Bill Maher on Health Care

[via HBO: Real Time with Bill Maher: New Rules: July 24, 2009]

“And finally, New Rule: Not everything in America has to make a profit. You know, if conservatives get to call universal healthcare “socialized medicine,” I get to call private, for-profit healthcare “soulless, vampire bastards making money off human pain.”

Now, I know what you’re thinking: But, Bill, the profit motive is what sustains capitalism! Yes, and our sex drive is what sustains the human species. But we don’t try to f*ck EVERYTHING. It’s okay for some things to remain non-profit. Just like when it comes to sexual relations, some people are off limits, like your cousin or your sister…or, if you’re a leading Republican, your wife.

Now, it wasn’t that long ago that when a kid in America broke his leg, his parents took him to the local Catholic hospital, the nun stuck a thermometer in his ass, the doctor slapped some plaster on his ankle and you were done. The bill was $1.50, plus you got to keep the thermometer.

But, like everything else that’s good and noble in life, some bean-counter decided that hospitals could also be big business. So, now they’re not hospitals anymore. They’re Jiffy Lube’s with bedpans. The more people who get sick and stay sick, the higher their profit margins. Which is why they’re always pushing the Jell-O.

Did you know that the United States is ranked 50th in the world in life-expectancy? And the 49 loser countries where they live longer than us, oh, it’s hardly worth it; they may live longer, but they live shackled to the tyranny of non-profit healthcare. Here in America, you’re not coughing up blood, little Bobby; you’re coughing up freedom.

The problem with President Obama’s healthcare plan isn’t socialism. It’s capitalism. When did the profit motive become the only reason to do anything? When did that become the new patriotism? “Ask not what you could do for your country, ask what’s in it for Blue Cross-Blue Shield.”

And it’s not just medicine. Prisons also used to be a non-profit thing. And for good reason. Who the hell wants to own a prison? By definition, you’re going to have trouble with the tenants. It is not a coincidence that we outsourced running prisons to private corporations, and then the number of prisoners in America skyrocketed. There used to be some things we just didn’t do for money.”

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What Maher doesn’t say here is the worst part: the people making billions out of the system we have today are paying hundreds of millions to the campaigns of congress people who have free health care, and who are making millions legislating health care.

I despair at democracy, because the people with money have every incentive to rig the game.

And so we have all the congress people telling us we have to be afraid of losing our own doctors, that we can’t afford this. How can all the leading industrial countries of the world do it? Why doesn’t someone (Obama?) call their bluff. They are lying, and they could care less.