u.s. govt: we can’t? hold my beer.
49 billiion+ dollars of inefficiency.
Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.
Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but trillionaires should be forced to transition into billionaires, and billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.
Maybe you Americans should wait until there’s 50 so you can evenly distribute them to all of your states for consumption.
Although I think you would then want 56 of them If you include American
vassalsterritories
Okay but it was kinda easy for a connect the dots puzzle
and yet you missed so many!
but defense budget can afford universal healthcare for servicemembers, although it tends to be low quality, and also congressmen have universal healthcare.
We just want the same healthcare Congress gets. Simple as that.
I don’t live in the US. But from the outside…
We can’t keep tying healthcare to employment
You can; and you will.
I unfortunately don’t see structural reform in your short to medium term future.
Given that establishment Democrats are actively working with Republicans to prevent progressives from winning primaries, I’d say you’re overly optimistic.
It’s only in our future if we take it by force.
they have always worked with the gop/DNC, they just have backdoor deals when they compromise with each other. they know which of thier party members will suddenly switch votes, before the public.
Yes, which is why sipps is saying you need to vote for progressive.
They probably meant to write ‘shouldn’t.’
In short term people are going to start dying a whole lot, and the rest of us will realize we have nothing left to lose.
It’s going to be ugly.
People are already dying a whole lot, and a whole lot more are needlessly suffering. And even more are struggling financially to handle the burdens of our health care system.
It’s already ugly.
There’s this quote, I can’t remember the wording or the source, but it goes something like, “What is truly terrifying is not what people can endure but what they can get used to.”
This is the truth, people will suffer and society will continue on. Things can get so much worse.
It really is sad. You should have better.
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Here is a list of the 49 individuals. Names help give weight to accusations of wealth hoarding.
https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2026/03/18/healthcare-billionaires
From the article: Forbes divided its list of billionaires into several categories, including industry and country. The billionaires from the United States in the healthcare industry were:
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Thomas Frist, Jr. & family, founder of Hospital Corp. of America ($41.1 billion)
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Carl Cook, current CEO of medical device manufacturer Cook Group ($11.7 billion)
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Robert Duggan, co-CEO of Summit Therapeutics ($11.6 billion)
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Charlie Mills, chair of medical supplies company Medline ($11.4 billion)
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Patrick Soon-Shiong, a physician and inventor of the blockbuster cancer drug Abraxane ($10.5 billion)
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John Brown, former chair of medical device and software company Stryker Corp. ($8.5 billion)
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Ronda Stryker, current director of Stryker Corp. ($8.5 billion)
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Li Ge, chair and CEO of Wuxi Apptec, which provides research and clinical trial services to biotech and pharmaceutical industries worldwide ($7.6 billion)
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Reinhold Schmieding, founder of Arthrex, an orthopedic surgical tools company ($6 billion)
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Andy Mills, director and former president of Medline ($5.7 billion)
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Jon Stryker, grandson of Homer Stryker, founder of Stryker Corp. ($5.7 billion)
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Wendy Abrams, shareholder in Medline, which was founded by her father Jon Mills and uncle Jim Mills ($4.7 billion)
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Nancy Mills Barnett, shareholder in Medline, which was founded by her father Jon Mills and uncle Jim Mills ($4.4 billion)
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Steward Rahr, who expanded Kinray and sold it to Cardinal Health in 2010 ($4.3 billion)
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Pat Stryker, granddaughter of Homer Stryker, founder of Stryker Corp. ($4.1 billion)
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Margaret Baker, shareholder in Medline, which was founded by her father Jon Mills and uncle Jim Mills ($3.9 billion)
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August Troendle, CEO of Medpace, a clinical research company ($3.5 billion)
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Keith Dunleavy & family, founder of Inovalon, a cloud-based software and healthcare analytics firm ($3.4 billion)
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Wayne Rothbaum, founder of investment firm Quogue Capital and successful biotech investor ($2.9 billion)
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Leonard Schleifer, cofounder and CEO of drugmaker Regeneron ($2.8 billion)
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David Dean Halbert, who built the diagnostics firm Caris Life Sciences ($2.6 billion)
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Jason Murray, cofounder, chair, and CEO of PACS Group, which operates skilled nursing facilities ($2.4 billion)
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Mark Hancock, cofounder and EVP of PACS Group ($2.4 billion)
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Vivek Ramaswamy, biotech entrepreneur, author, and Republican politician who ran for president in 2024 ($2.4 billion)
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David Paul, founder and executive chair of Globus Medical, a spine implant manufacturer ($2.4 billion)
