Dec 27, 2023·edited Dec 27, 2023Liked by Bill Astore
We met an expat here in Ecuador who had maintained a friendship with her ex-husband over the years. He had cancer and was tired of dealing with American health care. They decided to get together again for "one last adventure." They moved here and he lived another three years. The final year of his life, they had a live-in health care nurse who also helped with cooking and laundry--attending to all his needs to the very end. Their (and our) doctora, a Belgian who married an Ecuadorian would make house calls as needed. (She is the best doctor we've had and a plus--fluent in English). He never spent a single night in the hospital though he did visit the emergency room on two occasions. Their total "medical" costs during that last year totaled around $1,000 a month.
When I contrast their experience to my spouse's experience over the years, I marvel at the arrogance of our insistence that the US has such wonderful health care. They are masters of procedures and pill pushing--that's for sure. When private equity firms starting buying things up, you know the already mega rich are about to get richer at the working stiff and retiree's expense. The entire system is a house of cards like the rest of our war economy.
Dec 27, 2023·edited Dec 27, 2023Liked by Bill Astore
Seems to me the Churches should be leading the charge for Universal Health Care. I haven't seen any reference in the Bible when Jesus said to anyone, 'Pay me and I'll heal you!
The latest status symbol for the mega Preachers living the lifestyle of the rich and famous is a luxury private jet, so they don't even have to mingle with the sheeple paying for their rich lifestyles.
Israelis have free Universal Health Care. Does the $Billions the US Taxpayer gives Israel every year pay for their Health Care?
Bingo. The fed gov has money when they want to have money and doesn't have money when it doesn't want to have money. Assume you've heard of or read The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton? Or watched an interview with Michael Hudson? Highly recommend. They are proponents of Modern Monetary Theory- a framework for understanding how a currency-issuing economy really operates.
The same US government that finds nearly one trillion dollars to pay for war (sold as "defense") could also find one trillion dollars to spend on everyday Americans. All the stuff the majority of Americans want - healthcare (that actually promotes health), a living wage, roads without potholes, a retirement without working at Walmart- all this stuff could happen in an instant if the federal government CHOSE TO DO IT.
I was listening to an interview with an MMT proponent named Thomas Fazi who gave a very interesting take on the demise of Liz Truss (on podcast Macro n Cheese, "The Breaking of the World with Thomas Fazi".) Fazi described how Truss had said in public something to the effect of, "deficits don't matter. We can spend whatever we want." In response to airing this secret to the public, the Bank of England tanked its own currency to force Truss out of office. She said something that the US gov and British gov absolutely prohibit expressing out loud: that a government that issues its own currency can spend whatever it wants, on whoever it wants.
Yes, you have to be aware of the inflationary impacts of printing money. But you are 100% spot on that the federal government COULD pay for universal healthcare, etc. It just chooses to pay that money to the Boards of Directors of defense contractors.
I couldn’t agree more, Bill. I live in a country with truly universal healthcare, Japan. I’m so glad to be here. It pains me to hear about the nonsense and injustice of health and wealth conditions in the Divided States of America. May something save you all. Though nothing is omnipotent, the only hope I see is in your uncommon good sense. Keep it up!
I would gladly trade universal healthcare for the warfare empire,and I'm one of those who is concerned how it's paid for and I have concerns that the system would serve to limit the freedom of providers. But the costs are generally consistent as a percentage of GDP, all that changes is how it's paid for.
From what I understand most of the Cuban doctors are in Venezuela anyway. The Cubans rent them out for a high price, pay the doctors (who are state employees) a low salary, and pocket the difference. 21st century Communism, I guess.
I hope the regulars here bear with me on this 120th Day of my 80th year. Living alone I have the Time and Interest to read. I hope I haven't posted so much of what I read so far Today.
I'll try to restrain myself after posting this excerpt from Elijah J. Magnier
'Israel is sinking in Gaza’s quagmire without any feasible objectives.'
As the war in Gaza approaches its three-month mark, the situation for Israel appears increasingly complex and directionless. The Palestinian resistance continues to assert its dominance, effectively striking Israeli forces in areas of northern, central and southern Gaza, including Khan Yunis, despite these areas being declared under Israeli control.
These developments suggest a significant gap between the Israeli military's claims and the reality on the ground, leading to growing criticism within Israeli society.
