Back in the bad old days of the Big Pharma COVID-19 get rich quick scam, Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart wanted a Covid test. If he weren’t a congressman, he would have had to get a note from his doctor for which he would be billed the equivalent of an office visit, call a testing site to make an appointment, drive to the site and wait in his car for (if he’s lucky) about two hours. Days or weeks later, he would get his results, provided he hadn‘t already died. Diaz-Balart merely walked down the Capitol hallway to a two-room suite of offices with the innocuous title Office of the Attending Physician (OAP). He was waited on immediately, the test was administered and in minutes, he learned he was positive. His total cost? Zero.
[2021 as the Big Pharma-induced COVID frenzy was gathering momentum]
He’s co-chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and a beneficiary of single payer healthcare, two good reasons for Rep. Diaz-Balart to champion Medicare-for-all. Instead, he’s a vocal opponent of what he labels “socialized medicine” (aka Medicare for All) — “The Members of this Conference [Hispanic Caucus] … will not support a bill that is being forced down America’s throat and that will take America down the path to bankruptcy.” You will note there are exceptions to every rule a bloviating congress person lays down. In Diaz-Balart’s case, the exception is — you guessed it — himself and his BFFs.
Rep. Diaz-Balart, along with every member of Congress, is the recipient of single payer government health insurance. Guess what? It’s not socialized medicine when Congress has it. The Office of the Attending Physician (OAP) is a full-blown hospital with branches all over Capitol Hill run by dozens of navy doctors, nurses and technicians. It has been described by a former OAP staffer as “the best healthcare on the planet.”
Not surprisingly Rep Diaz-Balert is not the only member of Congress whose hypocrisy is killing Americans. A far bigger fish, Nancy Pelosi [net worth $248 million] a Democrat who should know better but doesn’t, the first woman speaker of the House and the most powerful woman in the U.S. has a “simple” solution for the millions of Americans whose children don’t have enough to eat, whose bills, including rent, go unpaid, stuck in miles-long lines for free food or stuck in a minimum wage job. It’s not Medicare-for-All. Instead, the Former Speaker and her Republican successor, along with former President Barack Obama are singing the praises of Obamacare (named after its creator) —overpriced crappy health insurance which wouldn’t help them even if they weren’t broke. Average price of an Obamacare plan in 2024? $6,000 per year with deductibles (amount you have to fork over before your insurance kicks in ranging from $5,000-$8,000 per year). Amount each Congress person has to pay for “the best healthcare on the planet?” $648 per year. Zero deductibles. It’s pretty cushy all-inclusive medical care that includes coronavirus testing, flu vaccines, lab work, physicals, Xrays, and referrals to specialists. What’s more for the cheapest members non-payment doesn’t stop them from enjoying the service. Try that one out on your insurance company.
The OAP may be virtually free to members of Congress but someone has to pay the $4.9 million price tag (2025). Look in the mirror. You and every other tax payer is on the hook for the free ride given to Congress.
This year it was of $4.9 million. In 2020 when pandemic hysteria forced country-wide closures, 22.5 million Americans lost their jobs and their healthcare. In response Congress passed the CARES Act, a nothing burger for people who most needed relief but a boon for Congress as they furtively tucked into the budget bill a $400,000 subsidy to OPA.
Members of Congress live on an entirely different planet from the rest of us. The legislators we send to Congress generally wind up as millionaires if they’re not when they get there. The vast majority of both the Senate and House of Representatives has a net worth exceeding $1 million. Only 18% of the 132.6 million American households (2024-25) are worth one million or more. There’s no single payer concierge-level healthcare plan for them.
Typically, politicians do a lot of handwringing when the topic of single payer health insurance is raised as an alternative to employer-provided health insurance — “[with Medicare-for-all] we will no longer have private insurance as we know it. And that means that 149 million Americans will no longer be able to have their current insurance…I think it’s a bad idea.”
What’s so bad about employer-provided healthcare? Almost everything. For openers in a system, unique in the developed world, where healthcare is tied to employment, workers must toe the line or risk not only their jobs but their healthcare. Even with employers paying some of the cost (less each year), health insurance company greed has taken a larger and larger chunk out of workers’ paychecks. Over the last decade, employees’ share of premiums has risen by 71%. (Kaiser Family Foundation). Workers’ wages have not kept up. Real wages (after accounting for inflation) have been stagnant for the last four decades. The overall effect —while employees’ wages remain static, they are constantly paying out more for their health insurance. At the same time, insurance companies are flush with profits.
The inequality underlying U.S. healthcare is stunning— a single payer virtually free healthcare delivery system for elected representatives and a free-market, profit-oriented health industry boondoggle enriching healthcare oligarchs for the rest of us. The one paid for by American taxpayers but not offered to them is a luxurious on-call service, the other, employer-provided healthcare, fails to fulfill even modest healthcare needs. Obamacare, the third tier of the failed U.S. healthcare system, is a hodgepodge of unaffordable costs and substandard care. You don’t have to imagine a situation where the people are forced to pay for the most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet reap little benefit. You’re living it. The present healthcare system based on private profiteering cost American taxpayers $5.2 trillion (estimated) in 2024. Don’t forget the U.S. spends more on health care than any other country yet still ranks last among wealthy nations in overall performance, particularly in access to care and health outcomes. Is it any surprise that the American people face the shortest life expectancies in the developed world?
Bottom line: The U.S. healthcare system is a miserable failure and a total disgrace. It’s time to pick up a broom and sweep out the phonies (aka elected officials) who keep the present healthcare system chugging along and then elect men and women who will fight to make healthcare in the U.S. a human right. But like Diogenes, searching for an honest man (or woman) with a torch in broad daylight, our quest for integrity in a world of pretense is probably doomed.