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Phillip Frost, a long-time healthcare investor, inventor and founder who now runs diagnostics maker Opko Health ($2.3 billion)
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Alan Miller & family, founder of Universal Health Services ($2.1 billion)
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Randal J. Kirk, former attorney and executive chair of investment firm Third Security ($2 billion)
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Amy Wyss, daughter of Hansjoerg Wyss, who founded the medical equipment firm Synthes ($2 billion)
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John Abele & family, cofounder of Boston Scientific ($2 billion)
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James Leininger, founder of Kinetic Concepts, a medical devices company ($1.9 billion)
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Noubar Afeyan, founder and CEO of life sciences innovation firm Flagship Pioneering ($1.9 billion)
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John Oyler, CEO, cofounder, and chair of global oncology company BeOne Medicines ($1.9 billion)
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Forrest Preston, founder of Life Care Centers of America ($1.8 billion)
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Gary Michelson, a retired orthopedic and spinal surgeon who holds roughly 340 U.S. patents for orthopedic and spinal surgery instruments ($1.8 billion)
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George Yancopoulos, chief scientific officer at Regeneron ($1.8 billion)
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Martine Rothblatt, cofounder of Sirius Satellite Radio and founder of United Therapeutics ($1.7 billion)
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Hao Hong, chair of Asymchem Laboratories, which provides pharmaceutical outsourcing services ($1.7 billion)
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Lee Sang-hoon, founder, chair, CEO and chief research officer of ABL Bio ($1.6 billion)
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Rick Workman, founder and chair of Heartland Dental, the largest dental support organization in the United States ($1.6 billion)
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Herriot Tabuteau, founder of Axsome Therapeutics ($1.5 billion)
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Jeff Tangney, cofounder of Doximity, also known as “LinkedIn for doctors” ($1.4 billion)
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Ed Park, cofounder of Devoted Health, a healthcare company focused on older Americans ($1.4 billion)
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Todd Park, cofounder of Devoted Health ($1.4 billion)
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Joe Kiani, founder of medical technology firm Masimo Corp. ($1.2 billion)
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Yu De-Chao, chair and CEO of Innovent Biologics ($1.1 billion)
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Timothy Springer, an immunologist and professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Harvard Medical School ($1.1 billion)
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Michelle Xia, cofounder, chair, and CEO of biotech firm Akeso ($1.1 billion)
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Wu Jinzi, founder, chair, and CEO of Ascletis Pharma ($1 billion)
(How depressing to have over three thousand individuals worth the vast majority of wealth in this world)
How about Judy Faulkner, founder of Epic (largest EMR provider in the US) - around 7 billion, estimates that I’m seeing.
Now cross-reference that with the amounts these people give to political parties for a new ranking on what order they get referred to the next Luigi
Hospital Corp. of America
That is the most on-the-nose American-ass name I’ve ever seen for one of our companies, not just a healthcare one.
It’s right up there with the places of worship named “church of god.”
Found all the missing money for universal healthcare!
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Yeah I think people have connected the dots, that doesn’t magically take the power away from the people holding healthcare hostage. Right now the debate is “are you going to give people a reasonable standard of living through civil processes or do we have to rip you apart and eat you?”
lol. I think we all know the answer to that question…
cough Mario Party cough
Green Mario?
We’re gonna need the entire damned gaggle for a proper party.
Including the green mario that’s bad and actually purple now (he’s not actually bad, not compared to the one’s we’re against).
if luigi isnt enough for these people we’re going to have to take our chances with waluigi
The only reason this is the setup. Was under FDR the top tax bracket was 94% of gross pay.
For the insanely highly paid, it just wasn’t cost effective to keep paying CEOs so much, so companies made amazing healthcare packages to stand out to potential employees.
That was 80 years ago, and all the good bits are gone and the shit remains.
We need to fix our healthcare, but absolutely nothing is more important than getting that top tax rate back up to around 94% or even higher. That has to be the highest priority, because that’s how we pay for everything and fight wealth inequality
Any “Income” calculated as “Increase in Worth” above 10 million dollars gets taxed at 100%.
Done. Easy.
Unfortunately not. When you’re over-rich, you stop getting income. Not kidding: check these folks, they have no or very low incomes.
They have wealth. An unfathomable wealth.
None of their expensive assets are under their names. They’re under shell companies names. When you claim to pe working all the time, any time of your yacht is working, right?
Then there are the expenses they can’t put on corporate accounts.
For that, they borrow money, at ridiculously low rates because they put a portion of their wealth as a caution.
When they need more money, their wealth has increased so much just because of economic growth that they can borrow more money just putting the wealth increase as a caution, and that’s enough!
