An American Way of Death

Healthcare is not really heath care, is it? It is actually sickness maintenance. It’s theoretically about providing resources for sickness: Drugs, medical devices, doctors and nurses. You only need those things when you’re sick. If you actually wanted to ensure people’s health you would make sure they did healthy things, like breathe fresh unpolluted air, drink fresh unpolluted water, eat organic carcinogen free foods. You’d ensure that people got exercise, took yoga classes, or that they maintained a stress free life as in doing meditation every morning and evening. You’d keep them out of stressful polluted traffic every day. You’d have them walk daily. You’d make sure they had respirators or masks in air polluted areas. If insurance did those things, it would be health insurance. It would be sickness prevention.

In America sickness is a profit center. Cancer alone is a multi-trillion dollar industry. Consider all the money required to maintain a person through cancer treatments. It easily averages over a million dollars (about the same amount required to support each troop in Afghanistan for a year). Industries profit on that. The insurance industry, the medical device industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the nursing home industry (and of course the war profiteers), all profit from Americans’ pain, suffering, and death. Call it PSD.

We have a lot of people who complain about the sick industries and the expense of PSD. People pay a lot for insurance. Even if a claim is honored, people have co-payments. They fight daily to get hospital bills paid by their so-called insurance. There is a profit incentive for the insurance industry to deny care. Their business model is to find ways to avoid paying claims and to take in as much in premiums as possible. They know that Americans willingly pay for insurance. Even when they raise their rates by double digit percentages, Americans pay. Even if insurance companies deny claims and people suffer and die for lack of care, they will still pay. Tens of thousands of Americas continue to die annually but they still pay for insurance. It’s an incredibly profitable industry that easily takes in a 30% margin over its costs, and makes huge profits. Very few industries do that.

Americans are conditioned like lab rats to pay hundreds every month, thousands every year, for questionable and often worthless insurance. Obamacare got more people to buy insurance. Authored mainly by Elizabeth Fowler, a prior insurance company executive, either Obamacare is a genius piece of legislation or it’s taking Americans for a ride (depending on if you’re an investor or not). Now millions more Americans pay for questionable sickness insurance. When they get sick, you can bet the first order of business for their insurers is to find ways to deny their claims. And now the government requires by law that all people pay for sickness insurance or they will be fined. So if you have insurance you pay to be denied sickness coverage, and if you don’t have insurance, you pay government fines.

The theory is that if people don’t have insurance, they will be taken care of anyway and everyone else will have to pay for it. That’s only true for legislators, government officials, and the active military who are all 100% covered by government funds at no cost whatsoever. For everyone else this would be true if insurance companies actually paid to help people through sickness. But they don’t. The reality is the opposite, which is to say insurance companies don’t pay. People with insurance suffer and die for lack of care because insurance is not care. It is a business. People without insurance also suffer and die, but at least they don’t pay premiums. They pay government penalties.

And what do we do to insure health? Nothing. Healthy Americans are a liability for the American PSD industries and their stockholders. Those industries depend on pain, suffering and death for their livelihood and profits. In fact PSD enterprises comprise about one sixth of the national economy. Without PSD our country would suffer a great monetary impact. Entire industries could go out of business. Do you work for the insurance industry? Do you willingly work for blood money? Those who have pain, who suffer, or die for lack of sick care, do so for our protected PSD industries to maintain high profits. It’s a uniquely American way of death.

The Real America

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PASADENA CA - On Thursdays since, June 25, 2009, a group of protesters gathered at the intersection of Orange and Hill Avenues to hold a protest vigil, shown in this film, and which continues there weekly. Drive by and honk if you care to.

So why after 60 years of Republican blocked attempts at nationalized health care are we finally seeing some movement? It looks like things are so bad that the insurance companies aren't even making out. If things get bad enough for people and people can’t afford to pay their bills, guess who gets screwed? The insurance companies who charged the outrageous premiums to begin with. Once again we see the authoritarian right digging their own grave. Keep up the good work guys. With any luck your kind will soon be extinct. Bailouts can't go on forever. At some point these greedy corporations will die if we refuse their services, whether out of necessity or not. The people have the power and always have. It's ultimately about cutting off the money. Now if only we could do this to Wall Street and The Pentagram.

“Health care reform is no longer just a moral imperative, it is a fiscal imperative. If we want to create jobs and rebuild our economy, then we must address the crushing cost of health care this year, in this Administration.” - President Barack Obama, White House Forum on Health Reform, 3/5/09

The following excerpts are from HeathReform.gov:

“With All These People Losing Jobs, A Lot Will Lose Their Health Insurance”
The Wall Street Journal, Thursday, April 23, 2009 - President Obama has said that health reform “cannot wait, must not wait, and will not wait another year.” Today the Wall Street Journal cited evidence that illustrates why so many Americans cannot afford to wait another year for health reform. Layoffs are causing thousands of Americans to lose their health care coverage, and as was reported today, insurance companies are seeing their profits shrink as they lose members.

Insured, but Bankrupted by Health Crises
New York Times, 7/1/09 - It is commonly cited that nearly 50 million Americans go each year without health insurance. What is perhaps less apparent is that millions more are severely under-insured. The unfortunate reality is that even those with insurance are too often brought to financial ruin because of medical expenses.

Medical Bankruptcy
South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 6/23/09 - Americans across the country are struggling to keep up with rising costs of medical bills, high deductibles, increasing premiums, and the escalating costs of prescription drugs. For some Americans health care costs result in medical bankruptcy. According to a new Harvard University study, 62% of bankruptcies in 2007 were caused by medical-related debt.