Criticism is directed at both the government and the army for their inability to set and achieve any feasible strategic goals since 7 October, a day now referred to as the Israeli Nakba.
The situation is exacerbated by the apparent ineffectiveness of the enormous American military and security assistance, along with other allies, mainly the UK and Germany. Despite the support of US special forces, naval fleets and diplomatic backing at the United Nations, Israel has been unable to gain a decisive advantage in the conflict.
This scenario underlines the resilience and tactical efficiency of the Palestinian resistance, which continues to deal heavy blows to Israeli forces. The latter are bogged down in Gaza without achievable objectives and facing a widening conflict that now includes other countries and forces allied with the Palestinian resistance. This expansion of the battlefield only adds to Israel's strategic challenges and underlines the complexity and unpredictability of the ongoing conflict.
The United States, recognizing Iran's influence in the region, reached out through intermediaries, urging Iran to intervene and stop the attacks by Ansar Allah Houthis, Hezbollah and the Iraqi resistance.
However, as conveyed to the intermediaries, Iran's response was unequivocal. It stressed that it was up to the United States to put pressure on Israel to stop its actions against Palestinian children and women. Iran's message is clear: it will not play the role of mitigating the consequences of the policies of Israel and the United States, and its role is far from being a fireman to extinguish Israel's wars.
Iran's involvement in the conflict has become more open, especially in light of US accusations that Iran was behind an attack on a tanker carrying military-grade chemicals to Israel opposite the Indian Ocean. This incident is Iran's willingness to overtly confront shipments to Israel, even if Tehran denied its involvement.
Bill, Wile the argument for Universal Health Care in the US is necessary and should be a pressing issue for the Election, it seems a little out of place in these Times, when Israel is using US bombs to demolish what little remains of Health Care in Gaza.
The Civilian Hamas government, with the EXTREME Israeli Economic Sanctions designed to keep Palestinians poor and destitute without much hope, cannot afford Israel's Universal Health Care.
Hamas did their best under the Israeli imposed Economic straitjacket on Gaza, charging only $2 per Hospital visit. They were not overwhelmed then.
From what the MSM shows on TV it appears those Hospitals and Doctors don't even get that $2.
For those with the eyes to see, they are living and serving their fellow man, acting and living the highest ideals of the ancient Hippocratic Oath, disregarding the real life threat & danger to their Persons.
They are the real contrast to those who took the Hypocritical Oath where MONEY Rules Health Care in the US. the self-proclaimed Leader of the mythological FREE World, at a TIME when the Financial, Psychological and Emotional COSTS keep rising for most of the People.
I'm still waiting to read your promised article on the Ukrainian and Gaza Massacre, which should be the Priority before our supposed Common Humanity fails the Test.
My comment in Zero Hedge this am where too many commentators use standard Nazi superiority language characterizations describing Palestinians.
"You discount the fact that 10 years BEFORE the formation of Hamas, the acronym for "ISLAMIC RESISTANCE MOVEMENT" Netanyahu's Likud Party platform was, “between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.”
Israel has been assassinating Hamas Leaders since 2007, but Israel CANNOT eliminate the ISLAMIC RESISTANCE MOVEMENT with the INDISCRIMINATE bombing of Gaza BEHEADING BABIES.
The Israeli MURDEROUS Bombardment of Gaza, no matter how many Civilians are killed by Israel, is creating the next Generation of the ISLAMIC RESISTANCE MOVEMENT, absent any Political resolution of the WAR ZIONIST TERRORISTS started 10 years before Israel was recreated from the Bible in 1948.
The Gaza MASSACRE is Netanyahu and his Old Testament Jewish Religious Establishment that became the Israeli government in January, carrying out that 1977 Likud platform. Israeli Leaders make no secret of it in their Public statements and the nominally Christian US-West is complicit in it."
"The WHO and the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza say amputations have become commonplace during the Israel-Hamas war, now in its 12th week....... Experts believe that in most cases, limbs could have been saved with proper treatment. But after weeks of Israel's blistering air and ground offensive, only nine out of Gaza's 36-hospitals are still operational. They are greatly overcrowded....and lack basic equipment to perform surgery. Many wounded were unable to reach the remaining hospitals, pinned down by Israeli bombardment and ground combat."
"People die of infections that they have because their limbs are infected,” Casey told a news conference. “We saw patients who were septic.”
