1. Healthcare is not a market good. Economists say that in order to have a "market", one needs an infinite number of buyers and sellers, price transparency, and no information asymmetries. Healthcare offers none of these things, except perhaps an infinite number of buyers.
Unless you have medical training or otherwise have a fair amount of smarts and a *lot* of time on your hands, neither you or I have any idea whether a recommended course of treatment is:
*medically necessary
*not the standard course of treatment but supported by an educated minority of informed medical opinion
*generally safe and effective but cheaper options are available
*pure quackery
*contraindicated in your particular case
*an appropriate treatment but you can get something similar for less at the other clinic down the street
*an appropriate course of treatment but another provider can perform it better
*palliative at most
*superseded by new methods of treatment
*something else
*more than one of the above
Now, imagine that you are lying flat on your back in the ER in Stutsman County, North Dakota. Are you going to look over a menu of treatment options and bargain and discuss qualifications while that nice Dr. Finster here washes between his toes? Or are you going to take your chances and hope that you don't bleed out before you can Uber it over to the next nearest ER, which is only 40 miles away?
Then throw in health insurance. That means that we are mostly spending other people's money. At the same time, medical procedures are expensive enough that for most of us, paying out of pocket is not really an option.
2. Anyone with as brains as God gave a baby rabbit can tell that the US healthcare system is utterly dysfunctional. By any objective measure, it delivers substandard outcomes and does so at exorbitant cost.
The problem is that all those inefficiencies mean profits. (Market theoreticians say that in a perfect market, everyone breaks even, which in turn demonstrates just how imperfect the US healthcare market is, but that is another matter.)
Everyone agrees that reform is needed and inefficiencies eliminated. The problem is that the there are a lot of people and institutions that profit off those inefficiencies. None of them want their slice of the pie to be touched, all of them are entrenched and all of them have their congressmen on speed dial.
To give a few examples:
*The AMA
*The trial lawyers
*The HMOs and hospitals
*The insurance companies
*The alternative medicine industry (because legit medical care is expensive)
*The pharma manufacturers (generic and name brand have somewhat different interests at stake here)
*The unions (many of which run their own health insurance plans)
Any real reform will put some of the above out of business, and will substantially limit the profits available to others.
For instance, can you imagine the howling from the AMA if reforms had the effect of reducing doctors' salaries to European levels? "How am I supposed to keep two ex-wives and a Porsche on $85K a year?" For that matter, the ex-wives and the Porsche dealer won't be too happy, either.
These interests don't necessarily line up with one political party or the other, so it's not like we can just vote Team D or Team R and we got the problem licked. The people in charge of these interests have careers and vacation homes at stake, and they are going to fight against reform a lot harder than someone not invested in the status quo will fight for reform.
3. I have often heard it said that state run healthcare will kill entrepreneurship. Quite the opposite. A lot of people would love to set up on their own, but health insurance costs make it impossible. That goes double if you have a kid with a pre-existing condition.
Great info Chris. The Corporate masters are stalking our medical coverage in Canada too. The private for profit advocates got a toe hold in Western Canada. Starting in B.C. with Think tanks like the Fraser Institute which flooded the media with straw man arguments with US corporate money since the 1970's or 80's. They sucked in Alberta along the way and are now coming for Ontario as we speak. Doug Ford our very own Corporate shill Premier is allowing private for profit clinics to set up in the same guise "business will bring down costs and deliver better results and shorter wait times". When you hear the break down of the Administration costs of 2% non profit to 50% for profit care, along with 900,000 beds compared to 1.5 million beds in the Nixon era is insane to say the least. Countervailing power has been destroyed by these 21st century Robber Barons. I can see yesterday's man Biden crowing about the benevolent corps that are dropping the price of insulin but no word of the obscene and illegal profits that they made commoditizing insulin is a laugh. He gave a plug for the "guy" who gave the world insulin for a dollar. That "guy" was Dr. Banting and the University of Toronto who developed it in the 1920's, giving it to the world The corps at the time tried to corner the market but Banting would have non of it and said what good is it if only for the rich. So for years Insulin made from beef and pork pancreases was cheap, until synthetic insulin got around his stipulations. Over night it went from $10 dollars a month to over $100 a month and ever more since. These corporate psychopaths see's Canada's non profit health care as the enemy and seemingly will stop at nothing to destroy, it as an example to the US citizen's of how it won't work. The battle lines are drawn and if Canada loses its coverage it will be at the hands of US and World Multi Nationals. Ironically using tax funded profits from Obama's sellout to them! American's and Canadian's should unite, the divide and conquer tactics of Corporate Power will pick off any semblance of a good health care system, one country or Province at a time.!
