Something is killing Americans and researchers have yet to find the culprit. But we can risk some intuitive guesses.

According to researchers from the Center on Society and Health, Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, American life expectancy has not kept pace with that of other wealthy countries and is now in fact decreasing.

The National Center for Health Statistics reported that life expectancy in the United States peaked (78.9 years) in 2014 and subsequently dropped for 3 consecutive years, hitting 78.6 years in 2017. The decrease was most significant among men (0.4 years) than women (0.2 years) and happened across racial-ethnic lines: between 2014 and 2016, life expectancy decreased among non-Hispanic white populations (from 78.8 to 78.5 years), non-Hispanic black populations (from 75.3 years to 74.8 years), and Hispanic populations (82.1 to 81.8 years).

“By 2014, midlife mortality was increasing across all racial groups, caused by drug overdoses, alcohol abuse, suicides, and a diverse list of organ system diseases,” wrote researchers Steven H. Woolf and Heidi Schoomaker in a study that appears in the latest issue of the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association.

At the very beginning of the report, Woolf and Schoomaker reveal that the geographical area with the largest relative increases occurred “in the Ohio Valley and New England.”

“The implications for public health and the economy are substantial,” they added, “making it vital to understand the underlying causes.”

Incidentally, it would be difficult for any observer of the U.S. political scene to read that passage without immediately connecting it to the 2016 presidential election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

Taking advantage of the deep industrial decline that has long plagued the Ohio Valley, made up of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Kentucky, Trump successfully tapped into a very real social illness, at least partially connected to economic stagnation, which helped propel him into the White House.

Significantly, thirty-seven states witnessed significant jumps in midlife mortality in the years leading up to 2017. As the researchers pointed out, however, the trend was concentrated in certain states, many of which, for example in New England, did not support Trump in 2016.

“Between 2010 and 2017, the largest relative increases in mortality occurred in New England (New Hampshire, 23.3%; Maine, 20.7%; Vermont, 19.9%, Massachusetts 12.1%) and the Ohio Valley (West Virginia, 23.0%; Ohio, 21.6%; Indiana, 14.8%; Kentucky, 14.7%), as well as in New Mexico (17.5%), South Dakota (15.5%), Pennsylvania (14.4%), North Dakota (12.7%), Alaska (12.0%), and Maryland (11.0%). In contrast, the nation’s most populous states (California, Texas, and New York) experienced relatively small increases in midlife mortality.

Eight of the 10 states with the highest number of excess deaths were in the industrial Midwest or Appalachia, whereas rural US counties experienced greater increases in midlife mortality than did urban counties.

A tragic irony of the study suggests that greater access to healthcare, notably among the more affluent white population, actually correlates to an increase in higher mortality rates. The reason is connected to the out-of-control prescription of opioid drugs to combat pain and depression.

“The sharp increase in overdose deaths that began in the 1990s primarily affected white populations and came in 3 waves,” the report explained: (1) the introduction of OxyContin in 1996 and overuse of prescription opioids, followed by (2) increased heroin use, often by patients who had become addicted to prescription opioids, and (3) the subsequent emergence of potent synthetic opioids (eg, fentanyl analogues)—the latter triggering a large post-2013 increase in overdose deaths.

“That white populations first experienced a larger increase in overdose deaths than nonwhite populations may reflect their greater access to health care (and thus prescription drugs).”

In September, Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin, reached a tentative settlement with 23 states and more than 2,000 cities and counties that sued the company, owned by the Sackler family, over its role in the opioid crisis

Other factors also helped to drive up the U.S. mortality rate, including alcoholic liver disease and suicides, 85% of which occurred with a firearm or other method.

The United States spends more on health care than any other country, yet its overall health report card fares worse than those of other wealthy countries. Americans experience higher rates of illness and injury and die earlier than people in other high-income nations.

Researchers were perplexed but not surprised by the data as there existed clear signs back in the 1980s that the United States was heading for a cliff as far as longevity rates go.

So what is it that’s claiming the life of Americans, many at the prime of their life, at a faster pace than in the past? The reality is that it is likely to be an accumulation of negative factors that are finally beginning to take a toll. For example, apart from the opioid crisis, there has also been an almost total collapse of union representation across Corporate America, which has essentially crushed any form of workplace democracy. This author, a former member of three worker unions, witnessed this egregious abuse of corporate power firsthand, which is apparent by the total stagnation of wages for many decades.

Today’s real average wage – that is, after accounting for inflation – has about the same purchasing power it did about half a century ago. Meanwhile, in the majority of cases, increases in salary have a marked tendency to go to the highest-paid tier of executives.

In a report by Pew Research, “real terms average hourly earnings peaked more than 45 years ago: The $4.03-an-hour rate recorded in January 1973 had the same purchasing power that $23.68 would today.”

One needs only consider the growing mountain of tuition debt now consuming the paychecks of many university graduates, many of whom have yet to land their dream 6-figure job from their relatively worthless liberal education, to better understand the quiet desperation that exists across the country.

At the same time, the exponential rise in the use of social media, which has been proven to trigger depression and loneliness in users, also deserves serious consideration. What society is experiencing with its massive online presence is a total overhaul as to the way human beings relate to each other. Presently, it would be very difficult to argue that the changes have been positive; in fact, they seem to be contributing to the early demise of millions of Americans in the prime of life.

Taken together, abusive labor practices that ignores workplace democracy, the epidemic of opioid usage, compounded by the anti-social features of ‘social media’ suggests a perfect storm of factors precipitating the rise of early deaths in the United States. Since all of these areas fall in one way or another under the control of corporate power, this powerful agency must find ways to help address the problem. The future success of America depends upon it.

Although ‘masculinity’ once upon a time helped ‘privileged males’ tame the American wilderness, build cities and exhibit courage in battle – among other dirty tasks that required no small amount of brute strength and even aggressiveness – the medical community would now have us believe there is something inherently wrong with masculinity.

In the American Psychological Association’s ‘Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men’, traditional notions of masculinity are described as undesirable for a host of reasons, but perhaps most disturbingly because “boys and men who identify as gay, bisexual or transgender still face higher-than-­average levels of hostility and pressure to conform to masculine norms.” In other words, the so-called ‘toxic masculinity’ that has helped men and civilization progress over the centuries has been written off as “harmful” because some males – either by choice or otherwise – feel threatened by it.

