Terminal Condition
Donald L. Barlett and James B.
Steele, in Critical Condition (Doubleday, 2004), focused their skills
as investigative journalists, on the American health care system.
The nature of our dysfunctional system is analyzed in great detail. The book should have sparked a national demand for sweeping reform in healthcare because of its shocking revelations. That it failed to produce a public outcry is an indication of the power of the healthcare industry’s control of the media.
A concise summary of the book can be found in a quote from page 73:
“This, then, is the sorry picture of health care in America. We spend
more money than anyone else in the world – and have less to show
for it. We have a second-rate system that doesn’t adequately cover
half or more of the population. We encourage hospitals and doctors
to perform unnecessary medical procedures on people who don’t need
them, while denying the procedures to those who do. We clog our
emergency rooms with patients who have insurance because they
can’t get in to see their doctors. We stand a good chance of dying
from a prescription drug taken at home. We charge the poor far
more for their medical services than we do the rich. We force
senior citizens with modest incomes to board a bus and travel to
Canada or
Mexico to buy drugs they can’t afford here. We require
ambulances to
drive around a city until they can find a
hospital
willing to
accept a patient for emergency treatment. We have a
system in
such constant turmoil that almost everyone involved is
unhappy –
patients, doctors, nurses aides, technicians.
Almost
everyone.
But for a lucky few, the turmoil is worth a
lot of money.”
National Capitalism
From 1933-1945, the governing principle of
Germany’s political, social, and
economic life was known as
National Socialism. Its central tenet was that all individual
efforts were to be subservient to the needs of German society. The individual’s
goal and highest
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