Health inequality & poverty US-style

Sat Dec 8 18:10:47 GMT 2012

Inequality and poverty US-style
http://www.redressonline.com/2012/12/inequality-and-poverty-us-style/
By Graham Peebles - December 07, 2012

Irrespective of ones circumstances or stage of 
life, illness is never welcome. But in the United 
States if you are poor it can prove to be a total 
catastrophe, ending often in personal bankruptcy.
Inadequate healthcare

According to a report published in The American 
Journal of Medicine, medical bills are a major 
factor in more than 60 per cent of the personal 
bankruptcies in the United States. Healthcare 
insurance is an unaffordable luxury for the 15 
per cent of the population  about 50 million 
people  now officially regarded as living in 
poverty in the USA, anxiously relying on good 
luck and a poor diet to keep sickness at bay.

Average individual healthcare insurance costs 
around 200 dollars per month, but this does not 
automatically cover prescription charges. Having 
paid around 12,000 dollars into insurance company 
coffers and made no claim in five years, a friend 
recently needed hospital care: no charge for 
admission and stay but antibiotics had to be paid 
for with an extra 50 dollars. My daughter, who is 
living in New York and has family health 
insurance, was charged 100 dollars for an 
ameliorative cream earlier in the year, as if it 
were infused with miracle oil and laced with melted gold.

The American healthcare system is a money-making 
machine for the insurance giants and their 
pharmaceutical bedfellows, and a major cause of 
poverty and hardship in the country.

According to the Bureau of Investigative 
Journalism, the US healthcare industry is the 
largest in the world with 300 billion dollars a 
year spent on prescription drugs alone, a figure 
that is rising in tandem with the pharmaceutical 
companies colossal profits. Surprisingly  or 
perhaps not, given US politicians relationship 
with corporate leaders  the prices set by these 
companies are protected in law, even though 80 
per cent of the population would support lower rates.

The American healthcare system is a money-making 
machine for the insurance giants and their 
pharmaceutical bedfellows, and a major cause of 
poverty and hardship in the country. It is 
inefficient and, at about double the cost per 
capita of comparable countries, extremely expensive.

The fact that the worlds only so-called 
superpower does not offer a healthcare system 
to all its citizens reflects the driving 
ideological doctrine that underpins all areas of 
life in the USA: capitalism with its single 
motive, profit. It is a system that is fuelling 
economic and social inequalities and trapping 
increasing numbers of people into a life of poverty and despair.
Disadvantaged and living in poverty

In August 2012 43 million Americans were classed 
as living in poverty, higher than at any time 
since 1959 when data was first collected and 
amounting to a 70 per cent increase in five 
years. These are people who rely on the 
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program  food 
stamps  for their meals. However, if inflation 
was still calculated in the way it was 30 or 40 
years ago, the poverty line would be much higher 
and millions more Americans would be considered 
as living in poverty. Predictably, wealth and 
poverty fall along lines demarcated by race and 
social background: 27 per cent of Hispanic and 
black people and 31 per cent of single mothers, 
compared with 13 per cent of adults generally.

Since the late 1970s poverty rates and levels of 
economic equality have been increasing 
dramatically. Under the presidency of Ronald 
Reagan and the days of unbridled competition and 
market forces that his administration championed, 
poverty numbers leapt to a little below the 
present figure. Reagan famously admitted to 
having fought a war on poverty and poverty won. 
Those under fire were poorly armed and 
inadequately prepared; the battle rages today and 
more furiously, with inequities and social disadvantages acute.

Lack of opportunities and a plethora of social 
problems, including overcrowding in housing and 
at school, poor nutrition and poor healthcare, 
contravene the spirit, at least, of the Universal 
Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25/1 of 
which states: Everyone has the right to a 
standard of living adequate for the health and 
well-being of himself and of his family, 
including food, clothing, housing and medical 
care and necessary social services. Living in 
unsafe communities destroys hope and makes people 
more susceptible to emotional and psychological 
problems, including low self-esteem, depression, 
anxiety, and substance and alcohol abuse.