Great discussion. The U. K. National Health Service, long the pride of the U. K. is under fierce attack from the greedy corporations. Actor Vanessa Redgrave has taken up the fight, amongst others, to preserve the NHS as a true, public good.
"The trajectory we are on is not a good one." Dr. Flowers @24:30. I love the English language and its ability to understate the obvious. Great interview, thanks for posting! Average U.S. citizens are poisoned by their food and lifestyle, exploited by the for-profit "health-care" system, and buried at an early age. Capitalism at its finest.
I lived in France for 20 years and was covered under their system. It was just fine, more bare bones that US healthcare. Less tests, less fancy stuff, but less medical errors due to overtreatment. France spends about half of what the USA spends on healthcare. Conventional medicine is a disaster on so many levels, economic and otherwise. I never go to the doctor anymore and I dont miss it. I have no desire to be screened for cancers or anything else.
Dr. Margaret Flowers...wasn't she part of the group that occupied the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington D..C. when the Trump administration, under the direction of Mike Pompeo was orchestrating the illegal overthrow o the duly elected Sovereign government of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro? Wasn't the electrical service and water service to that embassy illegally shut down while she and others were inhabiting that embassy as guests of the Maduro administration? Wasn't she and others in her group illegally harassed by Secret Service agents that illegally patrolled the sidewalk outside the embassy and eventually arrested by D.C. police who illegally invaded the embassy of a Sovereign Government and arrested unarmed U.S. citizens at gunpoint right here in the capital city of the Land of the Free and the Brave?
If so, then this is what I want to hear Ms. Flowers speak about. Not the demise of our Health Care System that is plain to see for anyone that wishes that had some.
Black people faired the worst in the lockdowns because their livelihoods and access to community support were disproportionatley affected. Maybe the black people who faired better in hospitals with 'covid' had treatments such as forced ventilation and remdesivir withheld, which is actually what was causing the 'covid' deaths. In the UK unprotected, vulnerable old people in care homes were placed on the the Liverpool care pathway, though now called something else, and were killed with Midazolam (reportedly a good death, but not) and were deliberately dehydrated and their deaths were labelled 'covid' https://georgiedonny.substack.com/p/seeing-is-believing
Pharma control politicians and the media in all western countries. Money, money, money.
Healthcare is almost completely privatized now. Education is heading on a similar path where you will have no choice but to pay for your children’s education at some location which may not be convenient to your home or work and a poor curriculum but oh well--that’s what you get for being poor. The school will be like a prison with one hardened entry and sworn officers who will name the challenging students discipline problems and walk them out in handcuffs. As soon as Social Security morphs into a 401K for everyone which is also coming soon (and means all retirement savings are contributing to market liquidity) it will be be done--the whole system--food, housing, healthcare, defense, local policing, education, pharmaceuticals, retirement--will be profit-making. Who wants to live in a country where profit is sacred and people and resources always exploitable? I don’t see how we turn this around. The state I live in is so gerrymandered the majority has no say. To say I am disheartened is an understatement and I know I am not alone.
The NHS has not taken the profit out of healthcare- the tax payer paid for the vaccine that was unnecessary and industry received all its profits with no liability for injury, which the tax payer pays
Mind you, there is cost and quantity, but there's also quality. In Portugal, for example, the quality of medical care is an abomination, as all of those Americans flooding in to retire on the cheap will slowly discover. The waiting time to see a doctor in the public health system in the UK is unacceptable and that's the case in a number of countries. I asked for an appointment for a particular cardiology specialty in the private sector and he did not have an opening for over 9 months. It's catch as catch can in the public systems.
