The Road to National Healthcare Turns Out to be a Dead End

For Profit Healthcare

The United States is one of only two countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (highly industrialized advanced economies) that does not offer universal healthcare. The fallout from this omission is grave and costly. Ever wonder why the U.S. with only 5% of the world’s population has the highest number of both COVID cases and deaths? Start with the 89 million Americans who were under or uninsured as the pandemic hit. Add in the fact that one-third of COVID deaths (330,000) could be traced to the lack of health insurance and what you wind up with is a dysfunctional system that is the real threat to U.S. national security. With so many Americans sick and dying in a country without a robust universal healthcare system, how can anyone ever feel really safe? Shocking to think that the U.S. spends almost twice as much as its nearest competitor on healthcare ($4.1. trillion or almost 20% of GDP in 2019) yet the life expectancy of its people has declined 2% from 78.9 years in 2019 to 76.6 in 2021. Better to move to Sweden or Denmark and expect to live to 83. Even America’s BFF, the UK has a life expectancy of 81years. Want to know more about the difference in healthcare in America and the rest of the developed world and how it affects our calamitous COVID experience? Check out “The Road to National Healthcare Turns Out to be a Dead End.

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A Marriage Made in Hell — Joe Biden and the Medical Industrial Complex

NO MFA

How’s this for a healthcare system to be proud of? The most expensive in the world yet with the lowest life expectancy and highest suicide rates among the top eleven economically advanced nations. The U.S. is number one in the prevalence of chronic diseases and in a shockingly high obesity rate. Yet the former vice-president and probable next president Joe Biden thinks that Obama’s refashioning of the U.S. healthcare system popularly known as Obamacare is “the crown jewel of the Obama administration.” Written by a bunch of health insurance hacks and borrowing liberally from the brain child of a conservative think tank, Obamacare is an expensive mess. Even after it was passed, 29 million were still uninsured and another 38 million underinsured. The pandemic has made matters worse hiking the number of uninsured to over 45 million. Not letting the desperate plight of many Americans get in the way of cold, hard donor cash, Biden dismisses a national single payer healthcare system. In fact, Biden has promised all his major donors that “nothing would change” in his administration. In grateful thanks, the pharmaceutical industry stuffed his campaign stocking with over $7 million. As the dreary statistics on the inadequacies of U.S. healthcare continue to bedevil, we wonder why that $3.65 trillion the U.S. spent in 2019 on healthcare isn’t saving more lives. With billions going into the pockets of predator investors who own 70% of nursing homes, 25% of hospitals, 47% of doctors’ practices and 45% of emergency departments, there is precious little left to make Americans healthier. U.S. medical care has become a push for immense profits at the expense of people’s lives and well-being. What will President Biden do to remedy the situation? Read “A Marriage Made In Hell — Joe Biden and the Medical Industrial Complex” and weep.

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What They Won’t Tell You About the U.S. Pandemic

Greed

The cacophony of voices and heavy breathing coming from the corporate media are the latest con — trying to convince you that the U.S. catastrophic response to the pandemic is the fault of one man — President Donald Trump. The movers and shakers including the five billionaires who own the lion’s share of U.S. media don’t want you to know the truth: that unlike every other developed nation in the world, the U.S. does not consider healthcare a human right but another way to make billionaires and their corporations richer. It’s been that way for decades. The evidence is glaring —the worst healthcare statistics in the world, Americans dying earlier than people in much of Europe, Asia, and even South America. With the advent of the pandemic, things have gone from bad to catastrophic. The U.S is number one in COVID cases and deaths — barred from entering almost every country in the world and facing dire economic consequences (12 million people were unable to pay their rent in July and August). No, it’s not just one man, it’s a whole corrupt system. Check out “What They Won’t Tell You about the U.S. Pandemic” and put the peoples’ revolution at the top of your to-do list.

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Worried About the Supreme Court Making Abortion Illegal? For 15 Million Women It Already Is.

All hell has broken loose and the keepers of the pro-choice flame are outraged. With the retirement of Justice Kennedy, who hot-footed over to the White House to say his adieus personally, President Trump has plenty of time to appoint a rock-ribbed conservative pro-lifer (no more of this “swing” vote nonsense) and get his choice confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate. You know the kind he’s looking for— a wingnut determined to come between women and their uteruses.

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Guess Who Wants to Get Their Hands on your DNA? With the Help of the Supreme Court, They May Succeed

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…not so fast. The first shoe dropped when profit-making companies assailed our eardrums and our intellect to convince us that handing them our DNA for permanent inclusion on their DNA database was a dandy idea. We shredded that hokum in “Hijacking Your DNA – It Could Cost You Your Freedom”. As we pointed out, the two most disastrous consequences of paying one of these outfits to “unlock the secrets of your DNA” — your DNA becomes permanently ensconced on their DNA database giving them co-ownership of what makes you tick and once you surrender your DNA, it might (without your permission or knowledge) be accessed by the long arm of the 17 intelligence agencies that undergird the surveillance state.

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How $6.13 Billion is Turning Healthy Americans Into Patients While Drug Companies are Rolling in Dough

“Abdominal discomfort or pain? Bloating? Constipation? It’s time to Talk to Your Doctor About IBS”
—Novartis Ad

Once upon a time, a rich and greedy captain of industry who headed one of the largest drug companies in the U.S. bemoaned the fact that he was forced to sell his drugs only to sick people, a very small share of the consumer market. What he yearned to do was to sell his potions to everyone, increasing the market for his drugs to infinity.

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America Misses the Boat Again and Again… Universal Healthcare Out of Sight Out of Mind

Remember the halcyon days of 2009 as the echoes of “change we can believe in” and “yes we can” hadn’t yet succumbed to dashed hopes and dying dreams. America had cut the cord of centuries of racial bias and elected a black man president. Dreams of My Father, Obama’s opus, reinvigorated our belief in the myth of a chosen people.

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Right to Try or Right to Die?

“We also believe that patients with terminal conditions should have access to experimental treatments that could potentially save their lives.

People who are terminally ill should not have to go from country to country to seek a cure — I want to give them a chance right here at home. It is time for the Congress to give these wonderful Americans the “right to try.”
– President Donald Trump State of the Union Address 1/30/2018

Not so fast Mr. President. In fact, almost unanimously critics of “Right to Try (RTT) legislation dismiss it as a feel good proposition with disastrous consequences. As one medical ethicist noted “The public has no idea that this is not a good thing. They know nothing about the bill except that the right-to-try sounds like a good thing.” A good thing maybe for the 1% but for desperate, terminally patients the devil is in the details.

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Right to Try or Right to Die? Hijacking the FDA For Fun and Profit

“… false hope legislation [Right to Try Laws] … put countless patients at risk by dramatically undermining the FDA’s role in ensuring that medical products are safe and effective before they become widely used.” (Public Citizen)     Sadly, It’s time for our umpty-umpth article on that serial offender —the health care industry – a […]

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