Healthcare and Education: The Putting of Profits over People and the Putting of Profits over knowledge in the United States

There has been a lot of focus on oppression, equality, and justice the last few weeks. Rightly so, as there is a lot of oppression, inequality, and injustice within the United States. However, I believe the focus of our ire and wrath is slightly misplaced. 

       Aside from law enforcement and the institutions of the government that are armed and can use brutal and sometimes lethal physical force, there are two other primary and essential sectors of society that contribute heavily to racial and wealth/class inequality. They are the healthcare system and the education system.

        Let's start with healthcare. An old quote I remember seeing carved in Schreiber Gym at the University of Montana simply states health is the first of all liberties. If this is the case and there is truth to this statement, than a significant portion of the United States isn't free. In fact, one of the great tools of social oppression within America, coupled with the financial system here, is how the health care system is arranged. 

           Our health care system is too expensive, and so much of it only prioritizes dollar value and profits instead of the well being of its patients and people who it treats for various illnesses.  Health care in the United States is catered more toward keeping the healthy who can afford health care healthy rather than alleviating the sicknesses and illnesses of the poor that propagate the cycle of poverty in the nation's less fortunate. The healthcare system needs a refocusing to prioritize alleviating the sicknesses of the lower classes which contribute to the stifling of upward mobility, whether this be things like obesity, addiction, mental illness, or otherwise.

           Whether done intentionally or not, the U.S. healthcare system contributes to the repression and marginalization of minority groups including African Americans, other ethnicities, and the lower classes in general and helps to prevent the moving out of poverty of many of these groups. 

         Add the social control factor of fields within medicine like psychiatry that govern behavior and sometimes even engineer behavior and pacify groups of people, and you can start to see how easily the healthcare system can be used as a tool of oppression, or at the very least how its set up is more tilted towards benefiting those who already have wealth instead of being a tool for good and helping the poor and sick rise out of poverty. Even without malevolent intent, the healthcare system is not fair, and contributes to much social injustice in the United States.

        On top of all this, the healthcare system is super politicized, and its becoming obvious during the time of COVID-19 and the current instability within the United States that it has its own political agenda. It doesn't hide its agenda very well anymore, and if there is one sector of society that should maintain a level of relative political neutrality to the best they can, it is the healthcare system.

        Now, let's get to the education system. If health is the first of all liberties, than knowledge is a very close second. If you want minority groups and the poor to improve their lives and rise out of poverty and a de facto repressive situation, they are going to need to know how to critically think and rationalize, and they are going to need knowledge and skill.  Just like how the health care system is arranged, quality education is too expensive, and the opportunities are limited to those who are restricted by class and the disadvantages of being within a minority group  with a history of oppression in America. Naturally, this contributes to the choking of upward mobility, and a lack of upward mobility is the definitive trait of a class system, which in itself a class system is neither truly free, nor does it have economic justice. Higher education prioritizes profits over people, and profits over knowledge. 

Just like the healthcare system is too politicized, so too, unequivocally, is the education system. It is the most politicized sector of society, period.

          Too conclude, these two sectors of society, the healthcare system and the education system, are the most overlooked tools and vectors of social injustice and economic inequality out of any of the major sectors of society portrayed in the media today. If you want to remedy inequality, social injustice, and the stifling of upward mobility in the United States, then you must reform these two systems.

         Any system that does not prioritize the well-being of its less fortunate and instead exploits the less fortunate to maximize profits and dollar value is seriously morally bankrupt and should reevaluate its priorities like liberty, equality, and justice. Plutocratic oligarchies are not systems of liberty, no matter how much you bombard the populace with the idea of freedom. If freedom exists in a nation only as an idea, then it is more of a deception then a legitimate principle.