Medical debt is a leading cause of bankruptcy in the US. But for every $1 invested, cities and states can retire ~$100 worth of residents' medical debt. A growing number of them are starting to use public funds to purchase and forgive millions in debt. More of this, please.
@rbreich
City and state strategies to wipe out residents' medical debt is working well as a stopgap, but I am conflicted about the fact that it perpetuates and enables a system that creates enormous personal medical debt for absolutely no reason other than that our politicians are bought and paid for by Big Pharma, Big Medical, and Big Insurance.
We need single payer, universal healthcare.
Every public dollar diverted to pay medical debt is a dollar that supports debt collectors and private, for-profit predatory healthcare and insurance providers.
Every public dollar diverted to pay medical debt is a dollar that could be more efficiently spent directly on healthcare without the profit-taking middlemen.
Americans are fully responsible for the absolute joke of a "healthcare" system we endure.
But I can't help but think about this:
The backsliding of healthcare systems into an American model of profitcare, which we're currently seeing in Canada and the UK, result from lawmakers in those countries seeing American lawmakers and corporations get away with it.
These profitcare systems deserve public ridicule with the force of a thousand suns.
Americans should be ashamed that we are leading the way in the international deterioration of public healthcare. We should be ashamed that we are exporting inhumane and cruel systems.
I stand with the people of Canada and the UK, and I will do what I can to help them fight healthcare profiteering as I continue to fight it here in the US.
From Salon: "In an era when multiple catastrophes are competing for primacy, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that our society is entering a death spiral. We are in a period of what UC Berkeley professor Alexei Yurchak calls 'hypernormalisation'... It describes a moment when everyone knows the system is failing but no one has a viable alternative vision, so the state of decay comes to seem normal."
This article underscores the need for a positive vision for the future, one where #HealthCareIsAHumanRight, #HousingIsAHumanRight, and we advance #EconomicJustice and #SocialJustice. People know the current system isn't working for them, and we need something that motivates people and gives them hope. Otherwise we're just going to fall further into #despair and #fascism.