sick & wrong
This is the —
Best article I have seen on the health care fiasco. It should be required reading for every American:
written by Matt Taibbi
[originally published in rolling stone]Let’s start with the obvious: America has not only the worst but the dumbest health care system in the developed world. It’s become a black leprosy eating away at the American experiment — a bureaucracy so insipid and mean and illogical that even our darkest criminal minds wouldn’t be equal to dreaming it up on purpose.
The system doesn’t work for anyone. It cheats patients and leaves them to die, denies insurance to 47 million Americans, forces hospitals to spend billions haggling over claims, and systematically bleeds and harasses doctors with the specter of catastrophic litigation. Even as a mechanism for delivering bonuses to insurance-company fat cats, it’s a miserable failure: Greedy insurance bosses who spent a generation denying preventive care to patients now see their profits sapped by millions of customers who enter the system only when they’re sick with incurably expensive illnesses.
where that article comes from :
that is matt taibbi writing for rolling stone
where the art work comes from :
that is from pictures of detroil
0 Responses to sick & wrong
Great article.
Yes, this. Our government is controlled by bankers and corporate health insurance lobbyists. (I’ve come to the conclusion that the purpose of the Republican Party is to be as batshit crazy as possible, so as to make the corporate whores running the Democratic Party — and this most emphatically includes Barack Obama — look ‘reasonable’ by comparison. Hence ghouls like Limbaugh, Beck, the teabaggers … and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Palin rises from the dead to capture the nomination in 2012.)
I hope the progressive Democrats that have signed Jane Hamsher’s ‘no reform without a public option’ pledge stick to their guns, though I know it’s likely this Congress will produce an ineffective public option for exactly the reasons that Taibi describes.
BTW, I’ve been a little gun-shy about saying this because of how you reacted the last time I tried to pay you a compliment, but I think overall your series of posts about health care reform has been outstanding.
Thank you, Game. Yeah, things do not look pretty for health care reform. If they screw this up, I am campaigning for Weiner for Prez next election.
Ha! Matt Tabbi by all that’s holy. He used to run a scurrilous English language newspaper in Moscow which, when it wasn’t setting out to offend absolulutely everyone, often published critical, insightful articles about Western Civilisation. Sorry, ‘civilisation’. Nice to see he’s still at it.
Incidently, am also admiring your series from afar, but as a Brit, don’t feel particularly qualified to comment. Of course, we’ve always thought your healthcare system is barbarous. What I like about Tabbi is he also points out it’s impractical.
It is barbarous. And Tabbi rocks. You are welcome to post a British perspective any time here. We need any perspective right now that is not the panicked lied to pawns or paid for representatives of the insurance companies.
Well. I could try to do a balanced assessment of the NHS, because obviously no system is perfect, but in truth the whole thing boils down to the fact that you don’t have to worry in the uk about getting treated, ever. Without having to once fill out any forms.
Mind you, on the subject of downsides, I’m not sure it’s worse to be told by your insurance company you can’t have such and such a treatment because it isn’t, in their expert opinion, necessary, or to be told you can’t have such and such a treatment because if you do your healthcare trust won’t be able to pay for the treatment for 500 000 other people in your area. Which happens very rarely and only for the really expensive drugs.
And even then, you’ll still get treated with the generic ones.
Possibly the equipment is better in the States, and I’m told the bedside manner is. If you have access to it, of course.
Still, I must say I think you are doomed to suffer it indefinitely. Our welfare system only got put in place at the end of WW2 largely because the country was on its knees anyway, so how much more badly could They bugger it up, and because to not do something for the people who had fought the war (ie pretty much everyone) would probably have made people Very Cross. Particularly as making a land fit for heros was promised after WW1 and in reality didn’t occur.
The point being, your system is too entrenched and you are, despite the recession, too comfortable and you don’t have the right kind of people in need of it. Best bet: recession gets worse, civilisaiton as we know it collapses and you can start again from the bottom up.
Only hope beyond that? Massive public demonstrations I expect.
That’s a bit pessimistic. Hope I’m wrong. There are people I know over there who could do with a proper system.
I hope you are wrong too. I guess we will see. The crazy thing is if this fails to pass, there will be a lot of people cheering who really would have benefited from it most.
Max, I don’t recall. Have you seen Michael Moore’s Sicko? It pretty much convinced me.
I haven’t seen the whole thing. I have seen portions. I do not need to see it to know what it says and that the American health care system sucks.