures. As far as efficiency goes, unnecessary tests and examinations, as well as the shuffling of, and referrals for, patients one doctor to the next, send sick people through mazes and myriads of logistics problems that postpones their actual care and makes them even sicker. We think we have good products, but many are not aware of the monopoly just a few companies have on important drugs, supplies, and procedures and the machines used for them. The simple hospital syringe, the paper shoe covers, the band-aids, are supplied at a 500% profit to its makers because it is not you, but rather the insurance paying for them. Again, sick people do not pick and choose based on the menu prices, they just want to get better, be free of their ailment whatever it takes, and will always go – or be sent – to that clinic closest to them, and regardless of price. Unlike me in my candy store, the hospital can charge what it wants, provide any type of shoddy service, give you any sub-grade technology or procedure and so product, in fact metaphorically can spit in your face and, given another medical emergency, you will return, humbily, ready again to be treated all around like a dog, just to be – healed (sorry).
Wouldn’t it be great if the government required YOUR business be patronized? Could the outlook be more ideal, for any entrepreneur, than to see your product or service be a mandatory purchase for all Americans? Is it conceivable that all of you could be required, made by force of law, to not just have to pay for my candy, but be made to pay for the candy you may some day buy from my shop?
We in America continue to live under the illusion that good health care must be expensive. The origins of such thought, this “get what you pay for” irrational fear and misunderstanding of socialized medicine, comes from a leftover Cold War type of mentality. This is the illusory, one could say inane worldview that there exists clear good guys and bad guys, two separate teams that wear different colors, say red and blue. So we have individually, too many of us, developed an “it’s us versus them” attitude, and these dichotomies, those purely ideological schisms that divide humans like stakes through their collective hearts. Hence communism-capitalism, fascist-communist, democrat-republican, conservative-liberal, nazi-commie…red and blue teams…and each member of each team thinks his the better way, enough to fight for it.
Really, and I have to laugh, we would be fortunate, as it stands these days, if communists even know what it means to be a communist, that is, what a communist really is, as it would be just as great if capitalists knew what capitalism really means, and how to act like a capitalist correctly, and so on. But as it is, too many, continuing with our example, conservatives don’t know they are actually being liberal, and too many alleged capitalists do not even know they are using communist or socialist ideas and principles. Worst of all, perhaps, too many still don’t know, or at least will not admit, their actual beliefs are a mix of liberal and conservative ideals, and many positions other than that which do not have their own flags.
Can anyone show me just one clear doctrinal difference between all democrats and republicans, especially considering the existence of entities such as “conservative democrats” and “progressive republicans”? You cannot, and this is because chances are you have aligned with one or another of these sides, and in fact have been steered to do so by economic and political manipulation. The idea, back in the Cold War, was that the then Soviet Union was “communist”, whereas America was “democratic”. That this is a false dichotomy, and compares a political system with an economic one, is an important fact lost on most, on both sides. Nevertheless, there still exist in America today those of this so-called Cold War Mentality, who see the sane humanitarian idea of universal health care coverage for all as a “Commie idea”, a sure way to ruin our proud and efficiently operating Grand Healing Machine. I am sure you all have heard the stories before – “well we will have to wait in line”, “well nobody will care”, “well people won’t work in the industry anymore”, “well quality will decline” etc. and so on. Truly, I think the next person who I hear arguing against Universal Health Care on such pathetic unsubstantiated and uninformed grounds I might just smack in the face with my one good arm. Good evidence exists to prove that the majority of the rest of the countries in the world, using some sort of price controls and government health care plan, each and all have a higher expected lifespan than us Americans. Look at the numbers where medical care is free for all citizens, see the higher grade of health, healthier populations, and overall happier people.
The best alternative would be an expanding of Medicare into a national health care plan option. Clinics can be set up all over the country, staffed by people working off their college loans. People could be put to work in every town over 5,000 people, and in the end it all would cost less than what it currently costs the American taxpayer. This universal coverage would be combined with price controls on all health-related services. Since, however, all suppliers of medical services, procedures, apparatuses, tests, drugs, and consumables will essentially be selling to one buyer, that being the Department of Health, you would think the resulting competition would in and of itself drive those prices down.
As is, we continue to clearly see who really is in control of things in this country. It is Big Business, a running of things solely by money, without morality. Crybabying and similar lobbying of the billionaires for their business concerns carry more weight, for our “leaders”, than children whose parents cannot afford adequate health care, and who spend more time filling out forms that under the eye of any doctor. Once again, the people of Canada, most of Europe and South America, Mexico, and even the far majority of Asia enjoy medical benefits guaranteed by their governments, which makes them thereby more concerned about their citizens than your government is about you.
Our over-controllers can somehow find money to bail out the biggest crooks of all (banks), and for secret programs, and for non-stop weapons-producing and unnecessary military involvements in lieu of the diplomacy we are expecting and pay for, and for wasting billions yearly on unnecessary wars and war games. They do not hesitate spending now trillions on the search for extraterrestrial life, but somehow cannot find a way to provide mandatory health care for all our citizens.
See the problems here. We Americans pay a lot of taxes. Most of it goes to to one of two areas, either 1) something to do with the national debt, or 2) something to do with the military. Regarding the national debt, my first act would be to cancel any debt incurred in the name of the people of the United States of America, whether this involves a declaration of bankruptcy or not. Think about this carefully: If we as a nation owe money, or anything, to anyone also in this country, then whoever we owe it to is the real ruling power. You vote for a government, you think they are watching out for you. But when they borrow money in your name, without your consent, you see that wherever this money is coming from is who controls the show. Your government is not that which is borrowing the money, it is that which your government is borrowing from, which by logical necessity must be a separate entity. Therefore as a nation you can declare yourself free of such debt, and then, my guess is, you will find out very soon the identity of these real rulers of your land. So, elimination of the debt, and a reserving of the military complex for actual necessary defense, and we have enough money to pay for Universal Health Care plus lots of money to spare, say for maybe a nationwide rail system linking every town willing to build a station, at which we can perhaps employ many now out of work department of defense employees.
I am ashamed that all this time and money has been wasted to merely boost up insurance sales. It has been said that in times of strife, when political systems are corrupt, it is impossible to be both a good man and a good citizen. I must declare, then, that I will not sacrifice being a good man to be this good citizen.
Instead of health care, we are getting mandatory insurance, reasoned like car insurance maybe, necessary for the “privilege of living” rather than driving. We, like fools, think we have a choice between “democrat” and “republican” when really they are THE SAME, something to give us the illusion of a choice. Big Banks and Big Business select and finance both major parties, knowing that whichever side wins, they win.
Don’t believe me? Look up any major business figure, or alternatively, the biggest political donors (you will find them the same people), and see where their campaign money went. And this information is all available in the public records, there is no hiding what they do. If Big Business people blatantly give money to both Trump and Hillary, what does that tell you? It tells me that, for their purposes, either one would do. The people we elect are only puppets, and we attend the wooden show of the ruling puppeteers.
In the words of Jefferson, it is our duty to correct a corrupt and self-serving government, now chock full of silver-spoon people most of whom have no idea what it means to work for a living. This is the new, our new aristocracy, the “New World Order,” no different than the Tories and British Imperialists we jettisoned once already.
Truthopia 