US healthcare is a two-faced monstrosity. The profiteers siphoning off big dollars from a privatized healthcare system run amuck. Its victims, virtually all Americans cheated out of the excellent care they deserve and are overpaying for.
Massively unfair doesn’t begin to describe it. Take a vast, monopolized industry completely unregulated whose major “accomplishment” is price gouging — ordinary Americans paying gargantuan fees for overpriced procedures that do little beyond fattening healthcare’s bottom line. It doesn’t stop there. More pillaging of the U.S. and individual Americans’ wallets is coming. Biden has called off the pandemic health emergency as of May 11, 2023. In response, CEOs of the two principal Covid makers, Pfizer and Moderna, despite record profits in the billions, raced to the microphones to announce that their vaccines sold to the U.S. government for $26 per dose would now cost individuals (and their insurance companies) $110-130 per dose. Adding insult to injury, Doctors Fauci and Collins (former head of the National Institutes of Health) knew all along that it cost less than $2.00 to produce the vaccines. Did they speak up? No. Meanwhile the oily Moderna CEO Stefan Bancel tried to justify the unjustifiable — “this type of pricing is consistent with the value [of the vaccine].”
No folks, a 4,000% increase in a drug price over its cost has only one explanation. Greed. The same reason big pharma hiked the prices on more than 1,400 other drugs in 2022. It’s simple really when you think about it. In the absence of real governmental oversight in a privatized environment, greed takes over. The governmental watchdogs are looking out for themselves. What would the American public think if they knew that nine out of the last ten FDA Commissioners wound up working for the pharmaceutical industry or serving on one of their boards? Granted the FDA does not have the authority to negotiate drug prices, but they have the bully pulpit. When it comes to regulating drug prices, Congress has the upper hand if only they’d use it. Through two federal programs Medicare and Medicaid that purchase more than 40% of the drugs big pharma sells, Congress has the muscle to regulate drug prices. But they don’t. Their ardor to work for the voters who elected them is cooled by the millions the healthcare industry spends on campaign lobbying [In 2022, $374 million] If you think Biden might coming riding to the rescue, don’t forget that Pfizer donated $1 million to his 2021 Inaugural. Taking his pledge that “nothing will fundamentally change” to heart, healthcare’s top bananas personally donated $47 million to his presidential campaign.
What good is the U.S. war on drugs if it overlooks the biggest drug dealer in the world—the U.S. pharmaceutical industry. While we’re on the subject, ever wondered why the cost of drugs is 5 to 10 times higher in the U.S. than in all other OECD (advanced economies) countries. Take Insulin as an alarming example: In the U.S. it costs $98.70. A short hop across the Canadian border and the cost drops to $12.00. Insulin is not an isolated example of pharma’s rip off of US consumers. In 2020, among the 20 top selling drugs, pharma made more money off US sales than in the rest of the world combined.
With healthcare company executives and investors living large how are the Americans whose wallets are being picked doing? Let’s see — the US death toll from the Covid pandemic now ranks number 1 in the world with 1.1 million deaths in a total population of 335 million (U.S. is 4% of the world’s population). In comparison, India, number 2 in Covid deaths has more than four times the population of the U.S. [1.4 billion] and less than half the number of Covid deaths [531 million].
But Americans overall are healthier than their peers right? Sadly no. If you are pregnant living in the U.S., you might want to move. The U.S. is infamous for being the most dangerous place in the industrialized world to give birth. 10% of live births in the U.S. are premature. [March of Dimes] This depressing statistic compares unfavorably with the rate in most other advanced economies with a preterm rate of 7.4% in the U.K., 6% in France and 5.8% in Sweden.
Sticker shock is the best way to describe the total amount of money America fritters away on healthcare that is largely unproductive. In 2022, $4.3 trillion. The part of it coming out of your wallet? $12,530. Don’t worry it may get worse. Next year you may have to ante up $13,800. Wait, it can’t be as bad as all that. Spending $4.3 trillion must guarantee Americans a longer life than in other countries, right? Sorry to disappoint you again. The truth is that the U.S. is an outlier among the world’s advanced economies. While from 2020 to 2021 life expectancy continued to decline in the U.S. (the lowest since 1996), it rebounded in comparable countries. If you were lucky enough to be born in Austria in 2021, you could expect to live a robust 81.3 years, in Germany 80.9 years, in the U.K. 80.8 years and in Japan you would be set for 85 years. In the U.S. best to have your affairs in order by the time you reach 75 since the average American will not live past 76.
If you defy the odds and manage to live to a ripe old age, you may be stuck with an astronomical bill. At least 100 million Americans have $140 billion in medical debt. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that sick people are often denied medical care because of an unpaid bill (often less than $100).
Isn’t it time for a peoples’ revolution to stem the abuses that are making us collectively a sick nation? Has the public become anesthetized to the pain and suffering their $4.3 trillion healthcare industry is costing them? Profiting off the costliest healthcare on the planet, it seems billionaire healthcare honchos could try a little harder. But they don’t and you know why? Because they don’t have to. Instead, they spend lavishly [$14 billion on digital ads in 2021] to convince the American consumer that their brand of healthcare —privatized and self-serving— is the best they can hope for. No matter that in every other industrialized country with national healthcare, residents are healthier with fewer chronic conditions and live longer. You want to know what the average American consumer of healthcare is really paying for? The CEOs of approximately 300 health care companies collectively took home more than $4.5 billion in 2021. One especially greedy CEO, pulled in an eye-popping $453 million.
What to do? Maybe the citizens of France and Israel have the answer. In both countries when their respective prime ministers tried to put one over on them, hundreds of thousands took to the streets to protest. In Israel, faced with demonstrations and a general strike, Prime Minister Netanyahu chose to back down. In France, Prime Minister Macron has asked to meet with the opposition. By contrast, U.S. streets are deserted. And the sickness that is American healthcare continues to shorten the lives and well-being of millions. What will it take to wake the public up?