On Nov. 13, when an Israeli airstrike hit the home of Nabahin's neighbour in Bureij, a refugee camp in central Gaza, her ankle and arteries in her leg were partially severed by a clump of concrete that blew into her home from the explosion next door. She was the only one of her family who was injured, all her neighbours were killed.
She was quickly taken to nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where doctors managed to sew up her leg and stop the bleeding. But after that, Nabahin said she received minimal treatment or attention from doctors, who were dealing with a huge number of critically wounded people amid dwindling medical supplies. Days later, her leg turned a dark color, she said. “They discovered that there was shrapnel that was poisoning my blood.". Nabahin remains in acute pain and can't sleep without sedatives."
"Jourdel Francois, an orthopedic surgeon with Doctors Without Borders tells of a young girl whose legs had been crushed and urgently needed a double amputation, but she couldn't be booked into surgery that day because of the high number of other critical injuries. She died later that night, Francois said, likely from sepsis, or blood poisoning by bacteria."
And it goes on.. and on... and on.... and on - hell on earth Ray.
And Joe Biden could stop this - but he refuses to!
Dennis, when I see the IDF and Israeli Officials spinning and lying about the Realities I see on TV every Day, I get angry with the anger in these Bible verses;
Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the LORD has spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.
The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but Israel does not know, my people do not consider.
Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward.
If the gloves are off from the blood-soaked hands of Israel and the United States, then the gloves should come off for the rest of the world to tell them what they think of their genocidal actions and brutality.
There’s no longer any pretense, no false humility, no drawing of the veil from either country. All lip service has been given up and the real aim and intentions of the U.S. and Israel have been made very, very clear. Many Israeli leaders have bellowed their hatred towards the Palestinians. They don’t care who listens or what the international community thinks. The following exclamations are not made up, they are real words of real Israeli hatred towards the Palestinians.
They’re sub-human animals
Bury them alive
Kill them all
From spineless Biden we have –
Hamas is the other team.
Please Israel, be more careful (as we supply you with more ammo)
These two countries are partners in crime and the world won’t forget. The utter shamefulness of vetoing a UN resolution for a ceasefire will also not be forgotten. There are 195 countries and we are watching only 2 countries dictate the future for the remaining 193. We are allowing just 2 aggressive countries to destroy any possibility of world peace when many of us believed we were all rowing in the same direction to steer the peace ship towards a better life for all – not towards the rocks. Silly us. America, the most powerful nation, has said with their UN veto, ‘No! Keep killing women and children and innocent civilians’. We may fall into a vortex which will take decades to crawl out of if the 193 countries don’t vehemently object to the savage decimation and attempted genocide taking place.
No country is immune from the ravages of a greedy and voracious United States. No country in the Middle East is immune from the ravages of a greedy and voracious Israel. And together they are the two-headed beast that other countries (or collectively Europe) are too scared to slay with words of mass objection and a demand to not only a ceasefire but an end to the Occupation of the Palestinian people. It could be done. Just a few phone calls and all this evil would be stopped in its tracks. But no, Israel and the United States seem hell bent on eradicating Palestine and Palestinians. If I hear one more lame lip-service load of BS spouting from the mouth of weak-willed Biden, I think I will lose all shred of hope that the U.S will realize they have crossed over to the incorrect side of history.
These two countries have a colossal self-regard and planet Israel-United States needs a gravity pull towards humanity......................................................
“Axis of Resistance”: Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis Challenge U.S. & Israeli Power Amid Middle East Tension
We look at how Israel’s war on Gaza has inflamed tensions in the Middle East and threatens to pull other countries into the fighting, including the United States. The Pentagon says it has intercepted a number of drones and missiles launched by Yemen’s Houthi forces — known as Ansar Allah — in the Red Sea aimed at disrupting international shipping, with the group vowing to continue the attacks on ships in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
The U.S. and Israel have also exchanged fire with groups in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, and violence continues to increase in the occupied West Bank. The growth of forces openly fighting against Israel and the U.S. is a major development in the Middle East that most Western commentators do not fully understand, says Rami Khouri, a veteran Palestinian American journalist and a senior public policy fellow at the American University of Beirut.
This “axis of resistance” is largely motivated by outrage over the treatment of Palestinians, he says. “The U.S. and Israel at some point need to acknowledge that the Palestinian people have rights that are equal to the Israeli people.”