The real problem is that the time of training for a good doctor in any domain is such that, in America, land of Money, the only thing that attracts young people to dive in to the complexities of medicine is money! and there's no way to put a ceiling on it.
I’m all for free healthcare for every American and get big money and big Pharma away from it. I would also recommend starting a vegan diet as soon as possible as a preventive measure. I have been vegan for over 18 years, Chris Hedges is vegan, and it’s easy to do.www.PCRM.org is a great place to learn more, I hope everyone reading this will start it. Going vegan will also cause big Pharma to lose some income once you stop supporting factory farmed animal ag that relies on massive antibiotics to keep animals alive until slaughter.
This podcast is most important for those of us that do not live in the USA but are under pressure from the USA via the IMF to "reform" our economies. If the American elites do this to their own countrymen, then what is the limit on what they will require our governments do with us? I live in Argentina and, as I listen to this podcast I realize we live in paradise. We are quite imperfect, but in no way is healthcare here close to the racket that healthcare is in the USA. With the IMF nosing around our country suggesting reforms, I guess they want us to go the American way: A sick guy choosing to die so as not to banckrupt his family.......
Seeing now everything about US “Empire of Lies”, including thanks to courageous Elon Musk and Twitter Files, it is beyond doubt that 2020 and 2022 elections were stolen..
US State press is paid to lie and must lick asses of their advertisers/controllers -- US arms industry and US fascist bipartisan War party.
1. Healthcare is not a market good. Economists say that in order to have a "market", one needs an infinite number of buyers and sellers, price transparency, and no information asymmetries. Healthcare offers none of these things, except perhaps an infinite number of buyers.
Unless you have medical training or otherwise have a fair amount of smarts and a *lot* of time on your hands, neither you or I have any idea whether a recommended course of treatment is:
*medically necessary
*not the standard course of treatment but supported by an educated minority of informed medical opinion
*generally safe and effective but cheaper options are available
*pure quackery
*contraindicated in your particular case
*an appropriate treatment but you can get something similar for less at the other clinic down the street
*an appropriate course of treatment but another provider can perform it better
*palliative at most
*superseded by new methods of treatment
*something else
*more than one of the above
Now, imagine that you are lying flat on your back in the ER in Stutsman County, North Dakota. Are you going to look over a menu of treatment options and bargain and discuss qualifications while that nice Dr. Finster here washes between his toes? Or are you going to take your chances and hope that you don't bleed out before you can Uber it over to the next nearest ER, which is only 40 miles away?
Then throw in health insurance. That means that we are mostly spending other people's money. At the same time, medical procedures are expensive enough that for most of us, paying out of pocket is not really an option.
2. Anyone with as brains as God gave a baby rabbit can tell that the US healthcare system is utterly dysfunctional. By any objective measure, it delivers substandard outcomes and does so at exorbitant cost.
The problem is that all those inefficiencies mean profits. (Market theoreticians say that in a perfect market, everyone breaks even, which in turn demonstrates just how imperfect the US healthcare market is, but that is another matter.)
Everyone agrees that reform is needed and inefficiencies eliminated. The problem is that the there are a lot of people and institutions that profit off those inefficiencies. None of them want their slice of the pie to be touched, all of them are entrenched and all of them have their congressmen on speed dial.
To give a few examples:
*The AMA
*The trial lawyers
*The HMOs and hospitals
*The insurance companies
*The alternative medicine industry (because legit medical care is expensive)
*The pharma manufacturers (generic and name brand have somewhat different interests at stake here)
*The unions (many of which run their own health insurance plans)
Any real reform will put some of the above out of business, and will substantially limit the profits available to others.
For instance, can you imagine the howling from the AMA if reforms had the effect of reducing doctors' salaries to European levels? "How am I supposed to keep two ex-wives and a Porsche on $85K a year?" For that matter, the ex-wives and the Porsche dealer won't be too happy, either.
