A Nation At Risk This 4th of July!

Posted on | July 2, 2017 | Comments Off on A Nation At Risk This 4th of July!

SOURCE: Decline in State/County GPA from Global Warming

The fact that the US is the only developed nation in the world that spends more on Health Care than all other Social Services combined according to a 2015 Commonwealth Fund study is a remarkably regressive achievement. Besides reflecting our distorted financial and ethical priorities, and the natural end point of a profit-driven free enterprise health care system, it also defines our nation’s vulnerability.

There is growing realization that our inability to come to grips with a decision way back in 1947 to throw our weight behind private profiteering health insurance has the potential to soon crowd out all other US priorities and collapse our economy. A simple shift to consolidate back room insurance functions (not the management or delivery of care) could trim 15% off the US health care bill immediately. But more than this, it would allow us to develop for the first time an integrated plan to assure a more healthy America.

Under such a plan, medical schools would integrate social mission into health professional education as Fitzhugh Mullen recently suggested. Also regressive policies such as those proposed by Trump EPA chief Scott Pruit would be exposed for what they are – economically dangerous and ethically disastrous.

As we wait for the US populace to catch up with this administration (in much the same way as 1970 America’s Nixon supporters took 19 months to finally come to grips with the fact that their President was simply not well enough to manage the duties of Presidency), we all need to continue to expose the truth in words and graphics.

Paul Voosen, Earth and Planetary Science journalist for Science magazine does his part in the June 30, 2017 issue of Science. The graphic above depicts the loss in state and county GDP as a result of the predicted impact of global warming under the current regime. It mirrors in part the human carnage of the opioid epidemic, and the supreme irony that Trump’s loyalest supporters are those most at risk as a result of his regressive policies.

As Frank Rich encourages in this week’s New York magazine cover story, “How A Presidency Ends”, it is highly likely that Trump will come to the same end as Nixon. But only if patriotic Americans continue to doggedly and respectfully pursue, display and share the truth in red, white and blue.

Happy July 4th!