Sad to say the limiting factor for medical care is the number of doctors. That number has not increased in the immediate past so a call for medicine to be "free" to the user will simply result in more attempted use and more lines to get medical care. I understand this is what happens in countries where such policies are practiced. I'm not defending the current system, which has far too many middlemen for my purposes. It's just to say that if we adopted the policies of the UK, for instance, we would be swapping the problem of cost to the user for the problem of the amount of time to get treated.
Like any Commodity, when there is too much the Cost goes down.
The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada sets the number of Doctors Universities can Educate every year.
Nonprofit organization
The non profit part is a misnomer.
By regulating how many Doctors Universities can turn out every year, reducing the number keeps Doctor Fees HIGH!
The downside of UNIVERSAL Health Care is, the Doctors in very poor Countries making very little, but their Populations really need them, are enticed to come to the nominally Christian Nations to make more money and make up for the shortages engineered by
The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.
We have the American Medical Association that does the same thing. Periodically, in an attempt to address a shortage of health care available to the public, politicians float proposals to expand the ability of nurses, etc., to give care. The AMA typically opposes those attempts, arguing that only doctors can give appropriate care. It's just yet another rigged system on behalf of the riggers. Making health care "free" to the user does nothing to address that problem.
Part of this too is who benefits from these proposals. In the run-up to Obamacare, the big insurance prescription benefits managers (PBMs) opposed it, thinking they would be replaced by a big government bureaucracy. The Obama administration assured them that this would not happen, that they would remain in the loop. So those same insurance companies now favored the proposals. Medicare recipients, who would largely by unaffected by the policies, got messages from their PBMs that they should tell their representatives that they should vote in favor of Obamacare. And it passed.
These developments are not the outcome of some strange, temporary, collective psychosis overtaking western establishments. They are yet more evidence of a desperate failure to stop the West’s long-term trajectory towards crises on multiple fronts.
They are a sign, first, that the ruling class understands it is again visible to the public as a ruling class, and that its interests are beginning to be seen as completely divorced from those of ordinary people. The scales are falling from our eyes.
The simple fact that one can again use the language of “establishments”, a “ruling class” and “class war” without sounding unhinged or like a throwback to the 1950s is an indication of how perception management – and narrative manipulation – so central to upholding the western political project since the end of the Second World War is failing.
Claims about the triumph of the liberal democratic order declared so loudly in the late 1980s by intellectuals such as Francis Fukuyama – or “the end of history”, as he grandly termed it – now look patently absurd.
And that is because, second, western elites clearly have no answers for the biggest challenges of our era. They are floundering around trying to deal with the inherent paradoxes in the capitalist order that liberal democracy was there to obscure.
Reality is breaking through the ideological cladding.
The most catastrophic is the climate crisis. Capitalism’s model of mass consumption and competition for the sake of competition is proving suicidal......................
‘Are we the baddies?’ Western support for genocide in Gaza means the answer is yes'
The desperate smear campaign to defend Israel’s crimes highlights the toxic brew of lies that’s been underpinning the liberal democratic order for decades
The other thing with government-paid for care is that the government likes to lower costs (so they can spend money on other things) and they do this by lessening the compensation to doctors and medical facilities. Finding a doctor who accepts Medicare for instance can be a problem and finding one who accepts Medicaid can be more of a problem. The problem of medical finance is like the game of whack-a-mole. Unfortunately.
We met an expat here in Ecuador who had maintained a friendship with her ex-husband over the years. He had cancer and was tired of dealing with American health care. They decided to get together again for "one last adventure." They moved here and he lived another three years. The final year of his life, they had a live-in health care nurse who also helped with cooking and laundry--attending to all his needs to the very end. Their (and our) doctora, a Belgian who married an Ecuadorian would make house calls as needed. (She is the best doctor we've had and a plus--fluent in English). He never spent a single night in the hospital though he did visit the emergency room on two occasions. Their total "medical" costs during that last year totaled around $1,000 a month.
When I contrast their experience to my spouse's experience over the years, I marvel at the arrogance of our insistence that the US has such wonderful health care. They are masters of procedures and pill pushing--that's for sure. When private equity firms starting buying things up, you know the already mega rich are about to get richer at the working stiff and retiree's expense. The entire system is a house of cards like the rest of our war economy.
Seems to me the Churches should be leading the charge for Universal Health Care. I haven't seen any reference in the Bible when Jesus said to anyone, 'Pay me and I'll heal you!
