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America’s for-profit healthcare scam is doomed to collapse. We’ve been doing the equivalent of slapping a band-aid on arterial bleeding for more than fifty years. It’s gotten to the point where the worst possible outcome has become inevitable. There’s no longer room to debate whether universal healthcare is the way forward. At this point, only the government has the resources to fix a system that is about to crumble under the weight of its own corruption.
I’ve been doing a series of talks with Dr. Yamicia Connor. She’s an OB-GYN and the founder of The Labora Collective. She’s been working tirelessly to analyze all the databases that track the trends in health care before our corrupt government has the chance to erase them all.
I’m not talking about political soundbites. I’m talking about numbers. To its detriment, the American population has been indoctrinated to ridicule the opinions of experts. But you cannot run away from the math forever.
We all know that this administration is keen to erase facts that do not support their preferred narratives. We’ve seen this when it comes to the labor market and climate change, so naturally they’re using censorship as their primary mechanism to cover up our impending healthcare collapse. It’s concerning to think that the malicious people who currently control the levers of power are fully aware of the impending dangers, but they’re content to rely on wishful thinking, ignorance, and denial rather than rational action.
It’s what they always do.
We also see an unwillingness among the media and Democratic politicians to even discuss the need for healthcare reform. As we approach the midterms, hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent on political advertising. This represents an opportunity to educate the public about the realities we face so that they might make an informed decision when they cast their vote. It’s distressing to think there is no space currently available to have a responsible discussion about healthcare.
At the root of the issue is the fact that, for too long, profit has been propped up as the ultimate justification for systemic cruelty. This is so deeply engrained in our cultural ideology that it often causes people physical pain to make them think otherwise.
But our situation has become so dire that we must make the attempt. Remember that the pain of overcoming cognitive dissonance is nothing compared to the agony of a life-threatening medical emergency, or the tragedy of losing a loved one because our infrastructure was allowed to become corrupted.
All Americans must be made to recognize that when you uphold profit above human lives, you become an enabler of oppression, torture, and death.
One of the most concerning trends that Dr. Connor has identified is the systemic push to reduce or eliminate preventative care. The critical decisions that guide our healthcare system are made to increase profit, not to ensure the wellbeing of the patient. The accountants that make their recommendations do not walk through recovery rooms to understand the weight of human suffering. Instead, they spend all their time with spreadsheets, and their only concern is increasing the return available to shareholders.
If that means your children have to die, they’re content with that outcome. That’s why unprofitable hospitals in rural areas are closing down at a record pace. The evidence is there, we just have to connect the dots.
Our system recognizes that there is a lower margin on preventative care. Emergency care is far more profitable to our system. So, preventative care has incrementally been phased out in order to maximize the wealth of the healthcare industry.
They’re literally squeezing us for every dime they can extract. Our agony isn’t an exception to their strategy, it’s a foundational feature. The American public has every right to be enraged about this. We pay far more for the worst health outcomes among any developed nation.
Imagine if the motor industry recognized there was more profit to be made by forcing customers to buy new vehicles, so they eliminated our ability to get oil changes. That’s essentially what’s happening with healthcare. By removing preventative care, they ensure emergency outcomes. This puts a strain on insurance, which in turn puts a strain on premiums. In addition to those problems, the current administration has been eliminating the critical government subsidies that have allowed the wounded system to limp along.
Keep in mind too, that the worst elements of the Republican spending bill don’t take effect until after the midterms. It’s going to get worse before it gets better, and it’s already a humanitarian crisis.
The reality of our healthcare problem goes beyond the oversimplified comments you see in the news and during political debates. Our politicians aren’t even close to an understanding of the problems that are looming in very near future. In order to get on the road to recovery, we’re going to have to adopt some positions that are far outside our current political discourse. We need a massive restructuring of our cultural ideology, and we need it fast.
The problem is that our political class and our elite class mistakenly believe that their wealth insulates them from these troubles. But what they fail to understand is that healthcare is a collective system.
It’s long been the case that our politicians have secured for themselves the kind of state funded healthcare they deliberately deny to the general public. But what good is it to have the best healthcare in the country when the hospitals have been shut down? What good is it to go to a hospital when there are no doctors?
