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Unhealthy Care

Nov 10, 2009
If you have not read Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, then waste no time, click on this link, and buy it now, or run out to your local library for a copy.

Read but a small portion of it and you will understand why our elected representatives could pass a health care “reform” bill last weekend that 1) requires every man, woman, and child in our country to purchase coverage from a corporate health insurance provider for the rest of our lives; 2) does not allow states to craft their own public, single-payer option; 3) protects patents for many of the most important drugs of the future from ever expiring and allowing the manufacture and sale of less expensive generics; and 4) denies coverage for vital and legal medical procedures to the population which needs them most.

We can only hope that the Senate introduces sufficient additional horrors into this bill to assure its failure. In other words, the best health care reform we can hope for now is no health care reform. Because this is not reform. This is Disaster Capitalism at its worst, a huge windfall for the corporatocracy, paid for by the poor and the middle class, yet again.

Klein’s book lays out the pattern and policy of torture—physical, social, and economic—pursued by the corporatocracy, and abetted by their minions in the government, since the end of World War II. The goal: to enrich the few at the expense of the many. And it has been working like a charm, in case you hadn’t noticed. Her book, thoroughly supported with references, is an eye opener of extraordinary proportions. No one who reads it will ever feel the same about our country. And having turned its last page and set it down, you will be forced with a choice: hope or despair.

I still believe there is hope. However, it must manifest itself soon in real action by the American people to reclaim our national ideals. If we aren’t up to the task, more than this nation will suffer the consequences. Our species will self-destruct, and those surviving will not miss us.
tags: Health | Business | Governance

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