These interests don't necessarily line up with one political party or the other, so it's not like we can just vote Team D or Team R and we got the problem licked. The people in charge of these interests have careers and vacation homes at stake, and they are going to fight against reform a lot harder than someone not invested in the status quo will fight for reform.
3. I have often heard it said that state run healthcare will kill entrepreneurship. Quite the opposite. A lot of people would love to set up on their own, but health insurance costs make it impossible. That goes double if you have a kid with a pre-existing condition.
Great info Chris. The Corporate masters are stalking our medical coverage in Canada too. The private for profit advocates got a toe hold in Western Canada. Starting in B.C. with Think tanks like the Fraser Institute which flooded the media with straw man arguments with US corporate money since the 1970's or 80's. They sucked in Alberta along the way and are now coming for Ontario as we speak. Doug Ford our very own Corporate shill Premier is allowing private for profit clinics to set up in the same guise "business will bring down costs and deliver better results and shorter wait times". When you hear the break down of the Administration costs of 2% non profit to 50% for profit care, along with 900,000 beds compared to 1.5 million beds in the Nixon era is insane to say the least. Countervailing power has been destroyed by these 21st century Robber Barons. I can see yesterday's man Biden crowing about the benevolent corps that are dropping the price of insulin but no word of the obscene and illegal profits that they made commoditizing insulin is a laugh. He gave a plug for the "guy" who gave the world insulin for a dollar. That "guy" was Dr. Banting and the University of Toronto who developed it in the 1920's, giving it to the world The corps at the time tried to corner the market but Banting would have non of it and said what good is it if only for the rich. So for years Insulin made from beef and pork pancreases was cheap, until synthetic insulin got around his stipulations. Over night it went from $10 dollars a month to over $100 a month and ever more since. These corporate psychopaths see's Canada's non profit health care as the enemy and seemingly will stop at nothing to destroy, it as an example to the US citizen's of how it won't work. The battle lines are drawn and if Canada loses its coverage it will be at the hands of US and World Multi Nationals. Ironically using tax funded profits from Obama's sellout to them! American's and Canadian's should unite, the divide and conquer tactics of Corporate Power will pick off any semblance of a good health care system, one country or Province at a time.!
Great discussion. The U. K. National Health Service, long the pride of the U. K. is under fierce attack from the greedy corporations. Actor Vanessa Redgrave has taken up the fight, amongst others, to preserve the NHS as a true, public good.
"The trajectory we are on is not a good one." Dr. Flowers @24:30. I love the English language and its ability to understate the obvious. Great interview, thanks for posting! Average U.S. citizens are poisoned by their food and lifestyle, exploited by the for-profit "health-care" system, and buried at an early age. Capitalism at its finest.
I lived in France for 20 years and was covered under their system. It was just fine, more bare bones that US healthcare. Less tests, less fancy stuff, but less medical errors due to overtreatment. France spends about half of what the USA spends on healthcare. Conventional medicine is a disaster on so many levels, economic and otherwise. I never go to the doctor anymore and I dont miss it. I have no desire to be screened for cancers or anything else.
Dr. Margaret Flowers...wasn't she part of the group that occupied the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington D..C. when the Trump administration, under the direction of Mike Pompeo was orchestrating the illegal overthrow o the duly elected Sovereign government of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro? Wasn't the electrical service and water service to that embassy illegally shut down while she and others were inhabiting that embassy as guests of the Maduro administration? Wasn't she and others in her group illegally harassed by Secret Service agents that illegally patrolled the sidewalk outside the embassy and eventually arrested by D.C. police who illegally invaded the embassy of a Sovereign Government and arrested unarmed U.S. citizens at gunpoint right here in the capital city of the Land of the Free and the Brave?
If so, then this is what I want to hear Ms. Flowers speak about. Not the demise of our Health Care System that is plain to see for anyone that wishes that had some.
