The concept of freedom has been co-opted by those who care least about freedom and that is why health care in the United States is expensive and sucks.
Too many people, in the name of some faux freedom, are all too willing to bend over and take it up the ass by corporations and their health care-rationing death panels than those who understand that whether the bureaucracy is private or public, you have a choice.
The idea that private enterprise is inherently better — morally and economically — than the public sector enterprise is naive and simple-minded. Medicare runs much more efficiently than private insurance conglomerates, for example, but that somehow is a threat to freedom. Freedom my ass. You pay or you pay. Get your facts straight. We have, for example, a ridiculous system of private care when people are more likely to be healthier (younger) and subsidized public care for older Americans. What is Medicare if it isn’t a giant subsidy to an already profitable private enterprise?? This unbalanced approach will cost more and more. Left unchecked, Medicare can reach 10% of GDP in a few decades, health care cost overall exceed 25% of GPD. Why? We are protecting profits, increasingly monopolistic profits, at the expense of affordable and available quality health care. That’s why.
The hegemonic ideological state apparatus has been usurped! The hegemonic ideological corporate apparatus…and profits, of course… rule instead. And it does so under the kowtowing bent of our collective ignorance. A disgrace.
(Althusser would agree, I think. It isn’t the ISA that threatens freedom, it is the ICA.)
Let me suggest this. The people behind private health care, those who deny you care in the interest of profits, are the ones getting rich and not you. (It is one of those “if you have to ask you can’t afford it” kind of things.) You are indeed free “to choose” an inefficient private health care program, but it is inevitably one that puts profits before your life and it takes everyone else down with you.
So I say screw the people who want private health care. If you’re that stupid, don’t expect me to care when you die. In fact die fast so you don’t suck up resources and drive up my costs. Still more importantly, someone’s stock investment depends on your quick and ignorant death. Stop wasting their money, patriot! Ah, but wait…before you go, send a thank you card to the stock holders. Thank them for protecting your freedom, your freedom to die in ignorance so that they can pay out of pocket for what you cannot afford.
We are what we are and we get what we deserve. Hijacked freedom, however, is inexcusable and that’s the problem.
(P.S. and FYI. I really mean to replace “screw” with “fuck” but I want to maintain my PG rating. I wonder if “take it up the ass” jeopardizes my PG rating…)
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