And it is.. in civilized countries, those who deal with $-matters, costs as all must -- but are not obsessed with making every single pharm-chem and peripheral supplier obscenely rich: for every aspirin. (The perhaps last? often effective post-patent-scam 'drug' we'll see).

Still, and before the above might occur in the US, I think that the hegemony of the AMA - as much a Political Corporation as any of the other usual suspects - must be broken. {somehow}

It is not that allopathic medicine is perfectly unsuitable for actual maintenance of health via our cockamamie concept of treating the symptoms of disease. It is that, in mine and the opinions of millions worldwide: there is something fatally flawed in the way we condition wannabe medicos, who are rote-conditioned to seek a pharm-chem solution for Every office call. Yada & yada. This 'paradigm' battle is hardly new - but nowhere in the world is terminal Pigheadedness as rife as in our Corporatocracy.

At any rate.. I don't think even our bloated Corp dominated approach to all matters concerning real life -- can much longer sustain the horrendous burden of "making health care Profitable" -- with the same class-delineated pay scales. We are simply blind to the possibility of running such an enterprise on *salary* and without the Big Gold Ring of some participants being 'worth' $1000/hr. while the massive daily care is relgated to $7.50/hr workers: often WITHOUT any health care of their own. Much is siphioned-off into the Armani-suited drones of Insurance, the longest-running Econ-scam of all time.

ie the Murican System (as in Edu and so many other areas) is so fucking broken.. it's not even Wrong.

Fie on Stupidity; specially Institutionalized Stupidity set in concrete from decades of non-thought. What our health system needs is an Advocate of the perspicuity of a (Ben Tilly's find) [link|http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Gatto.html| John Gatto]. Instead we get fucking indoctrinated Econ-theoreticians or failed University students who couldn't make it is a Gym instructor - so went for an MBA. No brains or heart required, merely cupidity at its most primitive level.

Luck to us all. Revolution is hard, and we have become soft as McJellyfish swimming in the Mall aquarium. Should we reclaim Language, the bafflegab of Econ-minds could be dispatched along with its tawdry definitions of The Good life\ufffd.


Ashton

(And were ours not such a Perpetual Death-fear culture, with roots in lugubrious Puritanism, that HUGE balloon payment.. whereby the terminal will Pay Any Price for another 10 minutes of laboured breathing -- would still occur -- but not nearly to the degree we budget for now. But that's quite another thread. ;-)