Socialized Health Care vs Gov’t Mandated and Subsidized Corporate Profiteering

The corporate controlled government, those in charge of both corporate controlled political parties, and the corporate controlled mass media, all continue to refuse to even make a pretense of discussing publicly, much less seriously considering, the obvious, clear and simple solution to the health care crisis in America. That outrageously ignored solution is HR 676, the 30 page (!!!) bill – summarized in just 14 sentences (!) – which proposes Medicare For ALL. (Note: It is important to point out that both current Medicare and the proposed HR 676 are NOT socialized medicine, they are simply socialized insurance.) Unfortunately, it has become increasingly clear that socializing only the insurance of health care (which is basically what Medicare for ALL will do) may no longer be enough to solve our health care crisis. Full-blown corporate control of the great preponderance of health care provision in the USA has metastasized and progressed to such a terminal stage that now the only cure to the health care crisis in America is to socialize medicine. Socializing only the health insurance part is not likely to succeed in driving the profit-seeking disease into remission.

Legalized bribery, corporate control, and unbridled greed succeeded in staving off a moderate, simple, obvious solution to the health care crisis in 2009-10. But that’s not the first time that door was slammed in our faces. It happened twenty years ago, too. And fifty years ago, the same opposition succeeded in preventing the newly established, desperately needed Medicare program from applying to anyone except the elderly and the disabled – those whom the sickness and injury for profit insurance industry had almost entirely excluded from their “coverage”. Indeed, the aristocrats and plutocrats, and the officials directing both major political parties, succeeded in preventing a solution to the health care crisis exactly a full century ago, when Teddy Roosevelt of the Progressive/Bull Moose Party campaigned for the presidency on a platform plainly endorsing comprehensive socialized, health care FOR ALL Americans by expanding and extending the existing hospital and health care system that had been established half a century earlier for serving military and veterans. Officials of both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party at that time were no more willing to embrace that platform a hundred years ago than they are willing today to even discuss the much more “moderate” proposal to simply strengthen and extend the proven-in-America Medicare program to ALL, despite the fact that by now, virtually the entire so-called “developed” world has successfully and economically adopted the Bull Moose Party platform plank of comprehensive health care for all as national policy and practice.

The answer to the question “WHY NOT YET IN THE USA?” is that we the people have not yet become sufficiently informed and solidly organized and unwavering enough to overcome the increasing and now almost total control of both permitted major political parties and all branches of state and federal government by corporations, the super-rich, and their associations. It’s important to remember that another vital plank in that platform urged by the Progressive/Bull Moose party and Teddy Roosevelt exactly a century ago was to prohibit corporate attempts to corrupt and influence what should be the democratic political process and interfere with the will of the people, and to establish public financing of elections in America.

As bad and ominous as the health care crisis has become in the USA, with almost complete control of all aspects of medical care now in the hands of profit-seeking mega-corporations, this crisis is merely one of the symptoms, one of the clues, of what the future holds for the people and for life itself on this climate-tilted planet with growing disparity in wealth and income, unless the people establish and defend democracy and government that is truly of, by, and for the people. The struggle will get more difficult and more desperate, the longer that we wait to do what needs to be done.

If Medicare for All is no longer strong enough to cure the health care crisis in America, then what is the solution? That’s simple. If socialized medicine is good enough for our active duty troops and their families – indeed, if it’s good enough for our Presidents and their families – then it’s damn sure good enough for all the rest of us.

A corporation is NOT a person.
Money is NOT speech.

Sources:

Move To Amend https://movetoamend.org/

Physicians for a National Health Program http://www.pnhp.org/

Healthcare – NOW! http://www.healthcare-now.org/

Public Citizen http://www.citizen.org

HR 676, the too-long ignored solution to the health care crisis in America.
http://beta.congress.gov/bill/113th/house-bill/676