The latest status symbol for the mega Preachers living the lifestyle of the rich and famous is a luxury private jet, so they don't even have to mingle with the sheeple paying for their rich lifestyles.
Israelis have free Universal Health Care. Does the $Billions the US Taxpayer gives Israel every year pay for their Health Care?
Bingo. The fed gov has money when they want to have money and doesn't have money when it doesn't want to have money. Assume you've heard of or read The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton? Or watched an interview with Michael Hudson? Highly recommend. They are proponents of Modern Monetary Theory- a framework for understanding how a currency-issuing economy really operates.
The same US government that finds nearly one trillion dollars to pay for war (sold as "defense") could also find one trillion dollars to spend on everyday Americans. All the stuff the majority of Americans want - healthcare (that actually promotes health), a living wage, roads without potholes, a retirement without working at Walmart- all this stuff could happen in an instant if the federal government CHOSE TO DO IT.
I was listening to an interview with an MMT proponent named Thomas Fazi who gave a very interesting take on the demise of Liz Truss (on podcast Macro n Cheese, "The Breaking of the World with Thomas Fazi".) Fazi described how Truss had said in public something to the effect of, "deficits don't matter. We can spend whatever we want." In response to airing this secret to the public, the Bank of England tanked its own currency to force Truss out of office. She said something that the US gov and British gov absolutely prohibit expressing out loud: that a government that issues its own currency can spend whatever it wants, on whoever it wants.
Yes, you have to be aware of the inflationary impacts of printing money. But you are 100% spot on that the federal government COULD pay for universal healthcare, etc. It just chooses to pay that money to the Boards of Directors of defense contractors.
I couldn’t agree more, Bill. I live in a country with truly universal healthcare, Japan. I’m so glad to be here. It pains me to hear about the nonsense and injustice of health and wealth conditions in the Divided States of America. May something save you all. Though nothing is omnipotent, the only hope I see is in your uncommon good sense. Keep it up!
I would gladly trade universal healthcare for the warfare empire,and I'm one of those who is concerned how it's paid for and I have concerns that the system would serve to limit the freedom of providers. But the costs are generally consistent as a percentage of GDP, all that changes is how it's paid for.
Health expenditure as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2022
United States = 16.6% - If you can afford it. Many cannot.
New Zealand = 11.2% - "Free" Universal coverage for EVERYONE
And medical care outcomes in New Zealand are BETTER than the richest country in the World.
New Zealand choses to spend its tax money on healthcare rather than bombs.
Medical outcomes in the United States are the BEST in the world - if you are rich.
The WORST if you are poor.
Perhaps NZ has more doctors than we do, as a percentage of population. Supply and demand. It's amazing what can be done if there's an adequate supply.
Google is our friend Alex.
Number of doctors per 10,000 people
Cuba = 84 !!!!!!!
Norway = 51
Australia = 41
Russia = 40
Israel = 36
New Zealand = 36
USA = 26
Canada = 26
Niger = 0.3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_number_of_physicians
From what I understand most of the Cuban doctors are in Venezuela anyway. The Cubans rent them out for a high price, pay the doctors (who are state employees) a low salary, and pocket the difference. 21st century Communism, I guess.
Well that's the answer. Just send the poor Americans to Cuba for free health care. Ha ha ha.
LOL LOL LOL
Universal health coverage now genicide Joe...heal us don't kill us
cut: national defense
cut: homeland security,
cut: funding the16 intelligence agencies that watch over us.
I hope the regulars here bear with me on this 120th Day of my 80th year. Living alone I have the Time and Interest to read. I hope I haven't posted so much of what I read so far Today.
I'll try to restrain myself after posting this excerpt from Elijah J. Magnier
'Israel is sinking in Gaza’s quagmire without any feasible objectives.'
As the war in Gaza approaches its three-month mark, the situation for Israel appears increasingly complex and directionless. The Palestinian resistance continues to assert its dominance, effectively striking Israeli forces in areas of northern, central and southern Gaza, including Khan Yunis, despite these areas being declared under Israeli control.
These developments suggest a significant gap between the Israeli military's claims and the reality on the ground, leading to growing criticism within Israeli society.
Criticism is directed at both the government and the army for their inability to set and achieve any feasible strategic goals since 7 October, a day now referred to as the Israeli Nakba.
