The existing U.S. health system is not a failure; it is a raving success, not from citizens' point of view, of course, but from the perpetrators'.
Elsewhere we routinely hear that the "War on Drugs" is a big flop...but again, from the perpetrators' viewpoint, it too is a big success. It justifies all sorts of rights violations, it kept organic hemp out of competition with chlorine and pesticide industries, it brings in most of the prison industry profits, it distracts from corporate crimes, and it excuses U.S. intervention in other countries.
If supporters of Single Payer made efforts to explain that the U.S. health system is not a failure from the view of the Privateers, perhaps some effective actions would be taken. It's impossible to fight something that is not seen or recognized or discussed. It's important to know the enemy.
Along with the obvious profit reasons, the U.S. has this system because:
1) For-profit insurers want to keep the flow of money coming in to fund multimillion dollar investments in private industries...even some of the most health-damaging and environmentally-destructive businesses on the planet...such as cigarette manufacturing, tobacco pesticides, dioxin-producing chlorine, military weapons, coal, oil, nukes, plastics, and so on.
2) Despite the international competitive disadvantages and the bother of having to deal with workers' health care, the investment properties located in the USA like the idea that, by the threat of losing health coverage, workers are intimidated into silence and inaction about unsafe or unfair work conditions, management fraud and environmental law violations, harassment, and union organizing. Single payer is just too worker-empowering.
3) With private insurers administering the system, there is all the less chance that the businesses in which insurers invest will be outed and condemned, if not prosecuted, for their contributions to the plagues of cancer and respiratory disease and all the rest...not to mention gross disruptions of wildlife. Industrial chlorine (the only source of dioxin for all practical purposes), being the (unnecessary) life-blood of so many industries, may be the above-all concern. Private insurers, of course, do not promote benign alternatives (like organics, hemp, etc.) to chlorine despite the potential for significant health benefits (and cost savings) across the country, if not the world. This incestuous relationship between health-damaging industries and those who are supposed to administer health programs goes far to explain why so many diseases are said to be Our Fault...our diet, our behavior, our genes, too much sun, etc., or the fault of natural things like germs, viruses, tobacco plants, alcohol, mold, etc. etc.
(A clue to chlorine perhaps being a top concern is that the top funders and pushers of the "anti smoking" crusade...which utterly ignores and distracts from pesticides and high levels of dioxin in typical cigarettes...which works to scapegoat a natural plant and those who think they are just smoking tobacco...are top members of the Chlorine Cartels...pharms, pesticides, their PR firms, their agents within government organizations, etc., etc. There are more four-leaf clovers on the moon than there are "anti smoking" officials without links to big chlorine and/or its insurers and investors.)
4) Insurer investments in pharmaceuticals (even those that make tobacco pesticides and non-tobacco cigarette adulterants) protect those pharms' drugs from being properly researched, outed if necessary, and removed. This conflict-of-interest ensures that health insurers and health professionals under their umbrella will tilt towards using the insurer's investment property's drugs over others that may be safer, more effective and cheaper. This also pretty much ensures that there will be little or no research on the benefits of natural drugs, certain foods, vitamins, supplements, herbs, and "alternative" medicine.
5) Though, tragically, there is no shortage of industry corruption of our current "public" regulatory system, private insurers constitute a major player in the corporate corruption of our medical health and research system. If some true, un-compromised, public servants, free of bonds of "proprietary secrecy," entered the picture to fill the void left when private insurers are removed, we may begin to see serious research and regulatory action regarding industrial toxins and carcinogens...one thing for-profit insurers and their investment properties (and business insurance clients) do not want.
As far as "non-profit" insurers are concerned, since they cannot invest, their motives to act in pretty much the same way as the for-profits are not as clear. Perhaps CEOs and managers have personal investments. Perhaps they have shared board memberships. Perhaps they want to keep their supply of insured workers that are in the health-damaging industries. Perhaps all of the above
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