medical insurance

My deceased mother-in-law, not a pious person but one of utterly conventional morals, used to say when someone over 70 — she died of heart failure somewhere in her mid-70s after our divorce — was diagnosed with some serious illness, “well, at least they can’t die young.” I say she was conventional because she certainly had all the usual ideas about what to do and say among polite people. Maybe having lived through the Second World War — on the losing side — and knowing enough people who did die young just gave her a certain sobriety in matters of life and death.

On Tuesday, February 4, Donald Trump delivered his third State of the Union (SOTU) address. As expected, it was filled with contradictions, falsehoods, and distortions. Among other things, Trump spoke for close to ten minutes about health care in the U.S., claiming that he “will always protect Medicare.” However, neither Trump and the Republicans, nor the Democrats can be trusted when it comes to health care.

A nonprofit employer is not necessarily a better boss than a profit-making one.
That sad truth is reinforced by the experience of some 2,200 nurses at Albany Medical Center, who have been fighting for a contract since April 2018, when they voted for union representation.

National improved Medicare for all is making tremendous progress during the 2020 election cycle. Democratic presidential candidates, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who advocate for it, are achieving record numbers of contributions and performing strongly in the polls. Candidates like former Vice President Joe Biden, who opposes Medicare for all, and Senator Kamala Harris, who came out with a phony plan she called Medicare for all, are losing ground.

My master that was thrall to Love
Is become thrall to Death.
— “A Ballad of Death,” by Algernon Charles Swinburne, Poems and Ballads, First Series, 1866

Welcome to corporate healthcare, the new normal in doctors’ offices, where profits are king and patients are commodities. With government regulatory agencies essentially adopting a “hands-off” policy, the ever-inventive medical establishment has come up with a basketful of new procedures to delude the patient population into believing that more (traditional drug-and procedure-saturated medicine) is the way to go. This at a time when American health care is growing more expensive and less effective. Life expectancy in the U.S. has been dropping for two straight years, the US.

The Democratic Party won a majority in the House of Representatives in the November 2018 elections by making health care one of its top “messages.” Yet events from Bernie Sanders’ bill of 2017 to legislation that “progressive” Representative Pramila Jayapal introduced on February 27, 2019 show that the Party is on its way to destroy Medicare.

The political system in the United States is a plutocracy, one that works for the benefit of the wealthy, not the people. Although we face growing crises on multiple fronts – economic insecurity, a violent and racist state, environmental devastation, never-ending wars and more – neither of the Wall Street-funded political parties will take action to respond. Instead, they are helping the rich get richer.

It is the year 2019, and American health care is in a state of profound crisis. While oligarchic parasites from the pharmaceutical industry and health insurance companies make enormous profits, bankruptcy and the fear of being denied care hang over the American people like a sword of Damocles. This diabolical order, predicated on greed and placing profit-making over human life, has stripped doctors of their autonomy and given birth to an inhuman and deeply unjust multi-tier system.