Survival__ Structuring Prosperity for Yourself and the Nation - Charles George Smith [211]
The net result is that "healthcare "(a.k.a. sickcare) spending has leaped to some 16% of the entire U.S. economy, even as the citizenry's health by most measures declines and the inequalities of healthcare in the nation rise.
It's a staggeringly profitable confluence of windfalls, State-enabled cartels, State redistribution of income to Elites and "shadow" governance by concentrated centers of power and influence.
First, sicken the citizenry with facsimile foods expressly designed for "mouth-feel" and the triggering of narcotic-like brain centers that are sold at immense profits via a mass media/marketing cartel.
Next, mount a propaganda campaign to mask the causal connection from corporate agribusiness/fast-food/manufactured food to ill health behind a screen of "the U.S. has the finest healthcare system in the world."
Third, enable direct marketing of largely ineffective medications and treatments directly to the public, even as the true cost of the treatments are obscured behind a "free money, free treatment" facade which collects trillions of dollars from citizens and enterprises (via "insurance" or taxes for Medicare/Medicaid) and distributes it to various cartels--the very opposite of the "competitive market" touted in media/State propaganda.
Fourth, misdirect public attention from the known causes of their ill-health--their consumption of unhealthy food, their lack of activity and their ignorance of nutrition, chronic disease and the system they are ensnared in--to magical-thinking "magic pills" and the ever-increasing consumption of drugs and treatments for lifestyle diseases.
Fifth, create a complexity fortress of State bureaucracy and industrial obfuscation (side effects small print, ginned-up Phase III trials, absence of testing interactivity with other common drugs, and so on) which collects vast sums of money and distributes it without regard for efficacy or efficiency into the various "healthcare" cartels.
Sixth, manage the multitude of diseases created by poor diet and inactive lifestyle with increasingly complex treatments of multiple medications and costly surgical interventions, both of which are found to be ineffective or dangerous years later--but only after even more costly "treatments" are devised.
Seventh, fund the ballooning cost of this highly profitable system by borrowing trillions of dollars from overseas creditors, effectively shoving the costs onto future generations.
Eighth, never admit the system creates the illnesses it then manages so profitably, or that it is not a competitive open market system at all but a State/Elite partnership operated for the benefit of the State fiefdoms and the Power Elites which control them.
This same "shadow governance," propaganda and State/Power Elite partnership can be found in "national defense" (defense of the Empire, and who benefits from that?), banking/finance, and every other market which is controlled by a State/Elite partnership to the benefit of State fiefdoms and Power Elites.
No enterprise--be it a sole proprietorship, a global corporation or a national government--can spend more than it creates in surplus.
In vernacular terms, we call this "going in the hole every month." The U.S. economy has not generated a surplus in decades; the difference between what we have earned as surplus capital and what we have spent has been borrowed or paid for with fiat dollars created out of thin air.
This con is unsustainable over the long term. Just because we as a nation have continued the con for decades does not mean the con will not catch up to us at some point. Rather, the con is unraveling right now as the world grows nervous about the instabilities being created by one nation passing off trillions of dollars in worthless paper and in