Pseudo-science pounces right out of the gates of the study as we are introduced to yet another parallel reality known as the “masculinities.” No longer does the singular adjective ‘masculine’ suffice these days of multiple genders and diverse lifestyles because apparently that would offend a minority subculture of those males whose notions of masculinity do not flush with those of the majority.

In the opening paragraph we are informed that “It is common to use the term ‘masculinities’ rather than ‘masculinity’ to acknowledge the various conceptions of masculine gender roles associated with an intersection of multiple identities.” The medical community's habit of tossing about scientifically unproven claims of “multiple identities” brings to mind Ken Kesey’s ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ where the medical staff, the ones with the real issues, pushes pure quackery on a trapped patient population.

The guideline continues with something of a caveat: “When trying to understand the complex role of masculinity in the lives of diverse boys and men, it is critical to acknowledge that gender is a non-binary construct [in other words, comprised of more than just males and females] that is distinct from, although interrelated to, sexual orientation.” 

Here, the authors insist (“critical to acknowledge”) that society as a whole must cater to the whims of that tiny segment of the population that believes it may not only choose the gender they identify with as if they were shopping in a Fifth Avenue boutique, but that the rest of society must use the ‘correct pronouns’ when addressing them. Yet, the overwhelming majority of males who are comfortable with their biologically assigned sex and gender, as well as their masculinity, are now being told something is inherently wrong with them. This is openly admitted.

And I quote: “The main thrust of the subsequent research is that traditional masculinity—marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression—is, on the whole, harmful. Men socialized in this way are less likely to engage in healthy behaviors,” writes Stephanie Pappas in a summary.

Proof of this assertion is provided by various questionable studies, including one by James Mahalik, PhD, of Boston College, who found that the more men "conformed" to masculine norms, the more likely they were to consider as normal risky behavior such as heavy drinking bouts, abusing tobacco and – wait for it – not eating their vegetables.

However, a weekend trip to a nightclub would quickly prove that a high percentage of females – with not a trace of masculinity in their bodies – also engage in those same risky activities. Yet with a wave of the academic wand, centuries of male accomplishments have been flushed down the proverbial toilet because part of the male population has a tendency to drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes and push veggies to the side of their plates. In any case, the Psychological guideline conspicuously fails to mention any of the tremendous accomplishments of the male species and the necessary amount of masculinity that has made modern urban living a comfortable reality in the first place. That is an unforgivable omission.

All of this hand-wringing over 'toxic masculinity' will only set up the male population for more dangerous ‘preventive measures’ now seen today, where many schools, for example, no longer provide recess period to their students, who are bursting with youthful energy and excitement. Instead, the medical community would rather brand boys who can’t sit still at their desks with ‘Attention-Deficit Disorder’ and medicate them into a somnambulist state of submissiveness and passivity. 

Below is a video of a young woman who discusses her “horrible” experience with a university gender studies course for anyone who wants a nice primer on the subject.

Further on we learn that in Western culture, the dominant ideal of masculinity is of “a more rugged and self-sufficient ideal.” This is not a good thing because, according to the almighty guidelines, such attributes may infringe upon that infinitesimal segment of the male population “who depart from this narrow masculine conception by any dimension of diversity (e.g., race, sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression)” and thus may find themselves “negotiating between adopting dominant ideals that exclude them or being stereotyped or marginalized.”

In other words, otherwise normal males exhibiting symptoms of masculinity, much as men have throughout the life of the species, are the ones with the problem. Why? Because a small fraction of the males do not subscribe to the “narrow” definition of masculinity (“rugged and self-sufficient”), which the APA itself has drawn up.

So instead of drawing up special guidelines on how the Psychological community should handle that tiny fraction of the population who feel uncomfortable with displays of “traditional masculinity,” the good doctors have taken it upon themselves to treat the entire male population as if it were one big patient in desperate need of counseling – and possibly even medicating, which should make the pharmaceutical industry very happy indeed. 

In reality, the ones who are in need of serious guidelines are these so-called medical professionals – in cahoots with the media industry and drug makers – who continue to push this insidious and hyper-liberal Cultural Marxist value system upon an unwitting population.

Study the world map of vaccine-preventable diseases maintained by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) and, when it comes to measles, it is easy to conclude that large parts of the world are in the grip of an epidemic. But the name of that epidemic is not “measles”: it is stupidity. And the Middle East isn’t immune.

Nor is the developed world. The vaccination rate for the triple MMR shot, which protects children against measles, mumps and rubella, has fallen in England for the fourth consecutive year. Worried public-health officials say the blame lies with the resurgence of anti-vaccination propaganda, based on a fraudulent and wholly discredited research paper published 20 years ago that is now gaining fresh credibility thanks to the power of the Internet and social media.

This month Seth Berkley, the chief executive of GAVI, told a summit in Abu Dhabi about the growing threat of such “epidemics of disinformation.” The organization, a consortium of public and private health bodies working to eradicate preventable diseases, was “seeing more and more problems with misinformation in developing countries” as the use of smartphones and social-media apps spread.

There also appears to be a growing association between populist, anti-establishment political movements and the so-called “anti-vaxxer” movement. In the US, President Donald Trump has frequently tweeted his belief that there is a link between vaccines and autism. In August, the Italian government scrapped a law that made it obligatory for parents to have their children inoculated against 10 diseases, in a move that flies in the face of overwhelming evidence that vaccinations are safe, are effective and have saved millions of lives.

In an age of global travel, such stupidity has consequences far beyond the borders of any one state.

The target of achieving 95% coverage of vaccinations is not a random one. This is the level at which vaccination confers “herd immunity,” making it difficult for a disease to spread within any community – and, crucially, preventing members of that community infecting those of any others in which it comes in contact.

The 22 countries of the World Health Organization’s Eastern Mediterranean region have been battling against measles since 1997, when they agreed to eliminate the disease by 2010. This is a task that has already been complicated by a series of conflicts and mass movements of refugees. The last thing the region needs now is to be infected by an epidemic of misinformation.

At first, the region seemed on track to hit the target. In 2013, coverage was at 95% or above in 11 of the 22 countries, 90-94% in two and between 46% and 85% in the other nine. But then progress stalled. The 2010 target was missed, and extended to 2015, when it was missed again. The target now is 2020 and, says WHO, the region is unlikely to hit that.

