The Invisible Hand Kills
Let's face it: Americans are a pretty deadly bunch. Over the years, they've had a very impressive body count - around the world but (even more impressively) domestically. But the part that's truly impressive is their (our) ability to rationalize it. Yankees won't like the first sentence of this paragraph. They don't see themselves as aggressors or killers. There's always a reason - they believe a good reason - for making folks not live any more. But why do they kill so many of their own?
Putting aside international killings like the ongoing drone murder program (since nobody in the world outside a handful of Washington insiders knows anything about it anyway) and the generally deadly mayhem we let the W. Bush junta inflict on Iraq et.al. in our name, let pause for a moment to look at the body count that Americans generate within their own 50 states.
Gun deaths are a good first stop on the tour. According to the BBC research: "So many people die annually from gunfire in the US that the death toll between 1968 and 2011 eclipses all wars ever fought by the country."
Home on the Range indeed.
These deaths are largely preventable. Americans could pass the type of laws that civilized countries have to introduce a domestic cease-fire. In the US, we choose not to. As a nation, our decision is that we are willing to have mass shootings like Sandy Hook. Those 20 children and six school staffers are dead, and it's because America wants firearms more than it wants safe kids. Sorry. The country has had since around 1776 to do something about loose access to deadly firearms, and has chosen, in 235 years, to do nothing.
Maybe by 2116 it'll seem worth doing something to stop?
But guns are clearly too easy to pick on. Americans sit in the back of the international classroom with the full dunce cap for their gun stupidity already. No need to remind anyone of that.
But what's really dumbfounding in the belief system is health care. Or specifically, the denial of health care to fellow citizens, who then get sick and die.
It's not that there is no money - the money is there, and spent wastefully every day by private health care companies. It's not the lack of available public support - the ACA offered to cover the uninsured who 'fell through the cracks' of the law.
What gets me is the choice that is made daily and constantly not to cover the remaining uninsured.
In the years leading up to the ACA, around 45,000 Americans died needlessly every year for lack of health insurance. I don't know what that number is today, but the success of Obamacare has most likely reduced it significantly. The needless killing that continues is in the states which played right-wing death politics and refused to expand Medicare as the law offers.
In those 24 of our 50 states, up to 17,000 will die annually because... What, exactly? Without getting into the details, nearly half the states in the US think that their working poor - not their poorest (they're covered) - don't deserve to live. They don't deserve support to be healthy. They don't deserve to have preventative care. They don't deserve to have curable stuff get cured.
This is true insanity. It's not a fiscal question - the money is spent and wasted if not on patients then on healthcare administration. Governors and legislatures in those 24 states gain only a political talking point for their most backward voters.
Racism clearly has a lot to do with it. Poor whites vote against their own interests because Republicans tell them that non-whites will gain if they don't cut off benefits for everyone. Nice.
Invisible Hand
What really gets me is the delusion that market forces belong anywhere near health care. Americans who are otherwise regarded as non-brain damaged will make market-based arguments about health care. As if we shop for hospitals. As if anyone but the 1% shops for hospitals, I should say. And not even the 1% does much shopping in he ambulance after their heart attack.
There is a raw, unrefined stupidity in this view. It's so raw that it must be on purpose. Somebody doesn't continually try to jump off a bridge if that's not what they really want to do. They're not just strolling and the street runs out. Somebody is paying them well to make this point. And just as valuably, they are made to feel as though they're 'insiders.' All the cool people in Washington think that the Invisible Hand of the market drives health care - not the beating heart of an actual human being.
Here's a typically shameful bit in a new study that finds - get this - that people want good health outcomes more than they care what it costs. Nice job, Perfesser! So, human beings given a choice of better health outcomes don't give a dry shit what the cost is? Huh.
Well, they had to spend the research grant on something.
But the real boneheadism comes from the conclusion that is arrived at from this shocking bit of insight (next project: what will drowning consumers pay for air? Who picks up the cost?). That is, that this goes to prove that people can make good shopping decisions because they can understand the factors involved. So we need more market-based competition in health care. Huh?
What we need are better health outcomes across the board. We don't need to rate hospital quality to use shopping skills to choose a better one. We can't play with people's lives and health outcomes by using quality metrics like Consumers Reports. Quality scoring is is great - to drive quality improvements, not to support some pathological homicidal drive to build a better death trap.
Look: the market is intended to have winners and losers - that's the whole basis of the concept. My store goes under, you build a commercial empire, and I come work for you. Fine. but you can't set up a medical system that intends to have winners and losers. With human health, we can'yt have any losers by choice. If we're not among 24 fascist Republican Medicare-refusing governors (who must like to watch sick working poor people die slowly in the streets) we have a moral obligation to fix all of it, not just the profitable bits.
The fact that this has to be explained to Americans shows how deep they are in their echo-chamber. They are so focussed on their greed-based for-profit ideology that they are blind to the damage that they willfully do to one another. Their rich and powerful live on an island protected by armed guards - who never cross paths with the unfortunates who are bankrupted and killed by their policies.
