The CEO of GoFundMe did not anticipate that a third of the money raised on that platform is used to meet life-threatening medical needs, which should tell everyone that the system is broken.
The system is terrible. It needs to be rethought and retooled. Politicians are failing us. Health care companies are failing us. Those are realities. I don’t want to mince words here. We are facing a huge potential tragedy. We provide relief for a lot of people. But there are people who are not getting relief from us or from the institutions that are supposed to be there. We shouldn’t be the solution to a complex set of systemic problems. They should be solved by the government working properly, and by health care companies working with their constituents. We firmly believe that access to comprehensive health care is a right and things have to be fixed at the local, state and federal levels of government to make this a reality.
Hah, right, “government working properly”. We haven’t seen any of that since a mob of assholes got elected who think government is the problem. Thanks, Reagan, keep on putrefying, you slimeball.
“Government working properly”? The assholes running things right now think the government IS working properly. (Or, if anything, is too indulgent.)
Hard to fix when the folks with the most power either are proudly ignorant or proud that our system is cruel to the poor and unlucky.
Maybe if access to healthcare for all was pitched as a public health issue: stress that the sick homeless person could easily infect the rich folks, that is why we need health care for all folks. Make it a selfish pitch. Tell them that sick people make terrible employees and terrible customers.
Still probably wouldn’t work since too many believe that personal wealth can shield them from an epidemic. Just like they believe that personal wealth will permit them to leave this planet and colonize another or have their being coded into a computer when the environment becomes too degraded. Delusions to justify the status quo.
US government decided to optimize the healthcare. So they streamlined it and took the “care” bit out.
“Government working properly” is at least theoretically possible, given that it seems to work (or work better, at least) in many other parts of the world far better than it does here in the US. The idea that corporations might do the right thing without a gun to their heads, however, is pure fantasy.
This problem is made even worse when a lot of the donated money goes to quacks and woos. The system is broken in multiple dimensions.
Liberal: “The Poor are dying because they can’t afford health care which is why I support a universal public option”
“Liberal” : “bLOcK gRaNtS”
Don’t forget Bill “The era of big government is over” Clinton. He spent his post-Presidential career helping further de-democratize the world through his foundation which promoted reliance on private sector charity to replace the role governmental programs would’ve normally served. I’m not sure if Clinton’s well-meaning destruction of public power is better or worse than Regan’s cynical destruction of it.
Reagan is still pretty progressive by GOP standards. His grave, after all, is currently one of the largest gender neutral bathrooms in the United States.
@2 whywhywhy
We have been saying, for years, that “if you actually pay people, they might be able to buy your products!”, to these same bunch of self serving monsters, and they keep screaming about minimum wages being too high, or unfair, or a detriment to their prosperity. Why the F would any of them buy that sick employees are a bad idea, instead of just lobbying to make it easier to fire them, instead, or something?