Going to Hell in a Handbasket — Is U.S. Healthcare Too Broken to Fix?

Health Insurance

How does the exceptional nation stack up to the rest of the developed world? Ask young American men, who for the last thirty years have the lowest chance in the developed world of surviving to age 50 or the infants who have the best chance of dying before age 5. Americans have the exceptional opportunity to die more often than people in other developed countries from heart or lung disease, obesity or diabetes. Isn’t it time to point the finger of blame where it belongs —at the heart of a corporate scam to make as much money as possible while ordinary Americans pay the price in untreated illness and premature death. Time to start fighting for single payer universal healthcare in a country that has the highest rate of women dying from complications of pregnancy and childbirth, workers paying 12% of their earnings to get poor-quality health insurance that comes with unaffordable premiums, deductibles, and co-pays, where medical errors, the third leading cause of death in the U.S., kill over 250,000 people every year. A country where suicide is the second leading cause of death among children 10-18, where 20% of the people cannot pay their monthly bills. Are we talking about some banana republic in South America, or maybe one of the poorest countries in the world in Sub-Sahara Africa like Guinea or Mali where average life expectancy is around 60? If that’s what you think, you’re in for a big surprise, read “Going to Hell in a Handbasket — Is U.S. Healthcare Too Broken to Fix?

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Putting Patients Last: The Corporate Capture of Doctors

Corporate-Healthcare

U.S. healthcare has become a free market nightmare. Corporate medical practices limit patient visits to eleven minutes, their doctors sell expensive and mostly unnecessary procedures and treatments to frightened patients. Half of Americans take at least one prescription drug adding to the already bloated profits of big Pharma. A healthcare system in crisis— medical errors the third leading cause of death in the U.S., highest maternal death rate in the developed world, and life expectancy dropping for two straight years. U.S. healthcare is also the most expensive in the world at $3.65 trillion and ranks last among the world’s developed nations in most outcomes. In “Putting Patients Last: The Corporate Capture of Doctors” we report on the newest attacks on patient choice and access as huge medical practices become monopolies, swallowing up sole practitioners and delivering substandard care to millions of Americans.

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Getting Away with Murder: Big Pharma’s Chickens are Coming Home to Roost

Sackler Empire

Now you see it, now you don’t. Which cup is the pea under? It’s a sucker’s game and America’s giant corporations have been playing the American people for decades. When exposure of their dirty dealings is imminent, there’s always a charity willing to perform cosmetic surgery for the right price. The drug companies have always been hugely successful at using philanthropy to hide their criminal behavior. The Sackler family, owners of the now-infamous Purdue Pharma which is internationally reviled for its killer drug OxyContin, has thrown money at such distinguished charities as Harvard, Columbia, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian. While the right hand is doling out the goodies, the left is producing a highly addictive opioid that currently has 200,000 victims and makes life miserable for hundreds of thousands more. Serial murderers to the core, are the Sacklers spending the rest of their lives in the slammer? Not exactly. Their sins have made them the nineteenth richest family in the U.S. with a fortune of $13 billion. While drug companies distract you with their “good works,” the pea is hidden under the cup labeled profits. Meanwhile the body count keeps rising. SA takes the gloves off in “Getting Away with Murder: Big Pharma’s Chickens are coming home to Roost.

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