The situation is exacerbated by the apparent ineffectiveness of the enormous American military and security assistance, along with other allies, mainly the UK and Germany. Despite the support of US special forces, naval fleets and diplomatic backing at the United Nations, Israel has been unable to gain a decisive advantage in the conflict.
This scenario underlines the resilience and tactical efficiency of the Palestinian resistance, which continues to deal heavy blows to Israeli forces. The latter are bogged down in Gaza without achievable objectives and facing a widening conflict that now includes other countries and forces allied with the Palestinian resistance. This expansion of the battlefield only adds to Israel's strategic challenges and underlines the complexity and unpredictability of the ongoing conflict.
The United States, recognizing Iran's influence in the region, reached out through intermediaries, urging Iran to intervene and stop the attacks by Ansar Allah Houthis, Hezbollah and the Iraqi resistance.
However, as conveyed to the intermediaries, Iran's response was unequivocal. It stressed that it was up to the United States to put pressure on Israel to stop its actions against Palestinian children and women. Iran's message is clear: it will not play the role of mitigating the consequences of the policies of Israel and the United States, and its role is far from being a fireman to extinguish Israel's wars.
Iran's involvement in the conflict has become more open, especially in light of US accusations that Iran was behind an attack on a tanker carrying military-grade chemicals to Israel opposite the Indian Ocean. This incident is Iran's willingness to overtly confront shipments to Israel, even if Tehran denied its involvement.
Bill, Wile the argument for Universal Health Care in the US is necessary and should be a pressing issue for the Election, it seems a little out of place in these Times, when Israel is using US bombs to demolish what little remains of Health Care in Gaza.
The Civilian Hamas government, with the EXTREME Israeli Economic Sanctions designed to keep Palestinians poor and destitute without much hope, cannot afford Israel's Universal Health Care.
Hamas did their best under the Israeli imposed Economic straitjacket on Gaza, charging only $2 per Hospital visit. They were not overwhelmed then.
From what the MSM shows on TV it appears those Hospitals and Doctors don't even get that $2.
For those with the eyes to see, they are living and serving their fellow man, acting and living the highest ideals of the ancient Hippocratic Oath, disregarding the real life threat & danger to their Persons.
They are the real contrast to those who took the Hypocritical Oath where MONEY Rules Health Care in the US. the self-proclaimed Leader of the mythological FREE World, at a TIME when the Financial, Psychological and Emotional COSTS keep rising for most of the People.
I'm still waiting to read your promised article on the Ukrainian and Gaza Massacre, which should be the Priority before our supposed Common Humanity fails the Test.
My comment in Zero Hedge this am where too many commentators use standard Nazi superiority language characterizations describing Palestinians.
"You discount the fact that 10 years BEFORE the formation of Hamas, the acronym for "ISLAMIC RESISTANCE MOVEMENT" Netanyahu's Likud Party platform was, “between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.”
Israel has been assassinating Hamas Leaders since 2007, but Israel CANNOT eliminate the ISLAMIC RESISTANCE MOVEMENT with the INDISCRIMINATE bombing of Gaza BEHEADING BABIES.
The Israeli MURDEROUS Bombardment of Gaza, no matter how many Civilians are killed by Israel, is creating the next Generation of the ISLAMIC RESISTANCE MOVEMENT, absent any Political resolution of the WAR ZIONIST TERRORISTS started 10 years before Israel was recreated from the Bible in 1948.
The Gaza MASSACRE is Netanyahu and his Old Testament Jewish Religious Establishment that became the Israeli government in January, carrying out that 1977 Likud platform. Israeli Leaders make no secret of it in their Public statements and the nominally Christian US-West is complicit in it."
My sickening read today Ray,
"The WHO and the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza say amputations have become commonplace during the Israel-Hamas war, now in its 12th week....... Experts believe that in most cases, limbs could have been saved with proper treatment. But after weeks of Israel's blistering air and ground offensive, only nine out of Gaza's 36-hospitals are still operational. They are greatly overcrowded....and lack basic equipment to perform surgery. Many wounded were unable to reach the remaining hospitals, pinned down by Israeli bombardment and ground combat."
"People die of infections that they have because their limbs are infected,” Casey told a news conference. “We saw patients who were septic.”
