Let’s consider the logistics needed to create a system of universal healthcare, without a parasitic middleman layer. Is it beyond our abilities?
No. We build extensive roads and complex transit systems. We have air-traffic control and thousands of airplanes in the sky every minute of every day. We have humans on an international space station. We’ve sent probes to other planets, even out of our solar system. We coordinate global supply-chains across nations and oceans.
If we can manage space stations and overnight delivery, surely we can manage healthcare. We have the know-how. What we’ve lacked—until now—is the will.
The logistics, the organizational technology and delivery expertise we humans have evolved and developed is extraordinary. I once ran the division of a major software vendor that built such systems. I know firsthand that it works.
We can readily apply this logic to healthcare. Our health doesn’t need to stay hostage to a mass of corporate parasites. We can center care on patients again.
We know how. We just have to choose to do it.
Does a mutual-care health system need good supervision, effective logistics, efficient delivery systems and individualized care from competent, well-trained medical professionals? Does it need quality control, regular updating and constant improvement?
Well, of course—just like any other large and complicated system does. But we already know how to do this. Look at our roads, our skies, our solar system, our stores and gas stations and electricity and natural-gas delivery, and the coffee pods that just arrived at your front door.
Again: We know how to do this, and we can.
Those who oppose it do so to protect their profits, not your health. They lie to scare you. They work with legislators to pass or defeat laws. All to protect their profits—not your health.
Our current profit-based system is like a cancerous mass that diverts life-giving blood from the rest of the body to itself. It pulses and grows while the patient withers away. A parasite, pure and simple.
It is past time to take our healthcare out of the wallets of bullies and parasites and create a just, compassionate system of mutual care—one rooted in justice, worthy of our humanity. We tax ourselves to do it. Of course. And it helps all of us to thrive.
Of course it must be done honestly, fairly, effectively. But it will be better—immediately better—than the nightmare we’re in now. And there are excellent examples of this at work every day in other countries. We can emulate their best methods and organization.
We can do it well, maybe even better. We must, and we will.
Perhaps, Looking Back
The grotesque imbalances and over-compensations in our current healthcare system aren’t listed here just to shock—they’re here to help us think clearly and fearlessly about what’s right and what’s possible. The logic and imperative of mutual care must extend beyond healthcare, into every shared domain of our lives. We’ll open these up in the pages ahead.
I hope that, someday in the future, readers of this book will look in disbelief at this section on healthcare: Wait, the system used to let people suffer while others got rich off it? No way. That can’t be real.
I invite your insights and contributions into our common life, and how to make it better together. MutualCare.online is set up for just this purpose. We can share resources, ideas and courage for building a better world