This is what our elites have failed to recognize. The only way to ensure their health needs are met is to adopt an ideology of ensuring everybody’s health needs are met. They can’t close themselves away in a gated community. That’s the equivalent of shoving their head in the sand. Money doesn’t matter if the services are unavailable to purchase. That truth is self-evident and irrefutable, and it needs to be forced into the national dialogue.
As always, women and children are the first to suffer. It’s already the case that two out of every three counties in the United States do not have an OB-GYN. This means that your loved ones are already unlikely to receive adequate care when it comes time to give birth. Women and children are already dying needlessly.
Again, this is not a political opinion. This is a scientific fact. The alarms are sounding. The people need to wake up and listen.
Unfortunately, the imminent healthcare collapse is not something we can fix simply by throwing money at it. We are short of trained professionals. It takes years to educate somebody in the practice of medicine. We are already seeing a shortage, and there are no replacements coming. This will be exacerbated by the fact that as the reckless Republican sabotage continues to take effect, more qualified professionals will suffer burnout and opt to retire.
The more that retire, the greater the burden on those that remain. This will lead to an accelerating downward spiral.
Regrettably, it falls to our generation to reap the consequences of a decades long initiative that places profit over the value of human life. We should also note that our entire system of private insurance is a fabricated industry that’s propped up by Medicare. Health insurance as a for-profit model does not function for people over the age of 65, so the government is forced to cover the percent of the population that cannot have their needs met through a capitalist model.
Massive profit in the healthcare industry is only possible when the taxpaying public is forced to absorb significant losses. We’re all forced to subsidize a system that doesn’t work, in addition to paying inflated premiums and medical expenses.
This is unsustainable.
We’ve known this for a long time, but it’s only recently that the healthcare system has been strained to its breaking point because of the inept, incompetent, and criminal current Republican regime. Through the big beastly bill, they’ve managed to strip our healthcare system of the essential government funding that is required for it to survive.
Our government also places limitations on the people that can be trained as doctors. All of these elements are compounding at once due to the tidal wave of cruel and irresponsible Republican decisions. The system has deteriorated to the point where there is no longer hope for an easy or incremental fix.
We face a national humanitarian crisis that only the U.S. government has the resources and authority to fix. That’s not an exaggeration. It’s the reason why the Republicans are erasing all the data and suppressing the conversation. They know the system is doomed to collapse, but they want to hide that information from the public to protect their power and wealth.
These are all issues that you need to keep in mind as you peruse the also largely corrupt media and come across dishonest stories that paint candidates as extreme for discussing the imminent need for healthcare reform.
Our current media is just as complicit as our political structure in enabling horrific healthcare outcomes. The good news is that we still retain the power to vote and to make up our own minds based on facts rather than political agenda.
We’re at the point where the citizens of this country have to look into their hearts and decide whether they’re going to help their fellow human beings or not.
Going forward, everyone with a platform must make their best effort to elevate doctors and scientists, such as Dr. Conner, who have collected the data which proves the urgency of this moment. We must also inform others of the need to deliberately avoid malicious media sources that dismiss the severity of the challenges we face.
You know what the truth is. Consider your own healthcare situation. Are you afraid to go to the doctor? Are premiums too high? Can you even afford insurance? All of that is proof that we’re surviving in a crisis.
The United States of America has irrefutably proven that a for-profit health care system is not only unsustainable, but it is also a crime against humanity. A for-profit system results in the needless suffering and death when techniques and knowledge exist to allow people to lead healthy, pain-free lives. The deliberate actions of the conservative Republican Party have dismantled an already inadequate structure to the point where an implosion can no longer be avoided.
Today, our only opportunity lies in conveying this information to as many people as we can, as quickly as we can, so that the general population becomes empowered to cast their vote for the representatives who are willing to work to save the health of the American public. We must universally reject conservative and Republican ideologies and implement universal health care reform. The collapse is coming, all we can do now is work to accelerate the repair.
It is the responsibility of the government to ensure the wellbeing of the public. For too long, we have allowed the government to stand by and do nothing as malicious forces built wealth at the expense of our suffering. We have been scammed. It’s time for us to stand up and demand an effective healthcare system that prioritizes humanity over profit.
For more information on this topic, please check out this conversation:
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