Healthcare
"Who are we if we can't protect them?" --Emily Blunt (A Quiet Place)
Part 1- INTRO (Dec 2019)
People ask how did healthcare become so unaffordable in the United States? The blame is on everyone once we talk to enough people. No one is innocent. It all depends on the paper you read or your source of information.
No one wants to take responsibility for what they have contributed. It's terrible public relations to admit that we are the reason people don't have access to care, that we are part of the reason healthcare premiums go up every year. Everyone wants to be a hero, and no one wants to be a villain in something as humanitarian as public health.
It's not the question of "whodunnit." We cannot pin down a guilty suspect, because we know we are all guilty of enabling companies, and people to act the way they do. We are accessories to their crimes.
The question we should ask is: " How did we get here?" How did we enable such a snowball effect to happen with public health?
The word that sums up how we got here is "exploitation." Like animals, we would do anything to protect ourselves and our loved ones. The difference between animals and us is we built multiple industries out of this fact. Animals will defend their families from predators or dangerous situations. We, on the other hand, pay others to protect ourselves and our family — protection from other humans.
The good that humans can do has helped life expectancy to rise with science and medicine. Because we are human, nothing is free due to logistics. Everything is business. Universally, greed, pride, and power are our most significant flaws. Innately, our kindness, caring side means we are willing to pay any price to save the life of the one we love or at least protect them. It's the perfect situation to make a multi-trillion-dollar industry in the United States.
The healthcare industry exploits the good in humanity.
No one has a sustainable answer to untangling this mess we got ourselves in, because we are too invested in the current system. Walking away means we have to cut our losses. We are not ready for it. The longer we wait to cut our losses, the more lives will be affected by our indecision. The question we have to ask ourselves is, "How much of the familiar are we willing to let go to move forward?" Our habits of what healthcare is have made us bias to change. We don't allow ourselves to see what healthcare could be without the familiar component of the current infrastructure.