'Soylent Green?' Our current system is worse!

In the 1973 movie "Soylent Green," the elderly are convinced to be euthanized and they are then turned into biscuits to feed the over-populated earth. When introduced in 1973 it was a horrifying thought, but now I realize that today’s healthcare system is worse, much worse. 

In the "Soylent Green" imaginary version of America, when your productive life runs out they put you into the food chain. In today’s reality version of America, they put you into the money chain, that is until your heart stops. But don’t expect your heart to stop quickly when so many stand to make big profits on a few more beats.

When my mother languished in a hospital cardiac unit for months with lung disease, they wouldn’t let me take her home to die, because in their words “for her to leave she needed to do it on her own power.”  Instead they jammed a ventilator down her throat, ripping apart her esophagus day after day to keep her blood oxygen level high enough that her heart wouldn’t stop. My mother had become part of the money chain where the drug companies and corporate healthcare providers were becoming rich. This system in rooted on by people that claim that opting out of the system by killing ourselves is a sin. The same people championing sanctity of life couldn't give a damn about the sanctity of a healthy life. Today we can’t even ask the doctors to help us die, because the corporatists masquerading as moralists will throw them in jail. Today’s medical system is much worse than that portrayed in "Soylent Green."

My wife went to the drug store to purchase a prescription recently. Our cost, because we have insurance was $5, where the same prescription without insurance would have been $95. My friend uses inhalers that cost $20 when paid for by Medicare, but $250 when they fall into the doughnut hole, or if you don’t qualify for insurance. These are clear examples of why we do not want to be on our own trying to negotiate with businesses for our healthcare and drugs, but the current drumbeat of the media is telling us to stand up and take care of ourselves! Being on your own is like going to court without a lawyer, not smart and almost a guarantee that you will lose. As a side note, Obamacare doesn’t negotiate for lower drug and medical costs, the advantage of as seen above, because the Republicans demanded that those provisions be dropped for passage of the bill. Whose interests did the Republicans and Democrats that relented have in mind, ours or the corporate profits?

Try looking for a nursing home for a parent that needs constant care. They want all their assets, all their Medicare, and easily $5,000 a month paid for by the children.  Hard choices for families where both parents must work and can’t stay home to provide elder care. Most of the need for dual income is because real wages haven’t gone up since "Soylent Green" was released in 1973. Because the Republicans went on a war against unions and have mostly won, while the middle class lost.  The only guarantee now is that when we die, we and our children, will have been sucked dry of all our wealth by the profit machine. 

If your kid needs a shot to go to school, be prepared to pay $57 at the local drug store and $150 with insurance at the local healthcare business. As we can see someone is making a bunch of money on immunizations that are not only necessary but mandatory to maintain the public health. Did I mention that corporate profits, including healthcare and pharmaceutical companies are at an all-time high, with the economy at an all-time low? 

Here is our future as elderly and infirm citizens of our wonderful nation. We can expect to have many years languishing on a gurney with tubes connected, receiving doses of extremely high-cost drugs designed to give us a few extra heartbeats, so others can profit handsomely. You and I will be converted into a money-making machine for the medical and pharmaceutical businesses and all the other small companies in that profit chain. Our legacy will be that we will have served our system well, as soldiers of the money chain. You will not be able to terminate your life as an alternative, like they did in "Soylent Green," because anyone that helps you will go to jail and become part of the corporate incarceration business, where profits are also wonderful.

The future of our healthcare cannot change unless we change it, through forced conversion to a non-profit structure and/or government take-over of the entire system. It’s time that we stand up and say, "No More!"