First, this “failure” should be put in context. Well over 400 million people in the region have been vaccinated since the target was first set in 1997. In 2000 there were approximately 43,000 deaths from measles in the region and in 2008 there were 24,000, a reduction of 43%. The WHO estimates that since 2000 more than 2.4 million lives have been saved.

But such success is fragile. The impact of social disruption can be seen in the gap of measles-vaccination coverage between the stable nations of the region and those racked by troubles. Coverage in the United Arab Emirates, for example, has been at about 95% since about the mid-1990s and 99% since 2014. It’s a similar picture in the other five Gulf Cooperation Council nations. But in countries affected by war, and prone to mass movements of population, it’s a very different story.

Until about 2010 vaccination rates for a set of 11 inoculations were rising in Syria, with an average coverage of more than 80%. Since then, though, all gains have been lost. In 2017 measles inoculations were down to 67% for the first of two required shots, and 59% for the second. Even more alarmingly, coverage of the triple DPT vaccine, protecting children against diphtheria, whooping cough and tetanus, is down to just 48%.

In Iraq, which saw a similar slump during the worst years of strife, there are signs of inoculation rates recovering across the board. Yet other than the BCG shot for tuberculosis, which was at 99% in 2017, all other inoculations are still well below the 95% target.

Since it began work in 2000, GAVI has contributed to the immunization of 700 million children and helped developing countries to save more than 10 million lives.

Yet for a range of reasons, including government inertia, conflict and, most recently, the rise of irresponsible conspiracy theories, children’s lives are still being blighted or cut short by diseases that need no longer exist. Last year alone 20 million children weren’t vaccinated and, as a result, 1.5 million died.

All of us, from individuals to governments, have a moral responsibility to ensure that every child, in countries rich or poor, is vaccinated. Parents and governments that refuse to do so are the enemies of their children, their communities and, ultimately, the entire world.

syndicationbureau.com via atimes.com

From Newsweek, which is supposed to, you know, report actual news of the week: “‘We don’t know what people have’: Laura Ingraham calls migrant caravan a health issue.”

And from The Daily Beast: “Fox & Friends Host Brian Kilmeade Fears ‘Diseases’ Brought By Migrant Caravan.”

This is not “news.” It’s propaganda recycled and regurgitated by lazy political operatives masquerading as journalists. At least the Newsweek writer gave credit to his zealous hitmen sources: “Ingraham’s comments,” he dutifully wrote, “were first highlighted by Media Matters for America.”

MMfA is a militant left-wing oppo research outfit funded by progressive billionaire George Soros. Somehow, not-really-Newsweek forgot to mention this fact. (Alas, mentioning Soros subsidies has also become a forbidden act this week, but that’s another story.) The determined intent of these “news” pieces is not to inform readers but to inflame them with the dog-whistle assumption that conservatives, Fox personalities and ordinary Americans who worry about diseases from immigration are de facto racists.

On cue, tennis star and celebrity leftist Martina Navratilova barked at Fox News’ Kilmeade on Twitter: “YOU ARE THE DISEASE! the migrants are not the problem, trump and his sycophants, like you, are the problem. Stop spewing fear and prejudice.”

Comedian John Henson tweeted: “Brian Kilmeade is spreading the disease of intolerance every single day…”

And former Clinton press flack-turned CNN hack Joe Lockhart wrote: “This is the disease Fox News spreads every day. They are complicit with Trump in trying to change the character of our country.”

Newsflash, fake newsers: It’s neither racist nor xenophobic nor hateful to discuss the impact of unfettered mass immigration and unvetted caravans of illegal border-crossers on our public health.

My husband’s great-great grandparents and their relatives from Ukraine underwent thorough medical and physical exams at Ellis Island immediately after disembarking from their arduous transatlantic journeys. A team of doctors checked for everything from eye disease and muscle weakness to heart conditions, ringworm and mental deficiencies. Those who failed were rejected and ejected. No appeals, no apologies, no amnesty.

I find it especially bizarre that some of the same outspoken, big government advocates for vaccinating every American citizen, young or old, against every possible condition, from the flu to chickenpox to HPV, are the same types now howling over the commonsense idea that we should protect ourselves from foreign diseases.

It wasn’t Trump’s idea to build a wall against microscopic invaders.

The Immigration and Nationality Act mandates medical screening exams for legal immigrants and refugees from around the world. The tests are performed by authorized physicians in either the applicants’ countries of origin or in the United States. The process includes “a physical examination, mental health evaluation, syphilis serologic testing… and chest radiography followed by acid-fast bacillus smears and sputum cultures if the chest radiograph is consistent with tuberculosis (TB).”

Legal immigrants and refugees must provide mandatory proof of vaccination for measles, mumps, rubella, polio, tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, hepatitis A and B, rotavirus, meningococcus, chicken pox, pneumonia and seasonal flu.

Moreover, the Centers for Disease Control, not Fox News or the Trump White House or any other evil conservatives, reports that “most experts agree that testing for TB, hepatitis B, and HIV should be performed for most new arrivals to the United States. Clinicians should also make a habit of ensuring that this screening has been done for every new non-US-born patient they see, regardless of time since the person’s arrival.”

Actual public health experts across the Southwest have reported rises in drug-resistant TB and dengue fever. In June, Australian public health researchers reported that “scabies, long considered a disease of the past in the developed world, is making its way back.” The scientists pointed to mass global migration as a leading factor, noting scabies outbreaks among refugees to the European Union and along America’s southern border.

And in Germany, federal epidemiologists reported that since opening the floodgates to migrants in 2015, data show “increased incidences in Germany of adenoviral conjunctivitis, botulism, chicken pox, cholera, cryptosporidiosis, dengue fever, echinococcosis, enterohemorrhagic E. coli, giardiasis, haemophilus influenza, Hantavirus, hepatitis, hemorrhagic fever, HIV/AIDS, leprosy, louse-borne relapsing fever, malaria, measles, meningococcal disease, meningoencephalitis, mumps, paratyphoid, rubella, shigellosis, syphilis, toxoplasmosis, trichinellosis, tuberculosis, tularemia, typhus and whooping cough.”

