felipesmithart:

For the People, for the Planet, for Education, for your Health ⭐️

One day in January 1952 when the Fatherland Liberation War was at its height, President Kim Il Sung summoned a health official. On his table lay a document about the germ warfare perpetrated by the enemy and the countermeasure against it submitted by the officials concerned sometime ago. The leader who had been looking over the paper for a long time with a serious face asked the official how much the people were charged for the doctor’s fee.

This unexpected question confused the official who had been thinking the President would give his views on the document. So he remained dumb for a moment before he answered that the workers and office clerks were given free medical care under the social insurance programme of the state while the peasants and private merchants and industrial entrepreneurs were charged a very small fee for medical treatment and the dependents of workers and office employees were paying about 40 percent of the outpatient’s bill.

At this, the President said that the people were fighting for victory in the war at the front and in the rear at the risk of their lives and that nothing should be spared for such patriotic self-sacrificing people. Then he proposed to adopt a free medical service system for the entire people. As a result, the Cabinet decision about the introduction of a universal free medical service system was announced in November 1952. The introduction of such a system in a hard war time when every penny was needed for conducting the war surpassed all imagination of people.

naenara.com.kp

“[F]or a long time, polls have shown favorable attitudes toward universal health care, sometimes very strong support. In the late Reagan years, about 70 percent of the population thought that guaranteed health care should be in the Constitution, and 40 percent thought it already was—the Constitution taken to be the repository of all that is obviously right. There have been referenda showing high support for universal health care—until the business propaganda offensive begins, warning of the heavy if not astronomical tax burden, much as what we have seen recently. Then popular support fades.

"As usual, there is an element of truth to the propaganda. Taxes will go up, but total expenses should sharply decline, as the record of comparable countries shows. How much? There are some suggestive estimates. One of the world’s leading medical journals, The Lancet (UK), recently published a study estimating that universal health care in the US ‘is likely to lead to a 13% savings in national health-care expenditure, equivalent to more than US$450 billion annually (based on the value of the US$ in 2017).’ The study continues:

The entire system could be funded with less financial outlay than is currently incurred by employers and households paying for health-care premiums combined with existing government allocations. This shift to single payer health care would provide the greatest relief to lower-income households. Furthermore, we estimate that ensure health-care access for all Americans would save more than 68,000 lives and 1.73 million life-years every year, compared with the status quo.

"But it would raise taxes. And it seems that many Americans would prefer to spend more money as long as it doesn’t go to taxes (incidentally killing tens of thousands of people annually). That’s a telling indication of the state of American democracy, and of the force of the doctrinal system crafted by business power and its intellectual servants. The neoliberal assault has intensified this pathological element of the national culture, but the roots go much deeper and are illustrated in many ways, a topic very much worth pursuing.”

–Noam Chomsky, “Ventilator Shortage Exposes the Cruelty of Neoliberal Capitalism,'” in The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic and the Urgent Need for Social Change (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2021), 291-292

“[C]ontrary to common belief, the US does have universal health care. It’s called ‘emergency rooms.’ If you can drag yourself to one, they’ll take care of you, often with superb care—and often a hefty bill. It’s the most cruel and expensive form of universal care known, but at least it’s there.”

–Noam Chomsky, “COVID-19 Has Exposed the US under Trump as a 'Failed State,'” in The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic and the Urgent Need for Social Change (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2021), 264

Just finished writing an article on universal healthcare in the U.S (or…y’know….the lack thereof) and I want to scream and throw things at some of the “nay” arguments I had to read as research.

“The healthy will pay for the sick”

“The rich will pay for the poor”

THAT IS HOW A SOCIETY WORKS.

I DON’T KNOW HOW TO EXPLAIN TO YOU THAT YOU SHOULD CARE ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE.

Help! I Could Keep My Brother Alive, But I Don’t Like His Wife!

Carolyn Hax, Washington Post,1 November 2021:

Dear Carolyn: What do I owe my siblings, if anything? My husband has been fortunate enough to make a lot of money, and we agreed long ago that it was for us and our adult sons, not our (many) deadbeat relatives.

My older brother pretty much raised me and helped my husband when starting out. Brother had a severe stroke three years ago, and Second Wife claims they have gone through all their savings and are now $140,000 in debt with all the costs. She is trying to guilt me into helping them. I do not feel this is appropriate.

