It has been over half a month since I wrote a piece for my blog. In fact, I was reminded that my last piece was posted on October 8^th. I had started writing a piece about the Israeli /Palestinian ceasefire when I began to feel a little under the weather. It started like a common cold and quickly progressed to affect my lungs. My wife called 911 when I could no longer breathe, and I was rushed to the hospital. In the emergency room, I was put on a BiPap to help me breathe and was admitted for a respiratory infection and cardiac observation. My pulse was over 130, and my blood pressure was sky high. I spent four days in the hospital on the 8^th floor at Health Park, in Fort Myers, Florida. I have to admit that the room had a great view, and I could watch the sunset every evening. From out the window, I could see all the way to the Sanibel Causeway. Overall, my care was good, but you could tell that at times they were understaffed, but were doing their best. I do wish that they could do something about that hospital food.

After 4 days, I was sent home. The diagnosis was a Respiratory Virus and Heart Failure.  They have oxygen set up in my home, and of course, I have all kinds of new meds that I have to take. There was a little bit of sticker shock with the new cardiac medicine I had to start taking. For a 30-day supply, the price was over 300 dollars, and that was with insurance. That is 3 times more than I would be paying if I lived in Canada. This is strictly because of greed. They use the excuse that they need to recoup the money they spend on research and development of these drugs, but look at how their profits have skyrocketed. From 2000 to 2018, 35 large pharmaceutical companies reported cumulative income of $1.9 trillion, with a median annual net income margin of 13.8%, significantly higher than the 7.7% margin for S&P 500 companies. The profitability of companies' profit margin increased from 15.3% in 1979 to 23.4% in 2018. In 2022, the five largest U.S. companies —Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, AbbVie, and Pfizer —reported combined net earnings of $81.9 billion, a $8 billion increase from 2021. So, what did they do with some of these profits? In 2022, they used $10 billion to buy back stock to ensure their stock would continue to rise. Not only is the pharmaceutical industry getting richer, but so are the shareholders. Who's not benefiting is the American consumer.

When it comes to healthcare, it is the American public that is the loser. As a nation, we spend the most on healthcare. In 2024, we had a per capita spending which was estimated at $14,885, which is way higher than any other country. This is way higher than even the countries that have Universal Healthcare. Canada spends $7,301 per capita, and thousands of Canadians follow me on social media, and I have never had one say that they would rather have our healthcare system. We are a nation that talks about caring about people, but that is all we are, talk. Here, we put profits before people's healthcare and people's lives, whereas many other countries put people's healthcare before profits. I dare you to search the timeline of universal healthcare. When I did, I was surprised by the results. You will see that Germany, in 1883, established the first national social health insurance system, which started implementing a compulsory sickness insurance program for workers. Norway introduced, in 1912, one of the first single-payer systems, providing state-funded healthcare for all citizens, and became the first country to adopt a universal healthcare policy. Reading through the timeline, I realized much of the rest of the industrialized world knew that healthcare was a problem early on and started working on it. In 1945, Truman tried to introduce universal healthcare, and Congress refused to pass it. I think since that day, we have been steadily falling behind the rest of the world when it comes to healthcare. Placing the burden of healthcare on employers just hasn’t worked, and that is why we have millions of workers with no healthcare. I wonder how many good-paying jobs would have stayed in this country and not gone overseas if we had had a universal healthcare system since 1945?

We are now in a government shutdown, and what is the major stumbling block? If you guessed healthcare, you would be correct. Republicans love to talk about fraud, particularly the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid, as a central argument in recent policy debates. One major claim focuses on so-called “phantom enrollees” in the ACA marketplaces - individuals who are enrolled on health plans but do not file any medical claims during the year. This argument is based on a report by the Paragon Health Institute, a Republican-aligned think tank. The report says the rising percentage of zero-claim enrollees jumped from 19% in 2021 to 35% in 2024, which, to them, indicates widespread fraud, such as brokers enrolling ineligible or non-existent individuals to collect subsidies. The Republicans, instead of going after the people who are committing the fraud, if there actually is that much fraud, just want to scrap healthcare for between 17 million people to 23 million people, depending on who is talking. The Republicans call it saving healthcare. Because they are willing to dump so many off the healthcare rolls instead of going after the fraud makes me think there is not very much fraud at all. I often read these cuts in healthcare are so they can pay for the tax breaks to billionaires at the expense of the people.

While I was in the hospital, I missed the “No Kings” march. I really wanted to be there just as I had been to three others. There was a meme of Trump flying a plane and dumping crap on the marchers. After looking at our healthcare system versus much of the world, I think that not only is Trump dumping crap on the marchers, but Trump and the Republican Party are dumping crap on the entire nation. It doesn’t matter if you live in a so-called red state or a so-called blue state; everyone in the nation, but the rich, suffers because of the Republican Party.