Beyond the ideological constraints of the various 
political isms of old, sharing as a rational 
economic principle is an idea whose time has 
perhaps arrived. But, of course, this is alien to 
capitalist principles that believe in the wisdom of the market.

Unemployment and/or poorly paid work are regarded 
as the primary causes of poverty in the US. 
However, Frances Stewart, Professor of 
Development Economics and Director of the Centre 
for Research on Inequality, Human Security and 
Ethnicity, University of Oxford, takes a 
different view. She believes that the equitable 
distribution of resources from the privileged to 
the deprived would be enough to eliminate poverty 
in high- and middle-income countries. That is. 
not simply the redistribution of wealth, but that 
of resources more broadly, in order to improve 
the health, the education, the assets and the 
productivity of the poor so that the improving of 
their lives can become self sustaining.

The fair and equitable sharing of resources to 
meet the needs of everyone in society is an 
economic model rooted in compassion and justice. 
Beyond the ideological constraints of the various 
political isms of old, sharing as a rational 
economic principle is an idea whose time has 
perhaps arrived. But, of course, this is alien to 
capitalist principles that believe in the wisdom of the market.

World Hunger believes that among the factors 
impoverishing US citizens are the operation of 
the political and economic system in the United 
States which has tended to keep people from poor 
families poor and physical, mental and 
behavioural issues among some people who are 
poor. All too often physical and mental illness 
is a consequence and not the cause of poverty.

People are trapped into poverty by a system in 
which power rests with the wealthy. Those born 
into poor circumstances face a mountain of 
disadvantages which they can hardly ever escape. 
In a society that champions material success and 
individual achievement above all else, when all 
time and energy is given over to addressing the 
basic requirements of living, life becomes arduous and demoralizing.
Unjust, unrestrained inequality

If you are born into poverty in the United 
States, the likelihood is that you will remain 
there, especially as the US has lower mobility 
than other wealthy countries  a fact that flies 
in the face of the notion that America is a 
meritocracy and a land of opportunity.

According to Why Poverty, the 400 richest people 
in US control more wealth than the 150 million 
people who make up the bottom households 
combined. This is a staggering and shameful 
statistic in a country overflowing with resources 
and espousing democratic principles of freedom, 
equality and justice to all and sundry. It is 
even more shocking when you consider that 
Washington spends 1,000 billion dollars on its 
armed forces  more than the military 
expenditures of the rest of the world put together.

In a world where the market is believed to be 
infallible and all knowing, and profit is the 
motive and raison dêtre of everything, every 
aspect of existence is seen as a commodity, fit 
to be traded, to be bought at the lowest price 
and sold for the highest amount, irrespective of 
the human or environmental cost. Such as world 
will inevitably create a significant amount of poverty and unemployment.

In a world where the market is believed to be 
infallible and all knowing, and profit is the 
motive and raison dêtre of everything, every 
aspect of existence is seen as a commodity, fit 
to be traded, to be bought at the lowest price and sold for the highest amount

But poverty and inequality are of little concern 
to those with power in the United States  the 
corporate leaders, financial magnates and 
business tycoons, sitting pretty in the top 1 per 
cent club and enjoying all the benefits of 
preferential tax arrangements and access to 
congressmen, presidents and other politicians.

Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at 
Columbia University, claims that there are many 
bought politicians in Washington  bought by the 
rich, the hedge fund managers, the brokers and 
the chief executives of major corporations, such 
as David and Charles Koch. Estimated to be worth 
62 billion dollars, they have donated funds to 
over half the members of the Senate and the House 
of Representatives, and ploughed millions of 
dollars into 230 university colleges to promote 
courses which support their free market ideology.

And what do the wealthy expect in exchange for 
the millions and billions of dollars donated to 
politicians  these are not, after all 
philanthropic acts from men of social conscience? 
Access to decision makers is the primary aim, in 
order to exert influence and fashion policy, 
ensuring that the economic system is managed in a 
manner that would benefit them in the fullest possible way.

More than enough, it would seem, is not enough to 
satiate the insatiable and so the madness continues unrestrained.
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Covetousnesse be gon: Come, Truth and Love arise.
Patience take the Crown; throw Anger out of dores:
Cast out Hypocrisie and Lust, which follows whores:
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