It’s simply insane to argue we should turn a blind eye to the health status of law-breaking aliens. And it’s treachery, yes, treachery, for so-called journalists to use their platforms to blithely smear those who dare to question open borders orthodoxy or report the highly inconvenient facts.

creators.com

Forty years ago last month, thousands of delegates from 134 countries gathered in Kazakhstan, then part of the Soviet Union, to adopt the Declaration of Alma-Ata. This landmark agreement committed the world to expanding health access, and the principles it enshrined in a mere three pages continue to have a profound effect on the field of public health.

The declaration’s continuing appeal consists in its dual character: it is part gospel of applied science, part political manifesto. Among its key messages are increasing community leadership in health planning; reducing elitism in modern medicine; and tackling social inequality for better health outcomes.

One of the biggest differences between 1978 and today is the breadth of health vulnerabilities. Climate change and shifting diets have created new risk categories, while wealth inequalities and political exclusion have produced deeper pockets of vulnerability. Consider, for example, the issue of migration: the politicization of this age-old phenomenon has serious public-health consequences.

Health markets have also changed dramatically. Today, poorly regulated private health-care sectors predominate in many countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa. While the expansion of health-care markets expands patient choice, personal debt is also increasing. Moreover, commercial interests within the food, alcohol and tobacco industries undermine people’s health and complicate efforts to curb the rise in non-communicable illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes.

Regrettably, community involvement in health planning has remained virtually unchanged since 1978. Although research shows that services improve when people participate in health planning, “participatory governance” is not a common feature in many developing countries. With few exceptions – Brazil and Thailand are often singled out – community-centered health systems remain rare.

The Declaration of Alma-Ata’s lasting legacy is the consensus that health can be improved only with a combination of good science, sound economics, and action against social injustices. This was true in the 1970s, and it is true today. The international community should mark the declaration’s anniversary by recommitting to the values it upholds.

Three of Alma-Ata’s messages merit special attention. First, to improve health, leaders need to do more than build clinics and train physicians; they must also protect the environment, ensure access to clean water and sanitation, promote gender equality, create jobs, and strengthen infrastructure. Although these objectives are incorporated in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), there needs to be more serious commitment to the holistic approach advocated by the Declaration of Alma-Ata.

Second, more needs to be done to promote interdisciplinary health sciences that address both the practical and ethical questions posed by Alma-Ata. One opportunity to reaffirm this principle will come this month, when some 2,000 stakeholders from around the world gather in Liverpool, England, for the Fifth Global Symposium on Health Systems Research. Engaging government policymakers, civil society, the media, and funders on the message of Health for All will be crucial to strengthening health systems.

Finally, just as the declaration prescribed, international health organizations and donors are beginning to reorient their strategies to empower leaders at the local and national levels. While there is still room for improvement, more women and citizens of developing countries occupy prominent positions in global organizations than before.

The world has yet to achieve the ideals announced in 1978. But we are moving in the right direction. True change takes place close to common people, and not just in centers of global power. It can come through more representative public institutions, more relevant science, or more social action. In all of these areas, the Declaration of Alma-Ata will no doubt be a source of continued inspiration.

atimes.com

“It is essential to provide conditions for creative labor and economic growth at a pace that would put an end to the division of the world into permanent winners and permanent losers. The rules of the game should give the developing economies at least a chance to catch up with those we know as developed economies. We should work to level out the pace of economic development, and brace up backward countries and regions so as to make the fruit of economic growth and technological progress accessible to all. Particularly, this would help to put an end to poverty, one of the worst contemporary problems.” Vladimir Putin, President Russian Federation, Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club

Putin wants to end poverty? Putin wants to stimulate economic growth in developing countries? Putin wants to change the system that divides the world into “permanent winners and losers”? But, how can that be, after all, Putin is bad, Putin is a “KGB thug”, Putin is the “new Hitler”?

American liberals would be surprised to know that Putin actually supports many of the same social issues that they support. For example, the Russian President is not only committed to lifting living standards and ending poverty, he’s also a big believer in universal healthcare which is free under the current Russian Constitution. Naturally, the Russian system has its shortcomings, but there has been significant progress under Putin who has dramatically increased the budget, improved treatment and widened accessibility. Putin believes that healthcare should be a universal human right. Here’s what he said at the annual meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club:

“Another priority is global healthcare…. All people in the world, not only the elite, should have the right to healthy, long and full lives. This is a noble goal. In short, we should build the foundation for the future world today by investing in all priority areas of human development.” (Vladimir Putin, President Russian Federation, Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club)

How many “liberal” politicians in the US would support a recommendation like Putin’s? Not very many. The Democrats are much more partial to market-based reforms like Obamacare that guarantee an ever-increasing slice of the pie goes to the giant HMOs and the voracious pharmaceutical companies. The Dems no longer make any attempt to promote universal healthcare as a basic human right. They’ve simply thrown in the towel and moved on to other issues.

Many Americans would find Putin’s views on climate change equally surprising. Here’s another clip from the Valdai speech:

“Ladies and gentlemen, one more issue that shall affect the future of the entire humankind is climate change. … I suggest that we take a broader look at the issue….What we need is an essentially different approach, one that would involve introducing new, groundbreaking, nature-like technologies that would not damage the environment, but rather work in harmony with it, enabling us to restore the balance between the biosphere and technology upset by human activities.

It is indeed a challenge of global proportions. And I am confident that humanity does have the necessary intellectual capacity to respond to it. We need to join our efforts, primarily engaging countries that possess strong research and development capabilities, and have made significant advances in fundamental research. We propose convening a special forum under the auspices of the UN to comprehensively address issues related to the depletion of natural resources, habitat destruction, and climate change. Russia is willing to co-sponsor such a forum…..” Valdai)

Most people would never suspect that Putin supports a global effort to address climate change. And, how would they know, after all, bits of information like that– that help to soften Putin’s image and make him seem like a rational human being– are scrubbed from the media’s coverage in order to cast him in the worst possible light. The media doesn’t want people to know that Putin is a reflective and modest man who has worked tirelessly to make Russia and the world a better place. No, they want them to believe that he’s is a scheming tyrannical despot who’s obsessive hatred for America poses a very real threat to US national security. But it’s not true.

