Those who need in-patient mental health care cannot get it. Unless they make a suicide attempt. WTF. Now again it has impacted my own family. This system encourages suicide. I've known this for three decades since I was married to a very suicidal person but it seems nothing can or will be done about it.
I'm so grateful that this suicide attempt was unsuccessful, but what if it hadn't been? The trauma of this will not easily be overcome by many people. I know because I've lived with some of these traumas over the past 35 years and eventually had major depression myself. Does a person, to get help, need to utterly ruin his or her life first? This makes no sense from any perspective except greedy, profit-driven, immoral capitalist health insurance corporations. The plutocrats have decided on a purely profit basis that there is to be no in-patient intervention for suicidal people unless they make an actual attempt which can, of course, and sometimes does, succeed in ending a person's life.
I'm ready to rant against the immoral capitalist system run by the plutocrats who actually like this corporate health profit system.
It's so tragic. Well, to people with morals. Why must people, the ill individual, and the whole family and friends, have to endure the pain and impact of an actual attempt? What a freaking horrible and unnecessary state of affairs.
In this case, a member of my family, depressed, in despair, unable to make herself/himself take medications, unable to suppress an addiction to alcohol, caved. Drank, and so on.....don't want to say too much. An attempt was made. Now. Now he/she can get help. Now. Anyone could see she/he needed it then. Before.
But no. American for profit Health Care System made this happen.
And because of her/his profession, this episode could end up costing this person a long-held job. It will cause untold suffering and humiliation for her/him and the family.
It could have and should have been prevented. So easily. Would have been in other, more caring countries with socialized medicine. Terrible countries like the UK, France or Canada to name a few.
Any country worth much would have figured this out by now, would have a different system. Any country today, without nearly half of it's population being enthralled by a fact-hating conservative ideology that exists by perpetuation of lies and irrationality disguised, well, any such country would have solved this tragic problem.
But America is not such a country. We are a country where greed and immoral capitalism is worshiped by a good part of the electorate, whether they admit it or not. We are a country where logic, science, facts, rationality and morality are ignored by almost half the population.
We are a country where plutocrats ruled the day and did not allow a single payer, non-corporate insurance, health care system.
I really do not want to live in a country that is run by people like that. If the Republicans and Independents elect Mitt Romney, well, I've had it. After being a Liberal Democrat (and proud of it) and a political junkie all my life, and I'm 68, I will withdraw from all politics. I will not pay any attention to any of it. I will not be able to bear it and don't want to ruin the rest of my life thinking about what apparently cannot change. I don't have the money to move abroad but I would if I could I think, if that were to happen.
If I were younger and in good health it would turn me into a revolutionary, wanting to take action myself to dislodge the plutocracy, basically change our government into a true democracy, getting money out of politics.
And perhaps most importantly, alter the capitalist system which is complete amoral
and immoral as well.
Checking dictionary.com I found these synonyms for immorality. I'd argue that they also apply to our system of capitalism.
"Immorality." Synonyms:
bad, wicked, dissolute, dissipated, profligate. Immoral, abandoned, depraved, describe one who makes no attempt to curb self-indulgence. Immoral, referring to conduct, applies to one who acts contrary to or does not obey or conform to standards of morality......
Our 1% capitalists, many of whom make their money by gambling in our financial markets, they are divorced from the 99%, especially from the 90%, and completely from the 20% at the bottom.
The 1%, the amoral/immoral capitalists at the top, they would like to continue having 50 million Americans have no access to health care. Yes, that is immoral. Because they want health insurance corporations to make big profits. They can further increase their portfolios, they can even place bets on which insurance corps will make the most profit. Lots of fun, lots of billions to be made on the backs of the poor.
As Chris Hayes just pointed out on the noon-day msnbc with Alex, the top 1% capitalists here are more than ever vastly separated from real people, and the needs of real people. He said the founding fathers talked about this kind of problem when revolting against the King of England whom they described as far removed and slow to act to meet their needs. They wanted to avoid that in the future. But today we have plutocrats running our nation, the 1% run it all and are ever-increasingly controlling our legislatures and our elections. They are very clever and they've been working towards this end for more than a century. Not surprising they've found ways to buy this tremendous power and hold onto it.
What can we do about it? Only take to the streets as we did in the 60's and revolt against it. But there are not enough people who are wise to the situation and willing to risk everything to make that happen. Not yet anyway.
So we can pray for our loved ones, gnash our teeth, cry and try to hold out a bit of hope. That's all.
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