Tom’s Tidbits- The other plague we can’t escape

Greetings,

As I write this, the world is closing out its second year of Covid. In round numbers there have been about 5,350,000 deaths worldwide with about 800,000 of them hitting here in the US. In a country of about 330 million, that means .24% of our Fellow Americans have died. So far. But I want to focus on not on our dead, but on our wounded and how they can be healed.

Those 800,000 deaths came from about 50,900,000 Covid cases, meaning over 50,000,000 survived. So far. But those survivors aren’t unscathed; about 250,000 required hospitalization during their illness and a significant (but unknown) number will be Covid Long Haulers who will require care for the rest of their lives. These are direct casualties of the disease but their wounds will be compounded by a shattered medical and political system.

Each Covid case is a spin of the wheel where the question is not IF the spinner will lose, but how badly. Death is just the (arguably) worst outcome. In 2020 8.6 percent of Americans, about 28 million of us, didn’t have health insurance. That means 8.6% of those 250,000 hospitalized will be paying for their care out of pocket, and with very, very few exceptions, they’ll be financially crushed. It’s not much better for those with insurance. In a world where we’re expected to be rational actors making life-and-death decisions on a price basis, there’s no way to know what the price will be. The for-profit Insurance Companies and for-profit Hospitals set unpublished prices, negotiate between themselves out-of-sight, and send us a bill for whatever they settle on. The options are pay, go bankrupt, or die.

Covid means tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of lives shattered, but of course, Covid is just the most visible mask on the same spectre. Cancer, Alzheimer’s, Diabetes, Heart Disease, and more… the ghost of Medical Bankruptcy has haunted us all for decades. 62% of all bankruptcies in the US alone are for medical reasons, and worldwide there’s… well… there aren’t any. “As it turns out, medical bankruptcy is almost unheard of outside of the United States. Other developed economies (except China) have single-payer health care systems where medical costs are financed by taxes, not by premium-financed insurance. In these countries, there are no out-of-pocket costs for medical care and thus no bankruptcy caused by medical debts.”

You might expect that if every other industrialized country on the planet has been able to figure out Universal Health Care, and the fact that we haven’t places us with countries like Iran and Syria, there might be a reason. Maybe our way is better and we might be getting something more for our money. Nope. We pay more per capita for healthcare than any other country; roughly a third more than our nearest competitor (Switzerland) and roughly ten times as much as the lowest spender (Mexico), yet we consistently rank near the bottom on access to health care, equity and outcomes among high-income countries.

No, it’s not that high quality demands high prices, it’s pure greed by the for-profit Insurance providers who add no value to the system but stand as barriers between you and your health. Single payer is politically popular with over 60% supporting it in most polls. One might think the struggling Democrats, or the few sane Republicans trying to rebuild their party might ride this issue to popularity, yet they don’t. Why? The Healthcare industry is the biggest source of lobbying money, spending over $500M this year and almost $5 BILLION over the last 23 years. “Follow the money”, indeed.

Under our current system the literal Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness of every American depends on the fiat of corrupt lobbyists and politicians, and an American public too propagandized to see it or too demoralized to fight back. The same people who scream ‘freedom’ from their unvaccinated, unmasked throats scream ‘socialism’ just as loudly when someone proposes a single payer system. The same people who decry ‘death panels’ fail to see profit-driven executives using ‘pre-existing conditions’ as just that.

A worldwide pandemic is no one’s ‘fault’. Some people will die while others will be affected for life, and just like more conventional natural disasters, those shattered lives can be laid at Nature’s doorstep. But the lives ruined financially are on us, our society, and the greed of insurance companies or the cowardice of politicians because we have thee power to prevent them… if we choose to use it. Single Payer!

Make a great day,