Death Panels

Death Panels

“Our civil rights laws protect the equal dignity of every human life from ruthless utilitarianism,” Roger Severino, the office’s director, said in a news release. “Persons with disabilities, with limited English skills and older persons should not be put at the end of the line for health care during emergencies.”

-       U.S. Civil Rights Office Rejects Rationing Medical Care Based on Disability, Age - NY Times

By JM Hamilton (4-4-2020)

Neoliberalism, or market rule, suffered several more body blows this week.  It now appears, that more deadly than the virus itself, is the laissez faire economy that allow companies and corporate C-suite brass to do anything they please.  The coronavirus, an insidious disease, is both a great leveler and revealer of how badly the US economy has been mismanaged by the political duopoly… in the service of a handful of oligarchs & to the complete detriment of nearly half the American population.

Unemployment has soared w/ 6.6 million more Americans cutoff from badly needed wages, in the matter of just one week (this comes at a time when 40% of American can’t meet a $400 emergency payment), and some economists now expect that unemployment may actually exceed Great Depression levels. Retail, restaurants and hospitality have all taken significant hits, as the entire economy suffers cascading effects from the virus & self-inflicted neoliberal/globalist economic policies.

Notably, in response to the economic pandemic created by our neoliberal economy’s inability to suffer a crisis of this magnitude, Congress - and The Federal Reserve (FED) - stepped in to bailout the usual suspects (once again):  Banks, Billionaires, Multinationals, Private Equity businesses that thrive off debt, and of course, US Healthcare.  More specifically, Congress passed a CARES Act worth $2.3 trillion, all of it financed, and the FED will be adding another $4.0 trillion in debt to the $2.3 trillion figure.  The average American can expect to see a onetime payment of $1200, whereas Wall Street can expect the FED to ride to its rescue w/ approximately $4.4 trillion (w/ little or no oversight… it’s 2008 all over again, only worse). Increasingly, we are told, by the Wall Street cognoscenti, w/ the neoliberal economy crashing down all around us, that we are not, repeat “not,” in another financial crisis.  Those assurances are falling on incredulous ears w/ the FED rolling out program after program to salvage Wall St, stock, repo, corporate debt, commercial/residential mortgages, and small business lending markets.

The private equity/financial engineering model is now so pervasive, w/in the American economy, that debt and leverage has left few mid-sized & large companies able to withstand the crisis, w/out welfare from the FED and the federal government. That is to say, management & ownership set many of these companies up for failure – w/ leveraged buyouts, mergers, stock buybacks, & financed dividends.  A fact that often seems omitted from the financial press and the MSM.

But perhaps no industry – and there are many standouts – represents the gross corruption, cronyism, and ineptitude of the neoliberal economy better than the healthcare industry.  The US Healthcare industry is a disaster, and is not only dangerous to their employees -- the brave women and men who serve on the front lines of the pandemic -- but it’s a threat to Americans and the American economy (like a vampire, sucking out approximately double the GDP, as nearly all other Western democracies, or close to 20%).

Some of the middlemen, the healthcare insurers, know they are in trouble, and we can see this firsthand by their sudden willingness to wave copays and deductibles, in the treatment of the coronavirus.  Quite the humanitarians?  Meanwhile, while many blame the federal government for the failure to plan and warn for the raging pandemic (and the congress and executive branch certainly share in that blame)… few w/in government & journalism are asking why the private sector didn’t have appropriate stockpiles available for an entirely foreseeable event?  Can you say, “shareholder litigation?”

And now the failure to plan – or fiduciary irresponsibility, simple negligence, & professional incompetence - is leading to the very real prospect that the US healthcare industry will have to institute death panels.  Death panels are where administrative and professional healthcare staff will make life or death decisions as who, and who will not, receive lifesaving care.  

Such irony, Republicans used to argue that socialized medicine would lead to shortages of care and death panels, but nope, it’s the for-profit – debt & greed soaked – US healthcare system that will, likely, be instituting death panels (if they are not already in place w/in viral hotspots).

At this point, Americans should ask why they are paying double, in GDP, for a healthcare system that is collapsing and failing to provide them care, in the middle of a life & death crisis?  Why does this same industry engage in shock & awe billing, and why is healthcare the leading cause of personal bankruptcy?

Moreover, much of our for-profit - inveterate - healthcare system is addicted to government welfare, at the same time it reports out tens of billions in profits. 

Consider:

Medicare;

Medicaid;

Medicare, Part D (Big Pharma welfare);

The ACA (Corporate welfare defined);

$100 Billion in Hospital subsidies, courtesy of the freshly minted CARES Act.

(The US healthcare model is so irrevocably dangerous - placing profits before the health of the American people and the US economy - that the POTUS had to utilize the Defense Production Act just to get US multinationals off their hind quarters and producing critical lifesaving machinery, such as ventilators.) 

In short, the entire for-profit healthcare industry is backstopped by government (like every other too big to fail multinational w/in the US economy). A federal government that operates w/ both arms tied behind its back, in that it forgoes nearly all powers that would allow it to curtail & mitigate excessive profit taking by the healthcare & Big Pharma industries.  And that's exactly what makes the aforementioned government programs corporate welfare. 

Our elected leaders' campaign coffers, from both parties, grow wealthy from healthcare industry donations and the whole death dealing cycle repeats.

Meanwhile, here again, is an industry, loaded w/ middlemen and overhead, that privatizes profits, while socializing losses (for greed, gross incompetence, and failure).

None of this is directed at the brave healthcare women and men, who are putting their lives, and their families’ lives, on the line, as they selflessly fight a war against an invisible & silent killer. All of this piece is aimed at the billionaires, healthcare multinational executives, and Wall Street financiers & fund managers, who insist upon maintaining a broken healthcare system for their own personal profit. 

A healthcare system that is essentially a death panel for the American people & the US economy.  Unfortunately, the United States is well past sixty-five years of age, and we appear to have many self-inflicted wounds... not the least of which are globalism, imperialism, and neoliberalism.

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2020