I used to see this question fairly often. The ‘Why Should I Pay for Someone Else’s Healthcare’ question. These people don’t seem to realize that they’re already paying for everyone else’s healthcare. But we’ll get to that later.
First we’ll talk about how the very people who post this type of complaint are the very people who cause America’s health problems! It’s your fault these people are sick, so pay up buddy boy. If you don’t like it, stop supporting the things that make Americans use so damn much healthcare in the first place.
Wha? What do libertarians/Republicans/right-wing Christians/etc. support that make Americans sick again?
It’s simple. It’s one thing. Companies over people.
That’s it. In a nutshell. Prioritizing companies, corporations, and businesses over people. Over people, the planet, and pets actually. But we won’t go into the second two. These people vote – and think – and act – and talk as though if there were 7 rich corporations left to do corporate stuff for 50 living humans left on the planet that capitalism would have once again proved its merit by working for the glory of all. All 50 people left.
I don’t much care for the left-wing complaint that corporations put profits over people. Of course they do! They are literally required by law to put the interests of shareholders over the interests of anyone and anything else.
Why Do Corporations Pay for Some Healthcare but Not All?
Corporations, businesses, and employers already pay for a lot of American healthcare thanks to a quirk of American economic and political history that occurred long before you were born. That’s because they were, at one point, allowed to attract workers by offering healthcare benefits but not by raising wages.
If stuff like that can happen in America, there is no reason to favor corporations over actual people in the law, policy, or government. And yet, these ‘why should I pay for someone else’s healthcare’ whiners do just that.
And putting the interests of corporations over the interests of people is a big reason why Americans get so fucking sick in such a costly way. That’s not the only reason but it is a big reason that is almost never reported in the medical/government/academic/pharmaceutical media.
So how exactly do corporations make Americans sick? I’ll bet you can think of a few ways! But let’s hit some highlights.
Americans die of heart disease, cancer, medical error, and various forms of sudden death – like suicide, gun violence, car accidents, drug overdoses, etc. Those deaths make up the bulk of deaths, along with some related chronic illnesses, such as diabetes, kidney disease, lung disease, and dementia.
What causes heart disease, cancer, and those related chronic illnesses? Hmmm…. It’s the individual’s fault, right? Each individual person is too fat and doesn’t get enough exercise and their diet is crap. All things within each person’s control. Get slim, work out, and eat your low-calorie vegetables, right?
Nope. To be fair to the libertarians, a lot of it is genetics. And neither you nor the right-wingers can control genetics exactly. Although…. but we’ll get back to that.
Health Status isn’t Under An Individual’s Control
But most of those other things that are supposedly under your individual control? They don’t work. We know they don’t work because the medical/blah-blah-blah establishment has been saying them for 60 years and people are still keeling over (eventually) from the same damn things. And if they’re not under individual control – the real question is why are you paying for healthcare at all? Shouldn’t the corporations who profit from the things that make people sick pay?
Well, let’s see. Corporations don’t mention that environmental factors are a big deal in your risk for heart disease, cancer, respiratory disease, metabolic disease, etc. For example, your environment is saturated with chemicals you nothing about. Your clothes are permeated with chemicals. Your clothes! The stuff against your skin.
Did you ask for that? No, you did not. I hope. But corporations do it anyway because they think it’s good for their shareholders. Who think they won’t die of heart disease and cancer because they’re rich! Although they will anyway.
Putting the financial health of the shareholder class above the physical health of everyone else on the planet helps people get chronic, expensive diseases. That, you guessed it, is good for the shareholders of the corporations that make money off chronic, expensive diseases.
Those chemicals in your environment, some of which are endocrine-disrupting, cause all sorts of mischief in your body. Over time. So you don’t die short and sweet like people did in the old days. No, you linger on, very expensively. Thanks to the corporations that those healthcare-hating whiners are always so keen to kowtow to.
Whose fault is obesity?
