The
Big Lie about “health care choice”
Lyndon Johnson had a saying about
special interests trying to get his support to pass some blatantly self-serving
legislation: “They can’t make chicken salad out of chicken (bleep)!”
Yet chicken (bleep) is all that the
corporate health complex has to work with as it frantically tries to defend its
current system of mass malpractice.
After all, as most Americans have learned the hard way, profiteering insurance giants, Big Pharma, and hospital chains grossly overcharge us while constantly trying to shortchange — or outright deny — care to millions of our families.
After all, as most Americans have learned the hard way, profiteering insurance giants, Big Pharma, and hospital chains grossly overcharge us while constantly trying to shortchange — or outright deny — care to millions of our families.
So, unable to win public support on
their own merit, the corporatists and their hired political hacks are going all
out to continue their gouging and keep control of America’s dysfunctional
system.
They’re now running a multimillion-dollar PR and lobbying campaign of lies to trash and kill all reforms that would deliver quality, comprehensive care to everyone, at far less cost than they can deliver.
Masquerading as a “Partnership for America’s Health Care Future,” the
profiteers warn ominously that such reforms as Medicare for All or a public
option for health insurance would take away people’s “choice” and our “control”
over health care.
Hello: we presently have no choice
or control.
Our “care” is managed by a handful of insurance, drug, and hospital monopolists whose primary objective is not improving our health, but feathering their own cushy nests. And the undeniable, ugly truth is that they can only continue ripping us off by killing real reform.
That’s one reason the American
Medical Association and others are dropping out of the Partnership’s political
front. Honest health care practitioners no longer believe it’s in their best
interest — or the public’s — to be part of its chicken (bleep) PR campaign.
OtherWords columnist Jim
Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. Distributed by
OtherWords.org.
