Pandemic – Suspicious Angels

For-Profit Healthcare Meets the Pandemic and Collapses

January 19, 2022January 19, 2022 Suspicious Angels Leave a comment

Single Payer Now

Although the U.S. has less than 5% of the world’s population, U.S. COVID cases currently (as of Jan. 18, 2021) comprise a staggering 20% of world-wide COVID cases and 15% of the world’s COVID deaths. How is that possible? It boils down to one big lack —a national single payer health care system (aka Medicare-for-all). Instead America has a for-profit healthcare industry focused on private gain not public health. The evidence is everywhere you look whether it’s the contradictory messaging coming out of government health agencies, stumbling and bumbling progress in acquiring needed equipment and supplies and the specter of all segments of the medical industrial complex from providers to institutions trying to make a quick buck off the backs of desperate Americans. How could single payer healthcare surmount these obstacles? First and foremost, end the reign of the private health insurance industry where faceless bureaucrats hold the power of life or death over their customers by denying treatment or medication. End those punishing premiums, deductibles and copays that make health insurance unaffordable for a vast number of Americans. End employees’ fear that losing their jobs will cut off their families’ access to medical care. End those narrow provider networks which rob people of the freedom to choose a provider or facility. Between for-profit medical care and rampaging COVID, it’s been a bleak winter in the U.S. To those of you who shake your heads in frustration or bow them in resignation, check out “For-Profit Healthcare Meets the Pandemic and Collapses” and prepare to be dumbfounded at how deep the rot in for-profit medicine goes.

Has the Two-Party Congress Outlived Its Usefulness?

January 18, 2021January 18, 2021 Suspicious Angels Leave a comment

Congressional Baboons

What does a dysfunctional congress and the U.S. congress have in common? Everything. Particularly if you’re one of 75 million who lost their jobs during the pandemic or the 40 million facing eviction or the 50 million the government labels “food insecure (they’re starving). A one-time $1,200 stimulus check and some extra unemployment benefits expired way back in August. Congress didn’t seem to notice. It’s no wonder since more than half of them are millionaires. Then January 6^th happened. Suddenly Congress had a new purpose: working on their second impeachment of a hapless president who has less than a week to go before he’s out. In their spare time, they’re chasing a friendly media who have their own ax to grind to broadcast their outrage to the folks back home. They call the events of January 6 — “[the] desecration of the peoples’ house.” But for desperate Americans the real desecration is Congress’ failure to provide them a way out of their misery. If you aren’t ashamed of the politicians you trusted to take care of the Republic and its people, you will be after reading “Has the Two-Party Congress Outlived Its Usefulness?”

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

September 21, 2020September 21, 2020 Suspicious Angels Leave a comment

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.

Ferment in the Streets: Killer Cops the Symptom of a Nation off the Rails

June 29, 2020June 29, 2020 Suspicious Angels Leave a comment

“…the purpose of direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open up the door to negotiation.”

Murder by Cop

Over a half century ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. rallied his supporters in the civil rights movement by cautioning them that true freedom was impossible without first addressing the economic disparities between the haves and have-nots in unequal America. He proposed an “economic bill of rights for all Americans” — which included a good job with a living wage, a secure income and the opportunity for all people to “play a truly significant role” in the government. Sound familiar? Today young people of all races and classes are out in the streets mobilizing to right the same wrongs — “America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds. But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.” (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) The death of one black man followed by another and preceded by the wanton murder of a young black woman has set the stage. What comes next? Check out “Killer Cops in a Nation Off the Rails.”

It Takes a Pandemic to Expose a Corrupt U.S. Healthcare System

April 27, 2020April 27, 2020 Suspicious Angels Leave a comment

Healthcare Corruption

Most agree that the privatized U.S. healthcare system does not cut it when a virus becomes a pandemic. Whether it’s health insurance flunkies trying to keep the music going while 26 million+ lose their jobs and their health insurance or drug company chieftains competing to make billions by discovering a vaccine or nursing home private operators unable or unwilling to protect the vulnerable populations that depend on them or hospital big wigs practicing “just-in-time” ordering of life-saving supplies to increase profits while their workers are drowning in a sea of sick and dying patients. In a privatized healthcare system operating on free market principles, long term thinking flies out the window. Short term profits are the goal. Want to know how bad it gets? Check out “It Takes a Pandemic to Expose a Corrupt U.S. Healthcare System.”

