Health care system is failing us

The PolitiFact question of Oct. 11 asks “Is ‘Medicare for All’ plan too costly?” and it provides a cogent analysis of the cost issues but turns a blind eye to the ethical, political and economic realities beneath the surface.

Every civilized nation on earth except America has a single-payer healthcare system funded by taxation based on the ideology that health care is a basic human right not a “for profit” product for sale.

America has lost sight of the humane and ethical balance between capitalism and socialism fed by the belief that “market forces” can control health care costs. Our grid-locked Congress has failed to negotiate a compromise, many of whose members are millionaires bribed by lobbyists for pharmaceutical and insurance companies. We have opted for an epoch of corporate greed and corruption that has turned health care into a massive “for profit” enterprise.

Medicine, once a profession, has become a business. Old fashioned hospitals that cared for the poor or uninsured have gone bankrupt in droves, replaced by classy Health Care Corporations disguised as “not for profit” to evade taxation, but keeping an eagle eye on their bottom line with huge advertising budgets and bevies of unproductive highly paid administrators.

While the top 1% of the population enjoy “concierge” medicine, the average citizen is coping with income disparity, loss of retirement and diminished health care benefits, sometimes facing the stark choice between bankruptcy or death.

Barry Blackwell, M.D.

Milwaukee