via Monday Note (A Medium Blog):
I began to see a different picture, one where people who call themselves Christians see nothing wrong with letting their brethren try to get by without coverage, nothing wrong with insurance companies gaming their customers. I saw how we spend more for healthcare than any other nation and end up with worse outcomes than any first-world country, especially infant mortality and postpartum deaths. As my friend and former colleague Joe Palmer likes to say: It costs more, but it does less.
All this because of ideology, because our government spends about $1T for a war in Iraq, a sum that would have been better spent on universal health coverage. European nations do it, it isn’t perfect, but their example, especially Germany, shows it’s possible and doesn’t bankrupt the country. But no, ideology wins, “it’s Socialism!”, a word used to shut down rational discussion. In that way, we’re just as bad as the religious extremists we claim to fight, an article of faith overrides facts.
At first too busy in Cupertino, and not yet a citizen, I later came to realize how we elected representatives who, once installed in Congress, sold us to a rogues’ gallery of lobbies for pharma, telecommunications, financial, oil or agribusiness interests. Our solons need money for their next election campaign. All leading to the surreal Citizens United Supreme Court decision that give Free Speech and unlimited electoral spending to nonprofit corporations, including made-up ones for political campaigns.
Jean-Louis Gassée is on a roll of-late. His weekly editorials have been home-runs. Only an immigrant could make such profound and remarkable observations about our world. The entire article is worth a read.