An excerpt from Loathsome America

America’s Healthcare System: Where Your Wallet Gets a Check-Up Before You Do

Imagine a circus where the clowns are all drunk, the lions are rabid, and the ringmaster’s busy jacking up ticket prices while you bleed out in the stands—that’s the U.S. medical-industrial complex in a nutshell. It’s a system so warped, so gleefully predatory, it makes loan sharks look like Mother Teresa on a good hair day.

Let’s start with the basics: you’re born, you’re pink, you’re screaming, and already some pencil-necked billing goblin in a hospital basement is slapping a $12,000 invoice on your gooey little ass for the privilege of existing. Meanwhile, your parents are sobbing—not from joy, but because they just realized their insurance has a deductible the size of a mid-tier yacht. Welcome to America, kiddo, where “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” comes with a co-pay and a side of bankruptcy.

The Most Expensive Scam in Human History

America spends more per capita on healthcare than any other country. So, naturally, we must have the best system, right? Wrong. We pay double what countries with universal healthcare spend, yet our life expectancy is lower, our infant mortality rate is higher, and our hospitals function like overpriced DMV offices where the service costs a fortune and the employees hate you.

In literally every other developed country, healthcare is treated as a basic human right. In America, it’s a privilege reserved for those who can afford to lose a few organs in medical debt. While Canadians and Europeans stroll into hospitals with their free, government-funded healthcare, Americans get the adrenaline-pumping thrill of calling insurance companies to beg for survival.

You think you’re covered? Cute. Insurance companies have made it their mission to deny as much care as possible. If they accidentally approve a necessary procedure, they’ll claw it back later, leaving you with a five-figure bill and a vague explanation about “coding errors.” Because in America, the only thing deadlier than a disease is fine print.

Health Insurance: The World’s Worst Subscription Service

Want to see a doctor? First, you’ll need insurance, which is sort of like healthcare but with more hoops to jump through and fewer guarantees. You’ll have to pick a plan—but choose wisely! Will it be the cheap plan that covers nothing or the expensive plan that still covers nothing but takes more of your money upfront?

And just because you have insurance doesn’t mean it’ll actually work. Need a specialist? You’ll need a referral. Need a test? Your doctor will have to justify it to the insurance overlords. Need a prescription? Hope you enjoy playing Prior Authorization Roulette!

Meanwhile, your insurance company will be raking in billions, while their CEO earns $100 million a year for figuring out new ways to deny your claims

Those soulless, tie-wearing leeches would deny a claim for your grandma’s oxygen tank because “breathing’s a pre-existing condition.” You pay them hundreds a month, thinking you’re covered, only to find out your policy’s fine print is longer than a Tolstoy novel and twice as depressing. Broke your leg? Sorry, pal, that’s an “elective injury”—should’ve thought twice before tripping over your kid’s Lego Death Star. Need chemo? Tough titties, your plan only covers “thoughts and prayers” unless you sell your house and sacrifice your firstborn to the CEO’s bonus fund.

The costs are the real punchline. A single ambulance ride—$2,000 to be strapped to a gurney by a guy who looks like he flunked out of Uber. Insulin? $300 a vial, because Big Pharma figured out diabetics are too busy not dying to haggle. Meanwhile, in Canada, they’re handing out the same shit like it’s Halloween candy, and their biggest healthcare gripe is that the waiting room Tim Hortons ran out of maple glaze. Here, you’re choosing between rent and a root canal while some slick-haired exec buys his third beach house off your misery.

Medical Bankruptcy: The True American Dream

In most civilized countries, getting sick means you go to the hospital, get treated, and then… go home. In America, you get treated and then spend the rest of your life fighting off debt collectors like it’s the final level of a video game.

Medical bills are the number one cause of bankruptcy in the U.S. Think about that. In the richest country on Earth, getting cancer is financially ruinous. Even with insurance, one bad hospital stay can leave you six figures in debt, forcing you to choose between paying for chemo or keeping the lights on.

You know a system is broken when people with full-time jobs still have to crowdfund their survival. Sites like GoFundMe have basically replaced health insurance, turning every hospital visit into an episode of Shark Tank where you hope strangers will pity you enough to donate.

Pharmaceutical Companies: The Legal Drug Cartels

And then, of course, there’s Big Pharma, the group of mustache-twirling supervillains that make sure you pay hundreds for medicine that costs pennies to produce. Need insulin to survive? That’ll be $300 a vial—despite the fact that the guy who invented it wanted it to be free.

The same medication that costs $10 in Canada costs hundreds here, because in America, we believe in free markets, not free lives. Other countries negotiate drug prices. We let corporations price-gouge dying people and call it innovation.

And if you can’t afford your medication? Boo fucking hoo. Maybe try cutting pills in half, selling your car, or—better yet—dying quietly so you don’t mess up the quarterly earnings report.

Why Don’t We Just Fix This?

Great question! The answer: money. The healthcare industry pours millions into lobbying to make sure no real reform ever happens. Any time someone suggests universal healthcare, insurance companies freak out, screeching about “socialism” while casually forgetting that we already have government-run healthcare… for the elderly and veterans.

Oh, and the politics—sweet Jesus, the politics. You’ve got one side screaming about “death panels” while the other’s jerking off to single-payer fantasies that’ll never happen because Congress is too busy gargling lobbyist cash. The Affordable Care Act? More like the “Affordable If You’re a Senator With a Gold-Plated Colonoscopy Plan Act.” Everyone’s got a fix, but the only thing getting fixed is the game, and you’re not the one holding the wrench. So here we are, folks, in the greatest country on Earth, where freedom means the right to die in debt, where a trip to the ER is a Vegas gamble with worse odds, and where the only thing universal is the middle finger they’re all flipping you. The American healthcare system isn’t broken—it’s a goddamn masterpiece of cruelty, a Picasso of profiteering painted in the blood of the uninsured.

Instead of fixing the system, we just keep making it more confusing, more expensive, and more exploitative. Why? Because there’s too much profit in keeping people sick and desperate.

America: The Greatest Healthcare System (For Billionaires!)

So, congratulations, America! You’ve managed to create a healthcare system where getting sick is a financial death sentence, where insurance companies exist solely to deny care, where Big Pharma treats life-saving medicine like designer handbags, and where people have to beg strangers online to keep breathing.

But hey, at least we’re not one of those socialist countries where people just… get care without having to sell their house. That would be crazy.

Now excuse me while I go treat this headache with a whiskey and a prayer—cheaper than aspirin, and twice as patriotic.