Some day (maybe) we'll get real.
Then we'll realize what has always been obvious: the BEST way to reduce healthcare costs is to TOTALLY eliminate the profit motive from the system.
That means ALL reputable (and certified) doctors in the US would work for state-certified community-based health care centers and nonprofit hospitals.
Drug development is ALREADY primarily directed by the federal government swishing finances through elite nonprofit research institutions (MIT etc). Drug marketing and distribution could also be handled by regulated nonprofits.
Etc. Etc. Etc.
“Socialized medicine” need not be run by “da Fedrul Gubmint”. It can be a widely distributed, multilevel system VERY accessible to oversight, checks and balances, and COMPETITION!!!
It takes a village to raise a child. It takes a generation to cultivate a vineyard or a forest. It will take a long time to get this right, and Medicare for All is not necessarily a false step any more than ObamaCare is (was?)
It would take a LOT LESS time if we would only stop deceiving ourselves with nonsensical neoliberal capitalist malarkey!
Yes, democrats are (for now) having the wrong type of debate. But this is the world we live in.
Right now we're allowing our healthcare delivery system to be overseen by an internationalized, profit ravenous, corporatized insurance industry. That's not unlike permitting a coven of vampires to run our emergency blood supply.
That's not to attribute malevolence to for-profit corporations any more than I would attribute malevolence to a pack of wolves dismembering a bleating Bambi, a scorpion stunning and then devouring a slug, or a silent owl swooping down to rip away from its cozy nest a screeching baby bunny rabbit.
We just have to get our minds and the incentives right.
Joe Panzica (Author of Democracy STRUGGLES! and Saint Gredible and Her Fat Dad's Mass. He is currently working on his second novel I Wanna Be Evil.
