The 2023 budget for healthcare was a staggering $5.8 Trillion dollars with ¾ of a Trillion dollars being spent on preventable illnesses, specifically immune failures. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345671828_The_cost_of_preventable_disease_in_the_USA

The Medicine Man

Healthcare was once the responsibility of the individual and never the responsibility of the government.  There were hundreds of individual health insurance carriers in every state that people could choose from based on their needs and budget.  In my book, “America’s Democracy Betrayed…Solutions to Fight Back,” chapter 2 “The Medicine Man” https://salmartingano.com/product/americas-democracy-betrayed/ gives a brief history of our healthcare system, vaccines, cancer, and the Affordable Care Act, in terms that clearly define how each has become politicized to make us believe government intervention is in our best interests.

The CDC’s Take on Vaccinations

Vaccines represent a major part of our healthcare system as well as controversy.  The rise in Autism, for example, is a battleground issue. In the 1960s autism was 1 in 10,000 cases. In 2012, it had risen to 1 in 88, In 2016 it was 1 in 68, and now it’s a staggering 1 in 44.  https://nemosnewsnetwork.com/autism-on-the-rise-since-1960s-why/

No other public health issue in nature has ever occurred in such numbers without unnatural intervention. The CDC states that a child’s immune system can handle multiple vaccines without compromising the immune system; however, could the ever-increasing number of vaccines and doses in babies and children (see Part 1, the new 6 in-1 Vaxelis vaccine) be correlated to the unnatural increase in Autism?

The National Academy of Medicine’s Take on Vaccines & Autism

The National Academy of Medicine published a research study stating, “Vaccines do not cause Autism” https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/autism.html

The National Library of Medicine’s Take on Vaccines & Autism

The National Library of Medicine produced a research paper stating, “A positive association found between Autism prevalence and childhood vaccination uptake across the U.S. population” Is it any wonder people have mixed opinions on vaccines? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21623535/

The Correlation Between Healthcare Costs & Actual Health

Is there a correlation between healthcare costs and actual health?  After all the amazing advances in medicine and pharmaceuticals, are we any healthier as a nation?  According to the World Health Organization, the U.S. spends 2 ½ times more on healthcare than any other country, yet is ranked last in high-income countries https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/04/health/us-health-care-rankings/index.html and ranks 37^th of the 190 countries with healthcare systems https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp0910064

Brief History of our U.S. Healthcare System:

• After WW2, corporations both large and small offered healthcare as a benefit to their employees in lieu of higher wages. 
• Over time, as the individual’s out-of-pocket expense decreased for healthcare benefits, usage increased creating higher costs for medical services including pharmaceuticals that were once adjuncts to medical care but now have become the mainstay of medical treatment.
• Increasing healthcare costs led to out-of-control pricing that employers could not absorb.  Employers turned to “third party” insurance carriers to manage their costs.  Employees (citizens) began to experience the concept of “managed healthcare”, which further separated them from the “doctor/patient” relationship, which further insulated the citizens from the TRUE cost of healthcare.
• The result has turned our healthcare system into the “business” of healthcare leaving people where they were prior to WW2; having to budget their healthcare costs based on family income

Government to the Rescue:

In a FREE society, it’s the marketplace that balances the economy.  In a Socialist society, it’s the centralized government that dictates what societal norms are. The “Medicine Man” chapter in my book, “America’s Democracy Betrayed” offers a simplified analysis of a Democratic government vs a Socialist society.  What we are witnessing in present-day U.S. politics is Socialism posing as a Democracy, believing that the only way to save healthcare is to have a single-payer government-run system.  https://salmartingano.com/product/americas-democracy-betrayed/

The Truth about the Affordable Care Act (ACA): 

• It largely failed because Health insurance markets are only afloat because of massive federal subsidies and premiums
• Out-of-pocket obligations significantly increased for families.
• Middle-income families and workers without employer-provided coverage have largely fared worse from higher health care costs as did the nation’s taxpayers who are responsible for funding.
  • For an in-depth review of the ACA’s performance ten years after its enactment, see the Galen Institute analysis. https://galen.org/assets/ACA_at_10_huge_expansion_of_welfare.pdf
• The ACA’s authors expected they were creating a market in which more insurers offered plans and coverage would be affordable. Unfortunately, the reality has been just the opposite. Choices have plummeted, premiums and deductibles spiked for plans that covered fewer providers and hospitals. https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2020/09/23/the-disappointing-affordable-care-act/?sh=244cfa6e4d99

The Cost Of healthcare Is A Mandate        

Is it any wonder why the cost of healthcare is a mandate, tied directly to the IRS as a tax?  Calling The Affordable Care Act a tax makes every citizen accountable; buy the insurance or pay a penalty.  To understand the socialist mindset, one must know how the game is played:

• Take a functioning system (healthcare) and create fear that it will soon be unaffordable, in limited supply, and does not cover all Americans
• Allow the system to spin out of control with ever-increasing costs
• Allow the people to blame the greedy insurance companies, which are under pressure of unrealistic government regulations, taxes, and mandates
• Before the system totally collapses, have the government, which initially
• caused the problem, step up with a government-backed solution (The Affordable Care Act) that will solve all the problems.  “SOCIALISM 101”

*NOTE: One consistent trait of a socialist-controlled healthcare system is to over-promise and eventually underdeliver.  The U.S. is presently in the “underdeliver” stage.  In a free society, healthcare is managed by the skill and performance of medical and non-medical healthcare professionals, where the marketplace, not a government agency, controls the economics of healthcare.

20% of our Gross Domestic Product is devoted to healthcare. Until we fully understand the consequences of our present healthcare direction, healthcare will become a divisive tool to control our population