CNN’s Lou Dobbs calls what’s happening to us ‘The War on the Middle Class.’
That’s not hard to believe.
Since the year 2000 charges for physicians’ services have increased 17%. Drug costs and medical supplies have gone up 23%, and hospitals are charging 39% more for their services.
It’s no wonder that General Motors is close to bankruptcy. Healthcare obligations it made for its employees and retirees are pushing them to the financial brink. And I’ll bet your employer is asking you to contribute more to your healthcare. Or perhaps your health coverage has been cancelled all together. If you are a small businessperson, you understand the problem all too well. Can you afford healthcare for you and your family? For your employees?
As I see it, a major contributor to this ‘War on the Middle Class’ is this one out-of-control segment of our economy. Why isn’t Congress taking the healthcare industry and all its components to task? I’m betting The American Hospital Association, The American Medical Association, and the Pharmaceutical Industry Association are paying our elected representatives to look the other way.
It’s no wonder so many American jobs are being ‘outsourced’ to foreign countries and their workers. Healthcare costs are making us too expensive to keep employed. It’s not surprising that many employers are turning to illegal immigrants to power their enterprises. They can pay them less than the normal American worker, and when they get injured or sick, they can simply dump them at a local hospital and let the taxpayers foot the bill.
Many hospitals in border states have been forced out of business due to the of treating uninsured illegal aliens. That’s one excuse for hospitals charging more; their numbers are fewer and those still operating are treating more of the uninsured.
What’s Congress doing? They passed Medicare Part D, the prescription benefit plan for seniors, but that legislation was written and pushed by the insurance and pharmaceutical companies. They certainly didn’t author that legislation to curb their profits.
Did anyone in Congress ask why pharmaceutical costs increased 9% last year? These companies claim they need more money to spend on R&D. The fact is they spend as much money on advertising as they do on research and development. Why not outlaw the advertising of prescription drugs on TV and have the savings can be passed on to the consumer?
We of the average middle class are getting screwed. We’re being out-lobbied by greedy corporations and industry associations whose only interest is increasing the bottom line. To hell with what’s happening to the average person and his or her family. They are destroying the very backbone of this country, the American Middle Class. They don’t seem to care.
Perhaps George Carlin said it best in his recent HBO Special.
“You and I are not in ‘The Big Club.’ By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head all day long where they tell you what to believe, all day long, beating you over the head in their media, telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy.
The table is tilted folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good, honest, hardworking people in white or blue collar—it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on—good, honest, hardworking people continue to elect these sick ---------s who don’t give a ---- about you. They don’t care about you at all, at all, at all.
And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. That’s what the owners (of this country) count on, the fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue ---- being jammed up their -------s everyday.
Because the owners of this country know that the truth is called The American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.”
