Only Medicare For All Can Beat Covid

 AUGUST 21, 2020

by EVE OTTENBERG

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/08/21/only-medicare-for-all-can-beat-covid/

The U.S. has coped with Covid-19 far worse than any other country on the globe. Though much, much of this catastrophe of over 170,000 dead can be laid at Trump’s door, some of it has to do with the uniquely awful American system of for-profit health care. Those words, “for profit,” mean that the U.S. public health infrastructure, always stunted, had completely shriveled by the time the plague struck. Other countries dealt better with covid because they have different health care systems – single payer or Medicare for All systems, in other words, ones that are, to varying degrees, socialized.

Two clicks to midnight

 By: Ken Leslie    August 21, 2020

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55482.htm

While I was absent from this esteemed blog focusing on other things, an extremely dangerous situation started to develop and I found myself reaching for the keyboard again. If some of my previous writings were a bit alarmist, the tone was motivated by a genuine angst before an unfeeling and unstoppable machine of conquest and destruction the likes of which the world had never seen. And angst it is—anybody with an ounce of common sense can see that the World is hurtling towards some kind of catastrophe. Whether this occurs in a year or five is less relevant. The point is that we are witnessing a process of rapid implosion of the current global system and are not able to see what will replace it. There is no compelling vision of the future—a universal vessel of hope that would transport us across the turbulent waters of fundamental change. This time I am not anxious but resigned. Resignation does not imply learned helplessness—unlike most people around me I am grateful for the ability to be aware of the danger and to articulate what I see as the truth without fear or self-censorship.

Oh, and if the post sounds like a rant, that’s because it is one.