The Next Failure of Health Reform

Vincent Navarro: The Next Failure of Health Reform
"Why does this situation persist in the U.S.?
For any society, medicine is a mirror of the power relations in that society. And nowhere is the lack of human rights more evident than in the house of medicine. In the U.S., insensitivity toward human needs goes hand-in-hand with enormous profits made from that suffering. The root of the problem, as noted earlier, is not lack of money but the channels through which that money is managed and spent. The problem is the privatization of the funding of medicine that allows profits to boom. The insurance and pharmaceutical industries enjoy the highest rates of profit in the U.S. Just last year, insurance industry profits reached $12 billion, and pharmaceutical industry profits $49 billion, the highest in the U.S. and in the world. According to Fortune Magazine, health-related industries are among the most profitable industries in the country. A lot of money is being made from people's suffering. "

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