Thirty million U.S. citizens do not have any medical coverage at all, and coverage for many more millions is inadequate. A lingering or chronic illness even in the latter case could mean bankruptcy and the loss of all property, along with the loss of one’s health.
The average annual salary for 80 million people is about $30,000. But the U.S. is alleged to be the greatest democracy in the world, and foremost economy. The anomaly presented by all of this doesn’t seem to bother St. Albert Gazette columnist Brian McLeod (Commentary, March 23), who believes universal health care is unaffordable in a country whose annual military budget is upwards of $700 billion a year. It is hardly surprising that surveys show the great majority of Americans 35 and under now find socialism a better option than capitalism.
The U.S. health-care system, in spite of its grave inadequacies, is still the costliest in the world. Much of the cost is siphoned off to private interests, private HMO or health management organizations, duplications of administrative functions, poor systemic co-ordination and other waste or illness-profiteering that if eliminated might well provide for universal care.
But McLeod believes the problem can't be solved without greater taxation on wealth which would drive the wealthy out of the country. To where? All European countries have universal health care and tax at a higher rate, and even Russia and China have public systems.
Perhaps McLeod is thinking of New Zealand, which has so much property in the hands of the foreign super-rich that it has had to institute restrictions and higher land prices.
Douglas Rushkoff has written a book and an essay, the latter available online: Survival of the Richest is the ironic title. It is an account of brainstorming sessions he was highly paid for as a consultant to a New Zealand right-wing think tank, to advise on high-tech methods of protecting the super-rich from the effects of their neoliberal, winner-take-all, maximum-profit-or-die, a-resource-in-the-ground-is-a-wasted-resource mindset.
One question he was asked was the possibility of an electronic around-the-neck control device against the possibility private guards would turn on their “employers” in the event money became worthless.
This does not paint a pretty picture of capitalism in its newest incarnation, a state of affairs predicted by Marx. And it isn’t inconceivable: the situation in Britain since Thatcher, and the 2017 Grenfell Tower disaster is iconic, supports the idea of an “unfettered” capitalism that has failed to include the vital human element as its fatal flaw. More of the same is not an option.
Doris Wrench Eisler, St. Albert