Banks are happy with these arrangements because their immense wealth management make them money.Full payment back of these loan will be done upon their death.
Taxing their income is pointless. You need to tax their wealth.
Edit: and… i just realized I missed “increase in worth”. Well, I would still put a wealth tax.
Yeah, “Increase in wealth”.
If Elon Musk is “worth” $300 Billion on Jan 1st, and $1 Trillion on December 1st, his “income” is calculated as “$700 Billion”.
Then we tax that.
At 100%.
Either he funds it to the Government at the end ofnthe year, or he starts paying out to employees or (real) charities, or whatever over the course ofnthe year so his “worth” on Dec 3rd is only $300,000,000,001.
Why not both? Let’s put the mamoth on diet!
I love posts like this because the comments always devolve into 50/50 people who don’t live in the country (doesn’t need to be the US, it could be the UK or Belgium or Singapore) being discussed telling others to either throw their entire life away on the thin hope that they spark a revolution, or simply commit suicide by cop while getting shot disobeying, all from the safety of their living room.
The only people who are capable of connecting the dots already know what needs done to get desired results, either peacefully or through violence, and are either doing everything they can to make sure it DOESN’T turn to violence, or preparing for when violence does happen.
<personal vent>
People like me can’t feasibly do any more than we are without taking hits to health and sanity. I am trying to change local government, I am campaigning for left candidates, and I’m organizing local minorities and we are learning self defense, forms of active and passive resistance, firearms and team cooperation exercises, etc… And when you’re caring for a disabled partner full time all that shit piles up fast. I haven’t even had time to look for a job this past month.
“throw your life away”
thats how they get you
they make you think youre dependent on them
My main annoyance is when USians shit on Russians for not standing up (many are, and they’re locked up or disappeared) to one of the most authoritarian governments in the largest country in the wrold. While in the same breath saying things you just said about doing something back home.
I’m not saying that’s what you’re doing. It’s just something that grinds my gears, and I’m neither Russian nor American. Shit is difficult when you live in countries that are realistically too large to effectively organize.
In my opinion this is applicable to virtually any political discourse on lemmy though. Overwhelmingly progressive, left leaning, politically informed.
I myself am often annoyed with the literal echo chamber effect of people dropping facts and entire paragraphs in the comments like there is an audience to be convinced, when in fact everyone already knows and has read and heard the argument dozens of times.
At the same time i don’t want to engage with right wingers either, so political monoculture it is.
This time, though, we’re not just talking about Carnegies and Rockefellers. In the 2020s the first estate has four times the wealth that it did during the gilded age.
It’s not just enough to buy elections and control government, it’s enough to buy all the elections internationally, and control all the governments.
And we’re already seeing how in the rest of the industrialized world how far right movements are gaining traction in nations that have been weakened by decades of neoliberal policies (e.g. policies that favor private corporate interests and disfavor the public).
That is to say, watch carefully what happens here in the States, because wherever you are, they’re trying the same thing, and have high tech and lots of money.
I have been saying this for YEARS. It is how the capitalistic overlords want it and why they throw money against medicare for all.
the gop, old guard DNC is just those puppets they need. plus the amount of propaganda against “welfare” too.
As someone who is going to die from lack of healthcare. It’s frustrating but what am I supposed to do in this situation? At the end of the day I’ll be another statistic but I’m kinda hopeful that it’ll be over soon. If worst comes to worst I’ll go to the ER but I have been getting gradually better minus the heart attacks.
Thanks for sharing. I assume you have a diagnosis, but you don’t have coverage for the treatment?
All the best to you, stranger 😕
Have you met my friend Luigi?
Cool. Did anything change with our healthcare?
I’m not shedding any tears over that shitty CEO getting killed but people act like everything magically got better because a CEO died.
Legislation is the only thing that can actually stop the next hydra head from popping up. People with wealth and power will easily outpower peasants. How many rebellions ended with another tyrant in place?
The guy in his 20s, with ample access to education and credit, wealthy parents, and no responsibilities, that Luigi? Yeah, I’ve heard of him. What are the rest of us supposed to do?
What’s someone in their mid-forties, no college education, bad credit, an ex-wife, two kids, and debt up to their eyeballs supposed to do? We can’t take a month of work to (allegedly) buy fake IDs, a gun, and a suppressor, travel the country, stalk a CEO, and then go into hiding indefinitely with no job or income. What options do those people have? That’s what matters because most US Americans are closer to being like that than being like Luigi.
Profit based health insurance is immoral.
Problem is not connecting the dots the problem is being able to change something about it when the regulatory is controlled by the people who profit from the dots
