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ACCORDING TO LIZ - More than ever, life is a commodity bought by those who can afford it. And increasingly at risk when conspiracy-mongers deny preventative care.
The current American administration has cut off funding for polio, H.I.V., malaria and nutrition programs around the world. For a miniscule savings, it is condemning people to suffering and death. Laying the groundwork for more heartache, more terrorism… and more resentment against Americans.
Not curbing infectious diseases like Ebola and bird flu could release another pandemic, and the confusion and deep cuts to public health care in the United States will put Americans squarely in the crosshairs.
Not investing in biomedical research will also cost the country dearly. In lives, certainly. But also, more than any other country, in the loss of its economic benefits and its global influence in the health sciences.
Research that may seem useless often yields surprising and salubrious outcomes. But the country must make those seed money investments. Or lose its cutting-edge leadership in delivering life-saving and lucrative results.
If Mehmet Oz is confirmed to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, his financial fingers in multiple medical companies that shape his perception of health delivery pose a clear and present danger to the lives of millions of Americans.
DOGE slash-and-burn techniques, endemic to the internecine start-ups of Eel-on’s background, may work for profiteering but, when whole departments are dismembered in a government designed to assist people, they can only lead to suffering and death.
FEMA experts in disaster recovery have been fired… where does that leave the red states when the next tornadoes, fires, floods, and hurricanes hit?
Murder by inaction may topple this regime, but only after thousands, maybe millions, of deaths
From not being warned about weather disasters-in-the-making because NOAA has been eviscerated. From decimation of systems established to safely evacuate people from wildfires, volcanic eruptions, flooding. From the inability of communities to get help in emergencies.
From what remains of HHS unable to deliver services due to lack of funding from a skeletonized IRS dedicated to preserving the wealth of the 1%. From crumbling infrastructure.
From not having the information needed to protect against outbreaks of food poisoning. From neighborhoods devastated by toxicity now the EPA has been gutted. From not having healthcare. From doctors fleeing ethical diktats. From lack of public health systems, after the NIH went on the chopping block, to prevent future epidemics or provide services necessary when they do occur.
With an avowed anti-vaxxer advising the White House, Americans are going to see a plethora of preventable deaths from occurrences such the measles outbreak in Texas. RFK, Jr.’s policy wild-hairs will also cost the country and every American more in individual and subsidized health expenditures.
Spreading in rural areas with low vaccination rates, the measles outbreak has grown to 146 cases and counting, almost all children, and appears to have leapt the border to New Mexico. On February 27, the CDC reported an aggregate of 164 cases in nine states from Alaska to Georgia preponderately children, 98% of who had not received the vaccine as recommended. If the disease spreads more widely, a great many more will be at risk.
Measles is one of the most transmissible diseases known to humanity and the vaccine is highly effective. Since measles destroys immune cells, those who recover have lost much of their existing immunity to all diseases, leaving them subject to other infections and complications.
Unvaccinated adults infected by measles face higher risk of death; the First World War saw thousands of healthy soldiers die, not in battle but on American soil from measles outbreaks in Army training camps.
Kennedy is now actively impeding the protection of Americans and their children by canceling public awareness campaigns during a season rampant with flu, Covid, RSV and norovirus, and threatening production of sufficient vaccines for next year. His “informed consent” model is a blatant attempt to impose his contrarian views by frightening people with a litany of possible but unlikely side effects.
Meanwhile pharmaceutical companies plaster the airwaves with far more dangerous products with poorly proven efficacy.
During deadly outbreaks, parents are supposed to protect their children. But during a 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa that killed 83 people (79 of them children), Kennedy actively undermined public trust in what would have helped – vaccination.
Fine if only the consenting adult was at risk, but how about their children, how about other children, how about seniors and the hospitalized?
Health and Human Services has allowed public input into its policies and procedures for decades. But on Friday, it announced plans to exclude public participation in future policy decisions. A significant about-face for an agency overseeing the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, as well as Medicare and Medicaid – which insure more over 140 million Americans – and now at high risk for trolling by too many in the current administration.
Another death-threatening issue surrounds who receives transplants when organs become available. The 1% who can buy their way to the front of the line and have the financial resources to offset the costs of expensive surgery? Or those who have waited for the chance to live longer with a higher quality of life?
More than 100,000 people in the United States are waiting for a transplant.
For decades, the government has mandated fairness, enforcing strict rules formulated by doctors and ethicists to ensure organs go to the patients who need them the most.
Every state has at least one nonprofit dedicated to organ recovery that uses algorithms to rank potential recipients across the country, prioritizing patients who are sicker, have been waiting longer and are nearby.
Twenty percent of patients at the top of waiting lists are now ignored with organs diverted to people not as sick, who have not waited as long, people who are disproportionately white and wealthy. That’s six times more than in 2020, an exponential increase tracking the widening of the wealth gap.
Allocating organs is not an instantaneous process. Some transplants can be unacceptable based on size, age and distance. Fairness takes time, posing a conflict between what is medically necessary – organs that are suitable for specific patients – and placing as many organs as possible.
Under a mandate from government regulators to avoid spoilage, decision-makers have been increasingly bypassing the lists for the past five years. After all, it’s easier to avoid the paperwork and check the speed box at the same time, steering organs to medical facilities with which they have existing relationships.
And these tend to be hospitals that can select healthier recipients to receive organs with correspondingly better results. Because they are judged on how many patients survive after surgery.
Which then attracts wealthier candidates more adept at manipulating the system, while poorer patients, disproportionately Black and Latino, pay the price. With their lives.
Over 1,200 people have died since 2020 after rising to the top of a waiting list, never having learned they were skipped for political reasons.
The exponentially increasing profitability of the health insurance, pharmaceutical and care-conglomerate industries and the drive of this triple-threat Republican administration to gut services for the people can have but one outcome. Murder due to choice.
And also ensures that, for the next four years, the possibility of a single-payer system which would reduce costs and guarantee healthcare as a right to all Americans has become distinctly improbable.
(Liz Amsden resides in Vermont and is a regular contributor to CityWatch on issues that she is passionate about. She can be reached at [email protected].)
