Reply #27: Because for-profit medicine is an extortion racket that has nothing to do with health care... [View All]

[warren pease]

This isn't a health care system. It's just another corporate shake down. Premiums are protection money paid to professional extortionists to keep medical providers from stealing your house, cars, bank accounts and anything else that isn't fused to the earth's core in case something serious (i.e., expensive and maybe requiring hospitalization) happens to you.

Medical insurance has nothing whatsoever to do with health care except in the twisted minds of Chicago School libertarian fanatics and free market pitchmen. Break that nonsensical, artificial link, dump the idea of for-profit medicine entirely, replace it with a single-payer, universal-access system and spread the risk over the entire population in the form of a modest, progressive tax.

In other words, take a hint from the rest of the modern world where people pay far less per capita for their health care, never see a doctor invoice or hospital bill and enjoy far better outcomes than in the US -- lower infant mortality rates, longer average disease-free life spans, a focus on preventative rather than reactive care, fewer stress-related illnesses and deaths per capita, and on and on and on.

And here's the final insult: We suck at keeping people healthy although we spend far more money pretending to try than any other country in the world. Here's some stats I got from a sort on the World Health Organization database and, lookie there, the US spends more money as a percentage of GDP than any other country in Europe or the Americas.

Which is bad enough, since most of these other countries spend far less and still provide universal access to health care for all. But then you look at this chart and see that the US ranks 37th in the world in overall effectiveness of its health care system -- right ahead of that medical nirvana, Slovenia.

There's no possible way to put a happy face on a system that allows bottom-line-driven public corporations to net obscene sums by selling access to health care providers, reserved solely for those who can afford the premiums, deductibles, copays and the rest of their bullshit fees and phony charges -- while keeping the riffraff out by denying access to those who just can't afford to get sick.

The practice of triaging by bank account balance literally imposes death sentences on at least 22,000 Americans every year, according to this study, released in January 2008, and entitled Uninsured and Dying Because of it. The summary includes this particularly shameful sentence: "According to Census Bureau estimates of insurance coverage, 137,000 people died from 2000 through 2006 because they lacked health insurance, including 22,000 people in 2006."

The US does so many things so poorly compared with civilized countries. And it's all about money and profits. There's no other reason for such a dysfunctional system to even exist, much less become the model for a medical scam that never tires of thumping its collective chest and declaring its superiority to anything those damn furriners do.

And why would that be? Because it's American, goddammit, and that's all that's required to grab the top spot in anything. Or so I'm told by fools and idiots.

USA! USA! USA! Perfecting the art of systemic suckage, just for the children.


wp