Putin is not the ghoulish caricature the media makes him out to be nor does he hate America, that’s just more propaganda from the corporate echo-chamber. The truth is Putin has been good for Russia, good for regional stability, and good for global security. He pulled the Russian Federation back from the brink of annihilation in 2000, and has had the country moving in a positive direction ever since. His impact on the Russian economy has been particularly impressive. According to Wikipedia:

“Between 2000 and 2012 Russia’s energy exports fueled a rapid growth in living standards, with real disposable income rising by 160%. In dollar-denominated terms this amounted to a more than sevenfold increase in disposable incomes since 2000. In the same period, unemployment and poverty more than halved and Russians’ self-assessed life satisfaction also rose significantly.”

Inequality is a problem in Russia just like it is in the US, but the vast majority of working people have benefited greatly from Putin’s reforms and a system of distribution that – judging by steady uptick in disposable incomes – is significantly superior to that in the United States where wages have flatlined for over 2 decades and where virtually all of the nation’s wealth trickles upward to the parasitic 1 percent.

Since Putin took office in 2000, workers have seen across-the-board increase in wages, benefits, healthcare and pensions. Poverty and unemployment have been reduced by more than half while foreign investment has experienced steady growth. Onerous IMF loans have been repaid in full, capital flight has all-but ceased, hundreds in billions in reserves have been accumulated, personal and corporate taxes have been slashed, and technology has experienced an unprecedented renaissance. The notorious Russian oligarchs still have a stranglehold on many privately-owned industries, but their grip has begun to loosen and the “kleptocracy has begun to fade.”

Things are far from perfect, but the Russian economy has flourished under Putin and, generally speaking, the people are appreciative. This helps to explain why Putin’s public approval ratings are typically in the stratosphere. (70 to 80 percent) Simply put: Putin the most popular Russian president of all time. And his popularity is not limited to Russia either, in fact, he typically ranks at the top of most global leadership polls such as the recent Gallup International End of Year Survey (EoY) where Putin came in third (43 percent positive rating) behind Germany’s Angela Merkel (49 percent) and French President Emmanuel Macron. (45 percent) According to Gallup: “Putin has gone from one in three (33 percent) viewing him favourably to 43 percent, a significant increase over two years.”

The only place where people have a negative view of Putin is in the United States (14 percent) and EU (28 percent), the two locations where he is relentlessly savaged by the media and excoriated by the political class. This should come as no surprise to Americans who know that the chances of stumbling across an article that treats Putin with even minimal objectivity is about as likely as finding a copper coin at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The consensus view of the western media is that Putin is a maniacal autocrat who kills journalists and political opponents (no proof), who meddles in US elections to “sow discord” and destroy our precious democracy (no proof), and who is conducting a secret and sinister cyberwar against the United States. (no proof). It’s a pathetic litany of libels and fabrications, but its impact on the brainwashed American people has been quite impressive as Gallup’s results indicate. Bottom line: Propaganda works.

The attacks on Putin began sometime in 2006 during Putin’s second term when it became apparent that Russia was going to resist the looting and exploitation the US requires of its vassal states. This is when the powerful Council on Foreign Relations funded a report titled “Russia’s Wrong Direction” that suggested that Russia’s increasingly independent foreign policy and insistence that it control its own vast oil and natural gas resources meant that “the very idea of a ‘strategic partnership’ no longer seems realistic.” That’s right, Russia was thrown under the bus because they wanted to control their own oil and their own destiny.

John Edwards and Jack Kemp were appointed to lead a CFR task force which concocted the absurd pretext that that Putin was “rolling back democracy” in Russia. They claimed that the government had become increasingly authoritarian and that the society was growing less “open and pluralistic”. Kemp and Edwards provided the ideological foundation upon which the entire public relations campaign against Putin has been built. Twelve years later, the same charges are still being leveled at Putin along with the additional allegations that he meddled in the 2016 presidential elections.

Needless to say, none of the nation’s newspapers, magazines or broadcast media ever publish anything that deviates even slightly from the prevailing, propagandistic narrative about Putin. One can only assume that the MSM’s views on Putin are either universally accepted by all 325 million Americans or that the so-called “free press” is a wretched farce that conceals an authoritarian corporate machine that censors all opinions that don’t promote their own malign political agenda.

What Washington really despises about Putin is that he has refused to comply with their diktats and has openly rejected their model of a “unipolar” world order. As he said at the annual Security Conference at Munich in 2007:

“The unipolar world refers to a world in which there is one master, one sovereign; one center of authority, one center of force, one center of decision-making. At the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within.”

Despite Russia’s efforts to assist the US in its War On Terror, Washington has continued to regard Putin as an emerging rival that would eventually have to be confronted. The conflict in Ukraine added more gas to the fire by pitting the two superpowers against each other in a hot war that remains unresolved to this day.

But Syria was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Russia’s intervention in the Syrian War in September 2015 proved to be the turning point in the 7 year-long conflagration. By rolling back the CIA-trained militants, Putin bloodied Washington’s nose and forced the Pentagon to adopt a backup plan that relied heavily on Kurdish proxies east of the Euphrates. At present, US Special Forces and their allies are clinging to a strip of arid wasteland in the Syrian outback hoping that the Pentagon brass can settle on a forward-operating strategy that reverses their fortunes or brings the war to a swift end.

The Syria humiliation precipitated the Russia-gate Information Operation (IO) which is the propaganda component of the current war on Russia. The scandal has been an effective way to poison public perceptions and to make it look like the perpetrator of aggression is really the victim. More important, failure in Syria has led to a reevaluation of how Washington conducts its wars abroad. The War on Terror pretext has been jettisoned for a more direct approach laid out in the Trump administration’s National Defense Strategy. The focus going forward will be on “Great Power Competition”, that is, the US is subordinating its covert proxy operations to more flagrant displays of military force particularly in regards to the “growing threat from revisionist powers”, Russia and China. In short, the gloves are coming off and Washington is ramping up for a land war.

Putin has become an obstacle to Washington’s imperial ambitions which is why he’s has been elevated to Public Enemy Number 1. It has nothing to do with the fictitious meddling in the 2016 elections or the nonsensical “rolling back democracy” in Russia. It’s all about power. In the United States the group with the tightest grip on power is the foreign policy establishment. These are the towering mandarins who dictate the policy, tailor the politics to fit their strategic vision, and dispatch their lackeys in the media to shape the narrative. These are the people who decided that Putin must be demonized to pave the way for more foreign interventions, more regime change wars, more bloody aggression against sovereign states.