Black people faired the worst in the lockdowns because their livelihoods and access to community support were disproportionatley affected. Maybe the black people who faired better in hospitals with 'covid' had treatments such as forced ventilation and remdesivir withheld, which is actually what was causing the 'covid' deaths. In the UK unprotected, vulnerable old people in care homes were placed on the the Liverpool care pathway, though now called something else, and were killed with Midazolam (reportedly a good death, but not) and were deliberately dehydrated and their deaths were labelled 'covid' https://georgiedonny.substack.com/p/seeing-is-believing
Pharma control politicians and the media in all western countries. Money, money, money.
Chris and Margaret this is a fabulous, extremely informative podcast. I will spread it around widely.
Healthcare is almost completely privatized now. Education is heading on a similar path where you will have no choice but to pay for your children’s education at some location which may not be convenient to your home or work and a poor curriculum but oh well--that’s what you get for being poor. The school will be like a prison with one hardened entry and sworn officers who will name the challenging students discipline problems and walk them out in handcuffs. As soon as Social Security morphs into a 401K for everyone which is also coming soon (and means all retirement savings are contributing to market liquidity) it will be be done--the whole system--food, housing, healthcare, defense, local policing, education, pharmaceuticals, retirement--will be profit-making. Who wants to live in a country where profit is sacred and people and resources always exploitable? I don’t see how we turn this around. The state I live in is so gerrymandered the majority has no say. To say I am disheartened is an understatement and I know I am not alone.
The NHS has not taken the profit out of healthcare- the tax payer paid for the vaccine that was unnecessary and industry received all its profits with no liability for injury, which the tax payer pays
Mind you, there is cost and quantity, but there's also quality. In Portugal, for example, the quality of medical care is an abomination, as all of those Americans flooding in to retire on the cheap will slowly discover. The waiting time to see a doctor in the public health system in the UK is unacceptable and that's the case in a number of countries. I asked for an appointment for a particular cardiology specialty in the private sector and he did not have an opening for over 9 months. It's catch as catch can in the public systems.
The real problem is that the time of training for a good doctor in any domain is such that, in America, land of Money, the only thing that attracts young people to dive in to the complexities of medicine is money! and there's no way to put a ceiling on it.
I’m all for free healthcare for every American and get big money and big Pharma away from it. I would also recommend starting a vegan diet as soon as possible as a preventive measure. I have been vegan for over 18 years, Chris Hedges is vegan, and it’s easy to do.www.PCRM.org is a great place to learn more, I hope everyone reading this will start it. Going vegan will also cause big Pharma to lose some income once you stop supporting factory farmed animal ag that relies on massive antibiotics to keep animals alive until slaughter.
I know this sounds stupid but... thank you for existing, Chris Hedges. Your light shines bright in the darkness.
Chris any chance you could interview Dr. John McDougall? His low fat Vegan diet is awesome for the environment and personal health.
This podcast is most important for those of us that do not live in the USA but are under pressure from the USA via the IMF to "reform" our economies. If the American elites do this to their own countrymen, then what is the limit on what they will require our governments do with us? I live in Argentina and, as I listen to this podcast I realize we live in paradise. We are quite imperfect, but in no way is healthcare here close to the racket that healthcare is in the USA. With the IMF nosing around our country suggesting reforms, I guess they want us to go the American way: A sick guy choosing to die so as not to banckrupt his family.......
Thank you !!
IMPORTANT -- Decisive proof that J6 riot was FBI-DNC choreographed – Ray Epps now defended by Democrat machine and key Dem and FBI lawyers
March 31, 2023 -- https://www.revolver.news/2023/03/desperate-ray-epps-enlists-notorious-dem-clinton-operatives-to-threaten-tucker-and-revolver-news-for-j6-reporting/
April 6, 2023 -- https://rumble.com/v2gm06s-equal-justice-is-dead-live-with-revolver-news-founder-darren-beattie-trigge.html
Seeing now everything about US “Empire of Lies”, including thanks to courageous Elon Musk and Twitter Files, it is beyond doubt that 2020 and 2022 elections were stolen..
US State press is paid to lie and must lick asses of their advertisers/controllers -- US arms industry and US fascist bipartisan War party.