The medical industry in the US is probably one of the biggest grifts of all time.
I say this because they have been very successful at keeping Americans insanely unhealthy while simultaneously selling drugs that are supposed to cure them of their unhealthy ways. Yes, the food industry is complacent in all of this, but organizations like the American Medical Association or the American Heart Association should be lobbying in Congress to ban things like corn syrup and demanding that processed food meet healthier standards. They’d also demand that the food stamp program limit itself to organic foods.
Instead, they are very clearly looking to make as much money as they can from the average American while keeping them just healthy enough to live to age 70. Then they do a prescription drug bomb on the idiots who are stuck in Medicare which probably does more harm than good in the long term. And then they all end up in nursing homes where they don’t bother feeding the elderly folks good food, just slop and pudding.
Meanwhile, if I get sick, I go to the doctor and the doctor runs tests. If the tests come back negative, I’m told to eat shit and go home with no prescriptions for antibiotics or anything else. Nevermind that if I started taking antibiotics right around then, I might be able to avoid getting a serious infection down the road. But that’s why I was sent home.
Because they’ll make more money if I have to come back to the office.
It’s the same with my kids. Doctors don’t give a flying fuck about what the parents say and oftentimes flat out ignore you when discussing your child’s health. It is astounding to watch as these pompous assholes sit there and lecture you on nearly every aspect of child-rearing while having a bulletin board of nonsense in the background like how breast milk contains more mercury than vaccines (if I have to explain to you the difference between ingestion and injection, you’re a moron or a liar).
At the same time, priorities in care often favor the people groups with the most unhealthy lifestyles. This may be inadvertent, but I’ve noticed that the gay community gets special treatment, probably because they have so many stupidly avoidable health problems. I remember reading a story about how there were gay men getting unidentifiable stomach parasites from rimming each other and they were getting doled out antibiotics as if they were candy. But try getting that same medicine for your child. You have a better chance of escaping a hippo attack on the Nile while riding a log raft.
This isn’t limited to the gay community either. My mother works at a hospital and related a story about a woman who shows up every couple of weeks because she has Type-II Diabetes and refuses to properly take care of herself. So she’s in the hospital for free treatments for something she could easily have fixed herself.
And then the COVID thing hit and the entire medical industry went fucking insane. Or maybe the masks of sanity were just discarded.
The hospital policies were taken directly from government bureaucrats, who were lying, and then they stacked their own policies on top, like prioritizing treatments for blacks and Hispanics. Because Martin Luthor King, Jr. said so or some bullshit like that. Also George Floyd mumbled something about it just before he choked to death on Fentanyl.
Economically, the United States Medical Industry isn’t Socialist nor is it Capitalist. One could hardly call it Corporatist either since even those rules don’t seem to apply. I don’t know what economic model you could fit it into, but I’m sure whoever figures it out should win a Nobel Prize. And no, these problems will not be fixed with Medicare for All because that just gives the greedy executives a permanent stream of income and no incentive to improve care.
A fully unregulated and non-subsidized Medical Industry won’t solve these problems either. This is because the problem with medical care is largely due to our cultural attitudes towards it. We need to stop treating medical care like it’s a necessity in our lives, encourage each other to eat healthier, and only go see the doctor when we are sick. If you have a prescription medicine, look into possible alternatives.
And we need to make most drugs available over the counter. That whole system is simply stupid to begin with because some over the counter drugs are much more dangerous than drugs that you have to acquire via prescription. Imagine how much time you would save if you could just buy your antibiotics at a local drug store without a prescription?
Anyhow, I think a big shift will be taking place soon enough. The whole COVID “pandemic” incident has awaken a lot of Americans to the high-levels of corruption in the American medical system. Hopefully, that will translate into better healthcare for all and a better system.