Putin has repeatedly warned Washington that Russia would not stand by while the US destroyed one country after the other in its lust for global domination. He reiterated his claim that Washington’s “uncontained hyper-use of force” was creating “new centers of tension”, exacerbating regional conflicts, undermining international relations, and “plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts.” He has pointed out how the US routinely displayed its contempt for international law and “overstepped its national borders in every way.” As a result of Washington’s aggressive behavior, public confidence in international law and global security has steadily eroded and “No one feels safe. I want to emphasize this,” Putin thundered in Munich. “No one feels safe.”

On September 28, 2015 Putin finally threw down the gauntlet in a speech he delivered at the 70th session of the UN General Assembly in New York. After reiterating his commitment to international law, the UN, and state sovereignty, he provided a brief but disturbing account of recent events in the Middle East, all of which have gotten significantly worse due to Washington’s use of force. Here’s Putin:

“Just look at the situation in the Middle East and Northern Africa… Instead of bringing about reforms, aggressive intervention destroyed government institutions and the local way of life. Instead of democracy and progress, there is now violence, poverty, social disasters and total disregard for human rights, including even the right to life…

The power vacuum in some countries in the Middle East and Northern Africa obviously resulted in the emergence of areas of anarchy, which were quickly filled with extremists and terrorists. The so-called Islamic State has tens of thousands of militants fighting for it, including former Iraqi soldiers who were left on the street after the 2003 invasion. Many recruits come from Libya whose statehood was destroyed as a result of a gross violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1973….”

US interventions have decimated Iraq, Libya, Syria and beyond. Over a million people have been killed while tens of millions have been forced to flee their homes and their countries. The refugee spillover has added to social tensions across the EU where anti-immigrant sentiment has precipitated the explosive growth in right wing groups and political organizations. From Northern Africa, across the Middle East, and into Central Asia, global security has steadily deteriorated under Washington’s ruthless stewardship. Here’s more from Putin:

“The Islamic State itself did not come out of nowhere. It was initially developed as a weapon against undesirable secular regimes. Having established control over parts of Syria and Iraq, Islamic State now aggressively expands into other regions….It is irresponsible to manipulate extremist groups and use them to achieve your political goals, hoping that later you’ll find a way to get rid of them or somehow eliminate them….”

Putin clearly blames the United States for the rise of ISIS and the surge in global terrorism. He also condemns Washington’s strategy to use terrorist organizations to achieve its own narrow strategic objectives. (regime change) More important, he uses his platform at the United Nations to explain why he has deployed the Russian Air-force to bases in Syria where it will it will be used to conduct a war against Washington’s jihadist proxies on the ground.

Putin: “We can no longer tolerate the current state of affairs in the world.”

Less than 48 hours after these words were uttered, Russian warplanes began pounding militant targets in Syria.

Putin again: “Dear colleagues,….relying on international law, we must join efforts to address the problems that all of us are facing, and create a genuinely broad international coalition against terrorism….Russia is confident of the United Nations’ enormous potential, which should help us avoid a new confrontation and embrace a strategy of cooperation. Hand in hand with other nations, we will consistently work to strengthen the UN’s central, coordinating role. I am convinced that by working together, we will make the world stable and safe, and provide an enabling environment for the development of all nations and peoples.”

So, here’s the question: Is Putin “evil” for opposing Washington’s regime change wars, for stopping the spread of terrorism, and for rejecting the idea that one unipolar world power should rule the world? Is that why he’s evil, because he won’t click his heels and do as he’s told by the global hegemon?

We should all be so evil.

unz.com

Back on 27 February 2017, after already more than a month as President, he said «Nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated», and that «I have to tell you, it's an unbelievably complex subject». For him, as someone who never had really thought about it before, this fact (the need for authentic expertise in the interests of the public, not of himself) came as an unpleasant shock — after already several weeks in the White House.

He has made clear that he’ll be happy to sign anything that Republicans in the U.S. Senate and House can have enough agreement with each other about so as to get onto his desk for him to sign into law.

The latest iteration of this is that Trump, it has recently become clear, would even be delighted to sign into law a healthcare bill that would strip away almost all regulations — almost all legal limitations — on what health insurance companies are allowed to do in the insurance policies they sell. Philip Klein, in the Washington Examiner, on the morning of Wednesday July 19^th, headlined «Trump calls Mike Lee in attempt to revive Senate healthcare bill», and reported that Trump had just spoken with Senator Lee — who along with Rand Paul is one of the Senate’s two libertarians (believers in eliminating all economic regulations) — and Klein reported there that:

Trump reached out to Lee, R-Utah, on Tuesday afternoon to take his temperature and, according to a spokesman for the senator, Lee reiterated his position that he wanted to free the market from Obamacare's regulations in an effort to drive down premiums and provide more choices.

Trump, according to the spokesman, seemed receptive.

In other words: Trump is «receptive» to eliminating almost all of the Obama regulations on the insurance policies that insurance companies can sell. Lee, who is a sincerely committed libertarian, has demanded that Obamacare be eliminated altogether before it is replaced, and the reason he has required this is that Obamacare has placed legal limitations upon the insurance policies that are allowed to be sold in the United States, and that Lee wants to get rid of all of them.

Almost everyone in Congress is either an ideologue or else corrupt, or else both (which combination is possible if corruption is acceptable within that person’s ideology). Mike Lee is specifically a libertarian ideologue, and no one has been able to corrupt him to violate his ideology, which, one can reasonably infer from this and other examples, excludes him from corruption — from selling it out.

Klein’s news-report stated, however, that Lee was willing to compromise it, just a little, if the Republicans can strip out all but the most popular Obamacare regulations:

Lee has indicated that he would be inclined to support the bill if it included a provision that he helped write with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, that would allow insurers to offer plans that do not have to abide by Obamacare's regulations as long as they offer plans that meet all of the requirements. Cruz eventually agreed to a compromise that would allow insurers to get around most of the regulations, but that maintained Obamacare's requirement that all insurers operate a single risk pool in a given state. That means that as written, insurers would be governed by two drastically different regulatory regimes within a single risk pool, which Lee determined would put upward pressure on premiums.