On Nov. 13, when an Israeli airstrike hit the home of Nabahin's neighbour in Bureij, a refugee camp in central Gaza, her ankle and arteries in her leg were partially severed by a clump of concrete that blew into her home from the explosion next door. She was the only one of her family who was injured, all her neighbours were killed.
She was quickly taken to nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where doctors managed to sew up her leg and stop the bleeding. But after that, Nabahin said she received minimal treatment or attention from doctors, who were dealing with a huge number of critically wounded people amid dwindling medical supplies. Days later, her leg turned a dark color, she said. “They discovered that there was shrapnel that was poisoning my blood.". Nabahin remains in acute pain and can't sleep without sedatives."
"Jourdel Francois, an orthopedic surgeon with Doctors Without Borders tells of a young girl whose legs had been crushed and urgently needed a double amputation, but she couldn't be booked into surgery that day because of the high number of other critical injuries. She died later that night, Francois said, likely from sepsis, or blood poisoning by bacteria."
And it goes on.. and on... and on.... and on - hell on earth Ray.
And Joe Biden could stop this - but he refuses to!
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/middle-east/301032928/lose-a-limb-or-risk-death-growing-numbers-among-gazas-thousands-of-warwounded-face-hard-decisions
Dennis, when I see the IDF and Israeli Officials spinning and lying about the Realities I see on TV every Day, I get angry with the anger in these Bible verses;
Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the LORD has spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.
The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but Israel does not know, my people do not consider.
Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward.
Isaiah 1:2-4
'Gloves fall from the blood soaked hands'
If the gloves are off from the blood-soaked hands of Israel and the United States, then the gloves should come off for the rest of the world to tell them what they think of their genocidal actions and brutality.
There’s no longer any pretense, no false humility, no drawing of the veil from either country. All lip service has been given up and the real aim and intentions of the U.S. and Israel have been made very, very clear. Many Israeli leaders have bellowed their hatred towards the Palestinians. They don’t care who listens or what the international community thinks. The following exclamations are not made up, they are real words of real Israeli hatred towards the Palestinians.
They’re sub-human animals
Bury them alive
Kill them all
From spineless Biden we have –
Hamas is the other team.
Please Israel, be more careful (as we supply you with more ammo)
These two countries are partners in crime and the world won’t forget. The utter shamefulness of vetoing a UN resolution for a ceasefire will also not be forgotten. There are 195 countries and we are watching only 2 countries dictate the future for the remaining 193. We are allowing just 2 aggressive countries to destroy any possibility of world peace when many of us believed we were all rowing in the same direction to steer the peace ship towards a better life for all – not towards the rocks. Silly us. America, the most powerful nation, has said with their UN veto, ‘No! Keep killing women and children and innocent civilians’. We may fall into a vortex which will take decades to crawl out of if the 193 countries don’t vehemently object to the savage decimation and attempted genocide taking place.
No country is immune from the ravages of a greedy and voracious United States. No country in the Middle East is immune from the ravages of a greedy and voracious Israel. And together they are the two-headed beast that other countries (or collectively Europe) are too scared to slay with words of mass objection and a demand to not only a ceasefire but an end to the Occupation of the Palestinian people. It could be done. Just a few phone calls and all this evil would be stopped in its tracks. But no, Israel and the United States seem hell bent on eradicating Palestine and Palestinians. If I hear one more lame lip-service load of BS spouting from the mouth of weak-willed Biden, I think I will lose all shred of hope that the U.S will realize they have crossed over to the incorrect side of history.
These two countries have a colossal self-regard and planet Israel-United States needs a gravity pull towards humanity......................................................
https://johnmenadue.com/the-gloves-falling-off-blood-soaked-hands/
“Axis of Resistance”: Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis Challenge U.S. & Israeli Power Amid Middle East Tension
We look at how Israel’s war on Gaza has inflamed tensions in the Middle East and threatens to pull other countries into the fighting, including the United States. The Pentagon says it has intercepted a number of drones and missiles launched by Yemen’s Houthi forces — known as Ansar Allah — in the Red Sea aimed at disrupting international shipping, with the group vowing to continue the attacks on ships in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
The U.S. and Israel have also exchanged fire with groups in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, and violence continues to increase in the occupied West Bank. The growth of forces openly fighting against Israel and the U.S. is a major development in the Middle East that most Western commentators do not fully understand, says Rami Khouri, a veteran Palestinian American journalist and a senior public policy fellow at the American University of Beirut.
