PHOTO/JOHN E. RAMSPOTT
Our ruling class seems to be putting into practice Mark Twain’s advice when he once said, “Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.” The American people are becoming aware of the fact that president Trump’s promises of “terrific” healthcare and “coverage for everyone” really means terrific higher profits for pharmaceutical companies and the healthcare insurance corporations at the expense of millions of us losing coverage altogether. As this awareness grows so do the protests.
On one side of the fight is the human right to healthcare for all Americans and on the other is maximum profits for the corporations. There is no middle ground. One exists at the expense of the other.
The moral question is, should the death and suffering of our children who are poor, our elderly or disabled, or anyone with pre-existing conditions be the currency that finances corporate private jets, Rolls-Royces and mansions? This is the system that we are at battle with and it must be replaced by free universal healthcare for all.
Ultimately the fight to remove the profit motive from healthcare is the fight for a cooperative society where access to the best health care—and everything else we need—is guaranteed to all. Then and only then can the Hippocratic oath taken by all doctors to “do no harm” have a real meaning. We can finally replace the imaginary banners that currently wave outside our hospitals that read, “Pay First” with the more just banner that reads, “Everyone gets the healthcare they need.”
American’s have been brainwashed, duped to think that ‘they’ will one day be rich so they support policies that benefit wealthy elites with the delusion that they will one day be part of that circle. Fact is that upward mobility is lower in USA than any other western nation.