Lee, it is clear, believes that regulations «put upward pressure on premiums». Reduce the regulations and the cost of «premiums» would go down, he believes. But what about the costs that health insurance isn’t even covering? Just forget about that, is the attitude. The obsession is: «premiums». What a consumer gets for those premiums, most members of Congress don’t even care — they don’t think it’s their business to be involved in that. Certainly, most of the Republican ones don’t. To be involved in that would be «regulation» — and anyone who is even just partially libertarian is against «regulation». The very concept has a bad odor to them.

However, that view, libertarianism, is exactly the opposite of the true understanding not only of health care, but even of just health insurance, because all international experience has made unequivocally clear that in order to drive down even only «premiums», libertarianism is actually poison: libertarianism actually drives up both health-insurance premiums, and uncovered healthcare costs. Libertarians — even people who are only partially and not exclusively that — ignore the total picture (which includes both premiums and what’s not covered by premiums). But when premiums are being driven down by means of driving up what consumers pay out of their own pockets (i.e., by means of reducing insurance-coverage), consumers tend to put off or delay care until their healthcare-problem becomes very expensive or impossible to treat — and that’s not at all the efficient way for a healthcare-system to function. It reduces instead of increases health.

The obsession of politicians, who don’t want to draw attention to the broader picture of driving down all healthcare-costs (while increasing health), including not just «premiums» but out-of-pocket (uncovered) costs, is «premiums», but premiums don’t by any means include paying for everything in health care. See the link at the phrase, «quality of care; and the U.S. quality of care is low in comparison to other advanced nations», in this article, wherein America’s unique combination of low quality and astronomically high cost is documented and is also placed into its broader perspective so that it can also be understood, not be at all confusing. This is what public-policymaking is really all about: it’s about the entire system, if it’s public-policymaking in an authentic democracy. An incomplete view of the system — such as libertarianism demands — is toxic to the public. If politicians don’t care about the public but only about their big campaign-donors, then calling the holders of public office «Representatives» of the public is a lie, that’s not a real democracy but only a fraudulent one.

The U.S. has both the least regulated, and the most expensive, healthcare in the world, and it’s inferior even to that in many countries where healthcare costs-per-capita are less than half as high as in the United States. Moreover, America’s healthcare also costs twice as high a percentage of GDP as in those other countries. That fact (America’s having by far the costliest, and also one of the lowest quality, healthcare-systems of all industrialized countries) is too «complicated» for the neophyte policy-thinker Trump to grab hold of (he doesn’t really care about it), or for the libertarian ideologue Mike Lee even to care at all about (since it contradicts his false theory, libertarianism); but it’s undeniably true, nonetheless: America is the corrupt laughingstock of all other countries, when it comes to healthcare. Ideologues such as Lee, and also plain psychopaths such as Trump, have made it become that way; but, still, it’s not yet enough «libertarian» to suit them. They want even more of it. (Certainly their megadonors do.)

Libertarianism is actually chaos, and that’s what America now has in its healthcare; and it’s both very expensive and very inefficient. Chaos is unregulated, but it is «unbelievably complex», because the options and sub-options in a chaotic social system regarding healthcare or anything else, are so numerous and so incompatible with one-another, so that the less regulated the system (that’s provided under the law) is, the more numerous the regulations themselves must necessarily be. There must be exceptions all over the place — and this frees up anyone who wants to get an edge on the ‘free market’, to do whatever he or she wants to do — thus it’s ‘libertarian’, such as the U.S. is famous for being: ideologically committed against socialism, no matter how democratic, how anti-authoritarian, that socialism may, in fact, be. It’s all ‘communism’ they say: Denmark has it, so does Sweden, so do many countries, but did we oppose them during the Cold War? Of course not! That type of thinking is for idiots, but plenty of them exist. And both Lee and Trump want them to wade through all those choices that, even Trump himself now admits, are «unbelievably complex». He thinks it’s «complex» for him, but not too complex for ordinary hardworking Americans to study fully and carefully enough so that they can intelligently choose the optimum insurance-policy to meet their own actuarial probability of this disease or that disease, or this type of accident, or that type of on-the-job health-risk? Really?

Trump is running into this same learning-curve when it comes to international trade; and, like with healthcare, he’s not learning.

Also on July 19th, Shane Savitsky and Jonathan Swan at Axios headlined, «Trump's own words put his trade policy in jeopardy», and they wrote:

President Trump wants to invoke a national security provision to stop the «dumping» of cheap steel into America, but trade lawyers believe Trump's public statements — and dubious legal reasoning — could expose the administration to significant legal problems.

The White House's rhetoric: The administration in April identified dumping as the impetus for Trump «standing up» for the steel and aluminum industries.

Trump last week on Air Force One: «They're dumping steel and destroying our steel industry, they've been doing it for decades, and I'm stopping it».

Why it matters: International trade experts, including NYU Law professor Robert Howse, told Axios that Trump made a big mistake by identifying «dumping» as his basis for imposing retaliatory tariffs on national security grounds. There are already laws on the books to remedy dumping, and if Trump invokes the national security provision to impose new tariffs, other nations will immediately challenge him because they're operating under a World Trade Organization agreement that has no national security exceptions… 

…The Trump administration has launched an investigation under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act to explore how to stop foreign countries «dumping» artificially cheap steel into the U.S. market. The Trump administration labels this a national security threat because it undermines American manufacturers. Trump's team would likely try to justify its actions to the WTO by citing Article XXI of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which allows countries to make trade decisions based on «the protection» of «essential security interests».

But the White House might never be able to use its preferred defense for steel tariffs using the GATT because the WTO already has a superseding Anti-Dumping Agreement that specifically disciplines such cases — and it doesn't allow for a dumping case based on «national security» or contain any national security exceptions. Given that the administration has been clear that dumping is a centerpiece of its Section 232 investigation, a WTO member could choose [to] bring a legal challenge under the Anti-Dumping Agreement to preempt the administration's Article XXI plan.

