Friday, July 24, 2015

'Toontime: The Choice 2016

credit: Michael Raimrez
Wackydoodle sez: Everybody knows Hillary's only a champaign socialist!
Seems the choice is boiling down to a "crazy old socialist" and more crazy old nativists who may or may not be war heros depending on your definition of "collaboration". Is this the best 'Merica can do? God help us if it is, is:

credit: Ted Rall
BC Idonwanna sez: Me like 'em crazy man with good scalp!
None of these cardboard cutouts, except perhaps Bernie Sanders, who the pundits say has zero chance of sitting in the office without corners, is talking about real issues that affect real 'Mericans.  For your consideration: one of the reasons US Person advocated single-payer health insurance is because the so-called free market does not engender free competition. It engenders consolidation and oligopoly.  Sure enough, Anthem announced it is buying out Cigna for a whopping $54.2bn, leaving only three major US health insurers.  Where does Anthem get that much money to buy out a major competitor? From the money it makes in a broken system where profits come before health care.  The deal comes only a month after Aetna acquired Humana for $37bn. Numerous economic studies show that consolidation leads to higher prices. It is time to end the insanity of health care for profit. Each citizen is entitled to a basic level of health care, free. That is the bottom line accepted by other civilized countries, and a single-payer system is the cheapest way to get from here to there. No double-talking politician worried about his war record can deny this fact: the US has the highest cost of health care in the world, yet delivers the worse care among eleven industrialized nations.