This “axis of resistance” is largely motivated by outrage over the treatment of Palestinians, he says. “The U.S. and Israel at some point need to acknowledge that the Palestinian people have rights that are equal to the Israeli people.”
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/27/arab_us_relations?jwsource=cl
Sad to say the limiting factor for medical care is the number of doctors. That number has not increased in the immediate past so a call for medicine to be "free" to the user will simply result in more attempted use and more lines to get medical care. I understand this is what happens in countries where such policies are practiced. I'm not defending the current system, which has far too many middlemen for my purposes. It's just to say that if we adopted the policies of the UK, for instance, we would be swapping the problem of cost to the user for the problem of the amount of time to get treated.
Like any Commodity, when there is too much the Cost goes down.
The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada sets the number of Doctors Universities can Educate every year.
Nonprofit organization
The non profit part is a misnomer.
By regulating how many Doctors Universities can turn out every year, reducing the number keeps Doctor Fees HIGH!
The downside of UNIVERSAL Health Care is, the Doctors in very poor Countries making very little, but their Populations really need them, are enticed to come to the nominally Christian Nations to make more money and make up for the shortages engineered by
The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.
We have the American Medical Association that does the same thing. Periodically, in an attempt to address a shortage of health care available to the public, politicians float proposals to expand the ability of nurses, etc., to give care. The AMA typically opposes those attempts, arguing that only doctors can give appropriate care. It's just yet another rigged system on behalf of the riggers. Making health care "free" to the user does nothing to address that problem.
Part of this too is who benefits from these proposals. In the run-up to Obamacare, the big insurance prescription benefits managers (PBMs) opposed it, thinking they would be replaced by a big government bureaucracy. The Obama administration assured them that this would not happen, that they would remain in the loop. So those same insurance companies now favored the proposals. Medicare recipients, who would largely by unaffected by the policies, got messages from their PBMs that they should tell their representatives that they should vote in favor of Obamacare. And it passed.
Big Insurance is a HUGE bureaucracy Alex! LOL
Even the Federal Government couldn't do worse eh!
You know the best thing about New Zealand Universal Healthcare...
ZERO PAPERWORK! No kidding - my NHI# is on the computer. Thats all that's needed.
When I arrive in the Ambulance all my details are on the computer.
You will never see a bill😁!
Viva New Zealand!!
Johnathan Cooke tells it like it is again.
These developments are not the outcome of some strange, temporary, collective psychosis overtaking western establishments. They are yet more evidence of a desperate failure to stop the West’s long-term trajectory towards crises on multiple fronts.
They are a sign, first, that the ruling class understands it is again visible to the public as a ruling class, and that its interests are beginning to be seen as completely divorced from those of ordinary people. The scales are falling from our eyes.
The simple fact that one can again use the language of “establishments”, a “ruling class” and “class war” without sounding unhinged or like a throwback to the 1950s is an indication of how perception management – and narrative manipulation – so central to upholding the western political project since the end of the Second World War is failing.
Claims about the triumph of the liberal democratic order declared so loudly in the late 1980s by intellectuals such as Francis Fukuyama – or “the end of history”, as he grandly termed it – now look patently absurd.
And that is because, second, western elites clearly have no answers for the biggest challenges of our era. They are floundering around trying to deal with the inherent paradoxes in the capitalist order that liberal democracy was there to obscure.
Reality is breaking through the ideological cladding.
The most catastrophic is the climate crisis. Capitalism’s model of mass consumption and competition for the sake of competition is proving suicidal......................
‘Are we the baddies?’ Western support for genocide in Gaza means the answer is yes'
The desperate smear campaign to defend Israel’s crimes highlights the toxic brew of lies that’s been underpinning the liberal democratic order for decades
https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/are-we-the-baddies-western-support
This BV regular is only too happy to bear with you on the 120th day of your 80th year Ray.
For me you haven't posted too much of what you read so far today.
Two excellent articles - even if off topic.
Kaumātua are wise elders in Māori society. Male elders are known as koroua.
You are a koroua Ray.
Take care my friend
The other thing with government-paid for care is that the government likes to lower costs (so they can spend money on other things) and they do this by lessening the compensation to doctors and medical facilities. Finding a doctor who accepts Medicare for instance can be a problem and finding one who accepts Medicaid can be more of a problem. The problem of medical finance is like the game of whack-a-mole. Unfortunately.