All kinds of health are under siege right now, especially mental health. Thanks to the rising cost of food, healthy food is becoming more expensive, and more people are at risk of contracting long-term health problems. In theory, there is an abundance of opportunities to see doctors and practitioners throughout the entire empire, but there is just one little problem: most of them are hidden behind insurance companies. Those who remember the town hall meetings for universal healthcare know that the insurance companies killed it the first time, and everyone knows why. It just seems counterproductive to the rest of the world why the empire is rejecting a chance for creating even a healthier workforce in favor of illusory wealth, which will mean less as our reputation continues to dissolve.
Despite propaganda, I have experienced private healthcare in a nation with nationalized healthcare on two separate occasions, once in Australia and another in Mexico. I was ineligible for nationalist healthcare, but I had to see a doctor, so I braced myself for debt I could never pay back. Australia cost me $12 USD for both the visit and the antibiotic I needed to take, and it was so anticlimactic that I forgot about that visit until writing this piece. Mexico cost me $35 USD for a bone density scan, a mammogram, and a pap smear, the first pap smear I had received for five years. A nation with universal healthcare is not a nation without private healthcare, but a nation with a lowered cost of private healthcare. It is pretty obvious why lobbyists destroyed such policy in the United States.
Additionally, pharmaceutical companies make a killing in the empire, quite literally under some circumstances. Drugs are big business in the healthcare industry, which is why diabetes had been so expensive despite the increased possibility of developing it with our food. One of the reasons that the COVID-19 vaccine was not consistently offered for free was because Biden was convinced by his donors that charging for it would boost the imperial economy, so 100% vaccination was impossible based on the shrinking economy. If the empire created competition for the private industry, that would drive down the costs of drugs due to a changed market, and as we all know, private industry cannot truly compete, and so they tend to cheat.
Without riotous healthcare costs, people would have less debt, and be healthier, which would mean that they could make better decisions, likely spend less and have calmer mental health. Medical debt is one of the highest debts, meaning that even as student loan debt is crushing households, many graduates understand that they could never afford to get sick. A desperate workforce makes poor decisions and reaches out to anyone or anything that offers the idea of relief. By denying people healthcare, the “elites” are stating that they enjoy the control of not granting people the option to avoid medical debt.
Truly, the only reason “elites” hate nationalized healthcare is because privatized healthcare costs more, and those with control and resources enjoy the power they have over the lives of everyone else. Nations with nationalized healthcare have consistently enjoyed better outcomes than those without because people who can prevent illness make better decisions. However, since the dominant narrative lacks empathy, that system does not want others to have the choice of disengagement, which is why private healthcare with an obfuscated insurance system is all the empire can manage.
Chasing A Dying Empire 