4 ms·
Well, if you are not from around here :-), the calculus is simple. The healthcare "industry" manages to levy anywhere from 4 to 6% tax on the GDP of the wealthi
by ChuckMcM 6y ago
Well, if you are not from around here :-), the calculus is simple. The healthcare "industry" manages to levy anywhere from 4 to 6% tax on the GDP of the wealthiest nation on Earth, and instead of giving that tax to the Government it goes to a handful of individual corporations.
That wealth sucking monster has its tendrils deep into every PAC and politician it can find. And like a giant organism that wants to survive. It employs hundreds of thousands of people who insure that the status quo, remains.
Even people who aren't employed by the beast but are wealthy hold large quantities of "stocks" in the beast so that they, like small trigger fish on a shark, might benefit the wealth that spills over as the beast munches at the trough of human despair and disease.
Yeah, it's a bit cynical, but I swear every bit of it is true.
- hokumguru 6y agoThat same beast produced a vaccine to Covid-19 in merely two days. I believe all but one of the major vaccines to the virus come from the USA. The machine is all-consuming but it surely doesn't all go to waste.
- symlinkk 6y agoYou could point to anything and say “look! it did something good!” but that doesn’t mean it can’t be improved upon.
- sitic 6y agoWhich vaccine would that be? The Pfizer one was developed by BioNTech in Germany (it's also produced by Fosun Pharma for China), the Johnson & Johnson one was developed by their Belgian subsidiary Janssen. I think only the Moderna (NIAID) and Novavax are truly "US-developed" vaccines. The AstraZeneca one was developed in the UK, Sputnik V by Russia, and CureVac is German. Besides, I don't think patient-healthcare spending (where the US is spending an additional 5-8% of GDP) affects that or where they were developed.
- relaxing 6y agoThat’s not remotely true. Even of the two RNA vaccines, Pfizer-BioNTech was developed in Germany. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine was developed in the Netherlands. Oxford-AstraZeneca is a UK product. And China, India and Russia each have multiple vaccines approved.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]