The Debacle of U.S. Healthcare

Well, gee, that was easy. Not.

Our ‘leaders’ spent over a year shoveling a big piece of crap together that’s supposed to bring dramatic improvement to our healthcare system. Pardon my suspicion, I haven’t read it, but I’m still convinced it’s a big turd. Why? Because the profit motive has no place in maintaining and augmenting human health. Jesus made the comment that ‘no man can serve two masters’, and these companies, literally a cartel, are uninterested in making us, the citizens of the United States, their master.

Universal Healthcare, or Medicare for All, was never seriously discussed. A public option got some modicum of discussion, but was quickly thrown under the bus. A ‘secret deal’ was negotiated with Big Pharma to keep foreign drugs illegal to purchase. The Healthcare Cartel maintains what is literally an anti-trust exemption status. And now the 30 million or so who don’t have healthcare but can likely afford it are being forced to pay the cartel or face a fine. And the other 15 or 20 million who can’t afford it? Well, they may get a new clinic in town to keep them away from emergency rooms.

This debate inevitably turns to taxation, a paying for healthcare, personally and as  a country, is a huge deal. Many folks don’t care for big government, and many folks feel that healthcare is a human right. How are such dillemas resolved?

For starters, let’s stop thinking in terms of whether big or small government is better. One can easily argue either side, but we miss the greater point. It’s not so much about bigger or smaller, as it is about ROI, return on investment.

For me the massive amounts of tax money that go to keeping military bases in some 200 countries is bad for ROI. Fighting in Iraq and Afganistan is bad for ROI. Private military contractors like the Halliburton and Blackwater are bad for ROI. The classic argument for militarism, ‘keeping us safe’, is a big crock of shit [not unlike our healthcare system]. The government will always insist on finding bogeymen [formerly the Soviet Union, now Terrorism, maybe China next?] because that’s how spending trillions on war and armaments is justified. Bad ROI, and lots of dead people to go with it.

So we find, in the end, that it’s the same old story. Our government does not serve us. Our representatives represent the never-ending war machine, heartless money barons and  the Healthcare Cartel. And we will continue to get crap until we throw the bums who enable such garbage out.