Public health versus private health: understanding the differences can be literally life and death for a society or civilization. The US has been slowly bankrupting itself providing exotic healthcare for all sorts of personal things including annoying sexual performance problems in the gnome community (viagra!). The US under serves public healthcare while overspending on private healthcare and this is putting us at a severe disadvantage in trade as well as driving our government off the cliff (of course, our many wars are also at fault here).
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As per usual, the US public writhes with fear, agony and partisan anger as we try, for the umpteenth time, to develop a national health program that is as useful and frugal as 80% of the top manufacturing nations on earth. The health statistics for the US public are miserable. We rank below nearly all of Europe and many Asian countries in longevity, child health and maternal deaths. Yet we have the most expensive medical complex system on earth.
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It is a mirror of our military/industrial complex. Expensive, totally out of touch with pressing matters, focused mostly on cosmetic appearances and impossible to change. And is bankrupting us. The twin forces of our extravagant military and our deluxe but nonfunctional health systems are tearing our nation apart and both will ultimately destroy our entire civilization if not reined in, somehow.
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One very bad problem we have, concerning healthcare, is differentiating between what is for the public good and what is private. We are a collective. Anyone who thinks he is an island, should move to one and not leave it. The rest of us live in the middle of an ocean of humanity, all of us are interconnected in a wide variety of ways.
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One way we are connected is, we share the same breathing spaces. That is, people breathe in and out all over the place (unless they are holding their breath!) and viruses love this aspiration methodology to aspire to multiply via coughing or sneezing. When did the first virus evolve to spread via breathing? We don’t know but I bet, it was around the same time the first amphibians began to walk on dry land.
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When the first Labyrinthodontia came toddling ashore, it probably cast a glance over to another Labyrinthodontia and said, ‘My nose itches. *Achoo*’. The other one said, ‘Gesundheit,’ and then went back into the water only it felt awfully sick the next day. Long before the ruling elites tried to get rich, running the G7 nations, the real pests were the Virus Empire and the Bacterial Kingdom. These two conglomeration of single celled party poopers have a long and stellar history of out-evolving all other life forms. More about that later.
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One of the main functions of any civilization that wishes to exist for very long is to deal with the Virus Empire and the Bacterial Kingdom and to keep them either at bay or under control. Anytime a government loses control of these two dire bio armies, chaos and death ensue. Out of curiosity, since I dislike simply assuming anything, here is a useful timeline about US public healthcare:
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Health Care Law: U.S. Health Care Timelines
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