She did quit her job to take care of him, but they were improvident and did not buy long-term care insurance. I ask her why she does not put him in a home or hire a full-time aide and she says they can’t afford it.

Brother’s adult children tell me Second Wife is horrible, which is why they choose not to help, either. Second Wife had the nerve to ask me to help buy Brother an oxygen concentrator. It is expensive: $2,500. I think this is pushing it. She comes off as bitter, so we said no.

Now she tells me she will have to launch a GoFundMe, because otherwise they will lose their house. This will be extremely embarrassing to my husband and me, because we are prominent in the community. What do you advise? — Family

Dear Family,

While your problem has, on the surface, a very obvious solution — let the brother who raised you and gave your now-wealthy family its start in the world die a slow, desperate death in poverty because you don’t like his wife’s attitude — families are complicated. Sometimes it’s not as easy as getting what you want from someone financially and emotionally and then abandoning them forever because you don’t care whether they live or die — because then the neighbors might talk! What a pickle.

Of course your brother should be forced to forego the medical care he needs because you don’t like his wife. That much is clear. It’s not about the money — you’d never miss a dime — but you think your brother’s wife sucks, so it’s just really not worth ensuring he has the medical care and housing he needs. Anyone in your shoes would make the same calculation without a second thought.

However, things get sticky when we start thinking about what really matters: how embarrassing it will look to people you aren’t related to, who you’ve never met and have no responsibility toward, if it comes out that your brother is an irresponsible poor who didn’t even get long-term health insurance before deciding to have a stroke in a country with an exploitative, unjust, discriminatory, and deliberately impenetrable medical system that drives millions of people into unimaginable debt every year.

It would be a kindness if the man who raised you and seeded your family’s vast financial success could just suffer in silence and die in the streets with his bad wife and leave you out of it. That’s an outcome you could be proud of — the kind of comfortable, happy little family story you’d be fine sharing with a few intimate friends at the club. But for your sister-in-law to publicly humiliate you by trying to stay alive and housed in order to fund your brother’s medical care, when she knows you simply can’t help him because you hate her! That is impudence of the highest order, and your brother’s wife is only creating for everyone a self-perpetuating cycle wherein she quits her job to care for her husband and has to beg other people for money to stay alive, and you have to keep not giving her money because you hate her because she’s so poor and embarrassing! The one and only solution in this situation is so simple — she shuts up, he dies! — and yet, this self-absorbed couple just can’t bring themselves to take the necessary steps.

There’s nothing you can do here, since funding your brother’s medical care as the most minimum thanks for his support at the most crucial times in your own life will only help him live a longer and more comfortable life without his wife having to make a big public show of their poverty at you. Some people really can’t see past their own self-interest! An upside: if your in-laws go forth with their crowdfunding plan, you will see your own visibility in the community grow in some interesting new ways.

progressivefriends:

Jesus fuck. Bernie just fucking killed the health care rationing question regarding a single-payer system in this debate stronger than I’ve ever heard a political question ever answered. Ever.

*may have been better if he pronounced the world “ration” correctly though.

Bernienailedit.

CHUCK TODD: Thank you. Before I get to the next question, Senator, I wanted to follow up on something you were talking about, the single-payer – referred to single-payer health care, talking about some of the European systems.You know, a common complaint in those European systems has to do with wait times for treatment, wait times for seeing specialists. How do you propose in your Medicare-for-all system to not have Americans have to deal with rationing of care?

BERNIE SANDERS: We are the only country in the industrialized world that doesn’t guarantee health care to all people. I’ve been criticized for saying that. Let me say it again. I believe healthcare is a right of all people. I will fight for a medicare for all, single payer system.

Second of all, alright. You want to talk about rationing, you got 29 million people in this country who have no health insurance. How’s that for rationing. They can’t got to the doctor. And, then you got even more who are under insured with high deductibles, and high copayments.

I have talked to doctors who have told me that people walk in the door extremely sick, and the doctors say, why didn’t you come in here six months ago when you first felt your symptoms?

And people said, “I had no health insurance,” or, “I had a high deductible”.

Chuck, some of those people die, or they end up in the hospital. You want to talk about rationing, that’s rationing. To answer your question. We spend almost three times more per person than the people in the U.K., 50% more than the people in France.

We can have a world class healthcare system without waiting lines, spending the same amount of money we’re spending right now.