Hello World, I’m Back!

Hello World, I’m Back!

What I Saw, What I See… Who We Seem to be Becoming

From the cloistered view from a hospital room (post-surgical and then rehab), surrounded by caring people overwhelmed with bureaucracy, red tape, equipment in dire need of updating, I witnessed the American political landscape migrating into a really huge swamp, a deep state run by plutocrats and a scared nation with demographic segments wondering where they belong. I witnessed the quicksand of insurance company approvals, which have sucked millions into sometimes terminal soup of easy answers no one seems willing to make. My treatment was first rate, more than I can say for many lost in a healthcare system designed to make profits.

As years have passed, with consumers who even have healthcare insurance being denied coverage for obvious ailments in need of treatment, I have learned of doctors spending as much as half their time fighting insurance giants over rejected treatments, just as we face a doctor shortage. Better to waste doctors’ time to support mega profits of insurance giants that to deal with the treatment so many people need. I witnessed nurses, doctors and specialized treatment personnel use handwritten notes (where streamlined ultra-thin tablets could translate handwritten notes into text for subsequent charting and data entry) and then re-type them into the main data repository, highly regulated by HIPAA federal requirements.

On my hospitals’ limited channels, I witnessed Luigi Mangione, the suspected killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, treated as a hero by a huge demographics, just as mass media (of all kinds) carefully tip-toed around aggrandizing his success in refocusing the nation around a failed healthcare system, the least effective and most expensive in the developed world. We remain the only developed country in the world without universal healthcare. We pay fortunes for prescription drugs, often a multiple of what other countries pay, even with the recent Biden adjustments to Medicare coverage for some vey routine drugs.

Republicans, who use the word “entitlement” to describe earned and vested benefits (like Social Security and Medicare), suggesting that these entitlements need to be trimmed so that the richest in the land can receive the vast portion of the renewal and expansion of Trump’s first term tax cuts. The completely disproven notion “trickle-down economics” – where if the rich get gobs of newfound money, they will immediately turn around and create wonderful new jobs – is the GOP axiom that underlies their planned tax reduction for the rich initiative (the bedrock of their platform). But TRICKLE-DOWN ECONOMICS HAVE NEVER, EVER WORKED TO CREATE JOBS OR BENEFIT ANYONE BUT THE RICH! EVER!

If the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson had not happened, would the outrage over “delay,” “deny” and “disapprove” – the seeming cry of major healthcare insurers often pushing treatment off to allow death to eliminate claims altogether – ever have been so heavily featured? I seriously doubt it, and, no, I do not condone murder. What a sad commentary on our system. Sadder still since those who face a world without insurance or “delay,” “deny” and “disapprove” with higher premiums, soaring deductibles, more caps and exclusions and escalating co-pays… with a disproportionate number being MAGA adherents in red states hoping to terminate government support for healthcare. They believe their lots will be improved, that trickle-down economics will boost their livelihoods and still allow for a balanced budget.

Not the prediction of most credible economists from both sides of the aisle. They project $4-$7 trillion of resulting deficit borrowing to service the tax cut. Hence the GOP frenzy to raise the debt ceiling during the waning days of the Biden administration. That would allow Republicans to blame Dems for the deficit increase. Now, with control of the presidency, the House, the Senate and the Supreme Court, the damage from that debt ceiling increase to accommodate that tax cut will belong solely to the Republican Party.

And with Musk’s seeming success in pushing deregulation and tax cuts – crying creeping socialism if we do the only effective solution to our crumbling healthcare system: stop prioritizing corporate profits over having an effective healthcare system in the United States… we become an oligarchy where the ordinary citizens are expendable to foster a society where only the rich are comfortable. Healthcare is no more socialism than is government-provided primary and secondary education. For those who tell us that if we adopt universal healthcare, we will only get long lines and inferior medical care, that happens only if the system is badly designed. Perhaps we should look at the German and Swiss systems to see what happens if the design is done right.

My greatest disillusionment through all this is that the religious right (98% of registered Republicans are self-described “Christians” accorded to Pew Research) either believes that the Bible is a menu or that virtually the entirety of the New Testament is simply too woke to be believed and followed. We need to care about each other again. We need to understand that our choice to support a profit-driven healthcare system vs embrace viable universal healthcare is an either/or decision. These alternatives are profoundly mutually exclusive.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I will try and add more blogs as I continue with a long recovery, so bear with me!