The shackles of this new serfdom are invisible, but no less destructive for being invisible.
One of the more remarkable characteristics of American life is our passive acceptance of systems that are so obviously completely insane. Yes, I refer to our healthcare system, a.k.a. sickcare because in America sickness is profitable and health is not, and healthcare profiteering that would be the envy of pirates and warlords everywhere is the norm.What warlord wouldn’t jump on the opportunity to jack up the cost of a medication from $13.50 a tablet to $750 overnight, or as the article highlights, jack up the cost of an off-patent med from $1 a pill to $750 a pill in a few years?
This piratical pillaging is not an outlier–it’s the norm in America’s parasitic pharmaceutical industry:
Cycloserine, a drug used to treat dangerous multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, was just increased in price to $10,800 for 30 pills from $500 after its acquisition by Rodelis Therapeutics.
Imagine getting to jack your weekly wage from $500/week to $10,800/week while issuing a laughably lame excuse.
These profiteering prices are not the shackle of serfdom, at least not directly; few pay these prices in cash–insurers pay. And when prices rise, insurers jack their rates up accordingly (plus a bit to cover their costly political lobbying and the profit margins expected of quasi-monopolies).
Healthcare insurance is the new shackle of serfdom: Americans are forced to cling to whatever coverage they have, lest they lose coverage and risk bankruptcy.
Low-income Americans theoretically don’t have to worry, as their medical care is covered by Medicaid. (They only need to find doctors and clinics that accept Medicaid. Good luck with that….)
Retired Americans only have to scrape up the few hundred bucks for Medicare Parts A, B, C, D, and of course E through Z (shall we talk about insane levels of complexity in the system? Perhaps another time…).
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