If the Trump & Cruz Rightists want to torture some people for killing Americans, they don't have to look further than those 24 state houses.
Putting aside international killings like the ongoing drone murder program (since nobody in the world outside a handful of Washington insiders knows anything about it anyway) and the generally deadly mayhem we let the W. Bush junta inflict on Iraq et.al. in our name, let pause for a moment to look at the body count that Americans generate within their own 50 states.
Gun deaths are a good first stop on the tour. According to the BBC research: "So many people die annually from gunfire in the US that the death toll between 1968 and 2011 eclipses all wars ever fought by the country."
Home on the Range indeed.
These deaths are largely preventable. Americans could pass the type of laws that civilized countries have to introduce a domestic cease-fire. In the US, we choose not to. As a nation, our decision is that we are willing to have mass shootings like Sandy Hook. Those 20 children and six school staffers are dead, and it's because America wants firearms more than it wants safe kids. Sorry. The country has had since around 1776 to do something about loose access to deadly firearms, and has chosen, in 235 years, to do nothing.
Maybe by 2116 it'll seem worth doing something to stop?
But guns are clearly too easy to pick on. Americans sit in the back of the international classroom with the full dunce cap for their gun stupidity already. No need to remind anyone of that.
But what's really dumbfounding in the belief system is health care. Or specifically, the denial of health care to fellow citizens, who then get sick and die.
It's not that there is no money - the money is there, and spent wastefully every day by private health care companies. It's not the lack of available public support - the ACA offered to cover the uninsured who 'fell through the cracks' of the law.
What gets me is the choice that is made daily and constantly not to cover the remaining uninsured.
In the years leading up to the ACA, around 45,000 Americans died needlessly every year for lack of health insurance. I don't know what that number is today, but the success of Obamacare has most likely reduced it significantly. The needless killing that continues is in the states which played right-wing death politics and refused to expand Medicare as the law offers.
In those 24 of our 50 states, up to 17,000 will die annually because... What, exactly? Without getting into the details, nearly half the states in the US think that their working poor - not their poorest (they're covered) - don't deserve to live. They don't deserve support to be healthy. They don't deserve to have preventative care. They don't deserve to have curable stuff get cured.
This is true insanity. It's not a fiscal question - the money is spent and wasted if not on patients then on healthcare administration. Governors and legislatures in those 24 states gain only a political talking point for their most backward voters.
Racism clearly has a lot to do with it. Poor whites vote against their own interests because Republicans tell them that non-whites will gain if they don't cut off benefits for everyone. Nice.
Invisible Hand
What really gets me is the delusion that market forces belong anywhere near health care. Americans who are otherwise regarded as non-brain damaged will make market-based arguments about health care. As if we shop for hospitals. As if anyone but the 1% shops for hospitals, I should say. And not even the 1% does much shopping in he ambulance after their heart attack.
There is a raw, unrefined stupidity in this view. It's so raw that it must be on purpose. Somebody doesn't continually try to jump off a bridge if that's not what they really want to do. They're not just strolling and the street runs out. Somebody is paying them well to make this point. And just as valuably, they are made to feel as though they're 'insiders.' All the cool people in Washington think that the Invisible Hand of the market drives health care - not the beating heart of an actual human being.
Here's a typically shameful bit in a new study that finds - get this - that people want good health outcomes more than they care what it costs. Nice job, Perfesser! So, human beings given a choice of better health outcomes don't give a dry shit what the cost is? Huh.
Well, they had to spend the research grant on something.
But the real boneheadism comes from the conclusion that is arrived at from this shocking bit of insight (next project: what will drowning consumers pay for air? Who picks up the cost?). That is, that this goes to prove that people can make good shopping decisions because they can understand the factors involved. So we need more market-based competition in health care. Huh?
What we need are better health outcomes across the board. We don't need to rate hospital quality to use shopping skills to choose a better one. We can't play with people's lives and health outcomes by using quality metrics like Consumers Reports. Quality scoring is is great - to drive quality improvements, not to support some pathological homicidal drive to build a better death trap.
Look: the market is intended to have winners and losers - that's the whole basis of the concept. My store goes under, you build a commercial empire, and I come work for you. Fine. but you can't set up a medical system that intends to have winners and losers. With human health, we can'yt have any losers by choice. If we're not among 24 fascist Republican Medicare-refusing governors (who must like to watch sick working poor people die slowly in the streets) we have a moral obligation to fix all of it, not just the profitable bits.
The fact that this has to be explained to Americans shows how deep they are in their echo-chamber. They are so focussed on their greed-based for-profit ideology that they are blind to the damage that they willfully do to one another. Their rich and powerful live on an island protected by armed guards - who never cross paths with the unfortunates who are bankrupted and killed by their policies.
If the Trump & Cruz Rightists want to torture some people for killing Americans, they don't have to look further than those 24 state houses.
posted by fiduciary at 1:04 PM
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