I mean let’s just take a look at that fatness that the medical establishment is always whining about. Big contributor – soda pop. Who benefits from selling you soda pop? Big corps. Soda is cheaper than water or anything nutritious. Rational consumers (in the economic sense) are gonna buy soda pop because it is a cheaper source of calories than those damn cans of carrots and spinach. (Cans that are laced, it turns out, with chemicals that make you fat.)
And how about those marvelous corporation-enriching phones that lure people away from all that exercising they’re supposed to be doing? Or McDonald’s being heart-disease friendly and wallet-friendly at the same time? Or the absolute tsunami of ultra-processed foods we’re all surrounded with that – um, make everyone fat.
Or your job that pumps you full of fatness-inducing cortisol and keeps you up all night worrying about stupid emails so you don’t get any restful sleep so you, you know, get fat? Everything I’ve mentioned so far benefits corporations and the ‘economy’ but drives up the cost of healthcare and chronic disease. So pay up, buddy boy. You want the benefits of the economy you espouse, you gonna pay the healthcare costs too.
And don’t give me no tripe about personal responsibility. You love personal responsibility, eh? So pay your fucking share of the overhead for the lifestyle you’ve dedicated yourself to foisting on the rest of us.
WHERE DO CHRONIC DISEASES COME FROM, ANYWAY?
Supposedly, about 60% of Americans have a chronic disease. If more than half of people suffer from something – personal responsibility ain’t gonna cut it. It’s systemic. Expensively systemic. Supposedly, about 40% of Americans have TWO OR MORE chronic diseases.
What’s a chronic disease? A disease that requires the involvement of the medical/industrial/pharmaceutical complex for more than a year. Convenient isn’t it? Is it any wonder that Americans lack trust in their institutions? Except, of course, for the buddy boys who whine about paying for someone else’s healthcare. They may not trust in God nearly as much as they say they do. But they sure do trust in capitalism and corporations.
Doctors, who are increasingly being bought out by private equity, know this. They know that what they see day in and day out is systemic. They know the same system that benefits companies makes actual people poor. And they know that poor people get sicker and more often. Doctors know that people can’t afford to eat right. That they can’t afford housing. And that’s on the buddy boys too, the whiners. Meanwhile,
Pharma-coddling in the US leads to HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of medication-related deaths in America EACH YEAR.
The US races toward the lead in preventable deaths each year and usually comes in first among developed nations. Other countries have figured out how to make medical care a lot less expensive partly because they don’t buy into the economic doctrines beloved by the buddy boys. You broke it buddy, you bought it.
And that’s just fatness and chronic disease. I haven’t even gotten into air pollution and climate change. Air pollution literally puts people in the hospital. Which is, you know, expensive. Can you personal responsibility your way out of air pollution? Well you could try moving to the countryside, if you can afford it. Except, oh wait, the rural areas of the US are just as unhealthy, if not more so, than the urban ones. Many things dog lots of rural areas in America: high poverty rates, lack of access to medical care, exposure to pesticides, high stress rates, lack of recreational facilities, lack of job opportunities, and so on.
And there are other environmental factors that make Americans sick. Noise pollution, a big driver of heart disease. Extreme temperatures. Extreme heat and extreme cold are both implicated in heart disease – and both are getting worse due to climate change. Toxic metals. Yeah, it’s not just all those industrial chemicals and plastics. It’s also all those industrial metals that leach into the soil, the water, and the air. Many of them drive up both heart disease and cancer rates, and you can’t personal responsibility your way out of any of these factors. Shouldn’t the entities that ARE responsible pay for the healthcare costs their behavior causes?
You want to deny climate change, gut the EPA, and put toxin spewing data centers everywhere?
You can damn well pay for the medical costs your policies demand.
You know what else drives up healthcare costs? Stress. The stress of the American system and American values that put, you know, corporations over people. Things like economic inequality that leads to poverty. And homelessness. Gun violence. Racism. Overwork and job instability. Lack of worker protections.
If you support those things, and many of the buddy boys seem to, then you can pay for them. There is no free fucking lunch, you would be moochers!
So if you’re pretty fed up with paying for other people’s healthcare – feel free to start fixing a lot of the things your ideas broke.
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