Shafted: American Workers Lose Their Jobs and Their Health Insurance

April 14, 2020April 14, 2020 Suspicious Angels Leave a comment

Unpaid Bills

“The state will bear the financial burden of the people who have to stay home. We won’t add fear of bankruptcy or unemployment to the health crisis.” Wouldn’t it restore your faith in America’s leaders if one of them had actually made those promises? Prepare to be disappointed. That was the message the president of France delivered to his people. He wasn’t the only European leader to announce life-saving programs. In Denmark, in Sweden, in advanced economies all over the world, leaders are scrambling to protect their citizens. Even Vladimir Putin. The one thing citizens in most European countries (and other parts of the world) don’t have to worry about is keeping their healthcare whether or not they have a job. The citizens of the exceptional nation are not so fortunate. For at least 17 million who have filed for unemployment (and many uncounted millions more), the fear of getting sick is another burden keeping them awake at night. In a system where 56% of the American workforce receives their insurance on the job, no job equals no insurance. Want to know why we need Medicare-for-all? Read “Shafted: American Workers Lose Their Jobs and Their Health Insurance”

Business as Usual: Trillions in Disaster Relief for Corporations and Banks, Spare Change for the People, Hospitals, Small Businesses, State and Local Governments

March 31, 2020April 2, 2020 Suspicious Angels Leave a comment

Great Minds

“Our doctors and nurses are being thoroughly mobilized and worked to limit…Many cases receive no attention at all” (Acting Governor Calvin Coolidge, Massachusetts, 9/25/1918)

“We’re going to keep our small businesses strong and our big businesses strong. And that’s keeping our country strong and our jobs strong.” That’s how President Trump described the Cares Act, the massive so-called pandemic relief bill. That’s not the way most economists describe it. Like the 2008 bailout masterminded by Barack Obama, most of the money will be handed out to banks and large corporations. Everyone else, individual Americans, small businesses, distressed cities and states will nibble from a much smaller pie. Here’s how Trump and his merry band of grifters is going to “keep small businesses strong.” Twenty-seven million small businesses in the U.S. will receive slices of a $300 billion pie. The 18,586 large corporations in the U.S. will feast on $4.3 trillion of government largest, no strings attached. While small businesses can apply for loan forgiveness if they keep their employees on the payroll, corporations are under no such restraint and will not only have their loans forgiven but should their gambling ways get them in trouble again, the Federal Reserve will bail them out — with your money. What’s left for suffering Americans? A one-time means-tested check and a slight increase in both the amount and duration of unemployment, a ninety-day extension of the IRS filing date, and a three-month grace period on student loans (you’ll still have to pay but those months will be tacked onto the end of your loan), That’s it folks. What happens the second month after you’ve spent your government check? Will you be able to pay the rent or mortgage, your credit card bills, your utilities bills? Large corporations won’t have any problem meeting their obligations, with the help of an obliging Fed banker and four (or five or six) trillion to keep those sky-high paychecks, extravagant bonuses and shareholder windfalls coming. And we can’t even go out in the streets to protest. For the chilling details check out “Business as Usual: Trillions in Disaster Relief for Corporations and Banks, Spare Change for People, Hospitals, Small Businesses, State and Local Governments”

Coronavirus —An Opportunity to Push for Single Payer Healthcare?

March 18, 2020March 18, 2020 Suspicious Angels Leave a comment

Coronavirus Demands

Pandemic fever is ramping up in the U.S. Can the hopelessly fragmented and larcenous U.S. profit-driven healthcare system provide the tools to handle this disaster? It’s a big question and the most likely answer is NO. The facts are stark. One-third of the population is uninsured or underinsured. If they need to be tested, what doctor do they call to get a prescription? How much will the doctor charge to give them the go-ahead? If treatment or — heaven forbid — a hospital stay is required, who will pay? The insurance company lobby has already laid down the gauntlet — waiving copays “for testing not treatment.” For those who are uninsured or have huge deductibles, copays are the least of their worries. Would a single payer national healthcare system help mitigate the pandemic wild fire and guarantee needed care for all? Bernie Sanders thinks so — “We have already seen people hit with massive medical bills for doing the right thing by getting tested. Others may face massive bills for hospitalization, treatment and quarantine if they need it. This must end. We need Medicare for All.” Joe Biden repeats the standard neo-liberal excuse for retaining a trillion-dollar plunder — “You got to look at the cost.” That in the face of a peer-reviewed study at Yale that showed a single payer system saved $450 million of U.S, healthcare dollars every year. Who do you believe? Check out “Coronavirus — An Opportunity to Push for Single Payer Healthcare” before you decide.

Tag: Pandemic