The approach has other problems: Trade experts view Article XXI — designed for emergencies or wartime — as a third rail in international trade law. If Trump invokes it he would threaten the WTO's legitimacy and potentially spark a global trade war. The U.S. also has domestic laws surrounding dumping that were recently expanded by Congress early last year, and White House could face a domestic legal challenge to any action against steel dumping — for example, from an auto manufacturer or a foreign exporter — before it has to face down the WTO.

What trade lawyers are asking: Is this the strategy of a nationalist administration set to paint either an international trade organization or the judicial branch as diametrically opposed to its America first policy or, similar to the roll-out of the travel ban, is the administration not prepared for the impact of the president's public statements?

This displays from Tump the same incompetency at systems-thinking that he displays in regards to healthcare. He doesn’t really »give a damn» about public policy.

The best thing that can be said about Trump as President is that, unlike his political opponent Hillary Clinton, who had an extensive track-record proving her commitment to overthrowing every head-of-state that is at all friendly toward Russia, and was so determined to do it as to be willing to bring about nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, Trump just doesn’t care at all, except about himself and his family. He had no track-record at all in public life, and, fortunately, had no «regime-change in Syria» commitment at all (though America’s neoconservative ‘news’media still grasp at the straws of hope for him to change on that and thus for him to become even more similar to his opponent than he already is turning out to be). 

His psychopathy gives the world at least a possibility it’ll survive his term in the White House. Thus, if Clinton were the President, I’d be even less optimistic than I am, about the next few years. Furthermore, there is now the possibility of massive political gridlock in Washington. That could be a great relief. Sometimes, incompetency in a person is a gift to be treasured, to ward off that person’s becoming really dangerous — or, at least, more dangerous than he/she would otherwise be. But, of course, the same would have been true regarding Mrs. Clinton. And, either way, it was a con, not a functioning democracy. That’s the first thing to understand about America, regardless who won the White House. 

UPDATE: Just as this article was being completed, on the evening of July 19th, the neoconservative Washington Post headlined the most important breaking news story thus far in Trump’s Presidency, «Trump ends covert CIA program to arm anti-Assad rebels in Syria, a move sought by Moscow», and reported, «President Trump has decided to end the CIA’s covert program to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels battling the government of Bashar al-Assad, a move long sought by Russia, according to U.S. officials. The program was a central plank of a policy begun by the Obama administration in 2013 to put pressure on Assad to step aside, but even its backers have questioned its efficacy since Russia deployed forces in Syria two years later». Obama Administration officials, and other neocons, were quoted there saying such things as, »This is a force that we can’t afford to completely abandon… If they are ending the aid to the rebels altogether, then that is a huge strategic mistake». These ‘moderate’ ‘rebels’, as the U.S. regime and its ’news’media called them, were overwhelmingly jihadists, whom Obama had been using as cheap boots-on-the-ground — proxies for far costlier American corpses — so as to overthrow Assad and install a pro-Saud Islamic Sharia-law regime to run Syria instead; Hillary Clinton had been intent upon finishing that job — even if it would mean war against Russia. This action by Trump is a sea-change for the better. It is a heroic act by a U.S. President whom the U.S. aristocracy have been trying to oust (in favor of the committed neoconservative Mike Pence) so as to overthrow Assad and any other head-of-state who is allied with Russia. Maybe Trump is learning something important, after all. And maybe he is starting to care, finally, about the welfare of the American public. The present observer, at any rate, is again in a wait-and-see mode, about him.

However, on 20 November 2014, Gallup headlined «Majority Say Not Gov't Duty to Provide Healthcare for All» and reported that, «For the third consecutive year, a majority of Americans (52%) agree with the position that it is not the federal government's responsibility to ensure that all Americans have healthcare coverage. Prior to the start of Barack Obama's presidency in 2009, a majority of Americans consistently took the opposite view». But if it’s «not the federal government's responsibility to ensure that all Americans have healthcare coverage» (presumably meaning for all basic healthcare but not for vanity medical services such as «tucks» and other non-health-related medical services), then «a federally funded healthcare program providing insurance for all Americans» makes no real sense at all.

Is it likely that majorities really do want single-payer, but not from the government? Hardly: a gratuitous addition of stockholders’ profits into the costs for providing essential and economic-productivity-enhancing healthcare services that everyone should have access to if it’s really needed (lawfully prescribed etc.) will not only distort the incentives to medical-services providers (and so reduce both health and economic productivity), but will also waste the money of medical consumers (government or otherwise). But what about having ‘non-profit’ firms provide the single-payer services? That cuts out profits, and so eliminates the distortions that stockholders’ wants will introduce into the providing of any services (wants such as stockbrokers have, who pump the investments that pay them the highest commissions, which necessarily harms their investors). However, the top executives even of ‘non-profit’ firms can pay themselves whatever their friends who sit on their board of trustees will approve; and so a ‘non-profit’ too can be, at least to that extent, a scam. (And, of course, in an entirely free market, there is no regulation and therefore scams will be routine; so, only crooks would want that, anyway.)

These are the reasons why the countries that have the highest life-expectancies, and therefore the best health-outcomes, are the same as the countries that have socialized basic healthcare services, paid for normally entirely through taxes and provided to all citizens as a basic human right instead of as a privilege that’s available only to individuals who can afford it. (Of course, «tucks» and such get charged extra to the patient.) The United States has by far the costliest health care in terms of not only what Americans pay for it but in terms of healthcare costs as a percentage of GDP, and yet the U.S. has the lowest life-expectancy of all OECD countries; the U.S. has the most-free-market healthcare, and also the worst healthcare, among all of the economically developed countries — all (except the U.S.) of which provide guaranteed basic healthcare services to all citizens: essential services free as a right, not charged as a privilege.

America’s combination of the worst healthcare plus the by-far-costliest healthcare is no coincidence; and healthcare profits in America are the world’s highest, so, the present American system is terrific for those stockholders (whose firms hire the lobbyists and their politicians who write America’s healthcare-laws). Because basic healthcare in the United States is a privilege instead of a right, the U.S. is the only economically developed nation that does not have universal coverage, health insurance for 100% of its citizenry, healthcare as a guaranteed right instead of dependent upon the patient’s ability-to-pay. When Barack Obama entered the White House, the uninsured rate was 14.6%; when he left office it was 10.9%; the insured rate when he started was 85.4%, and it was 89.1% when he left office. His repeated promises of «universal coverage» were lies. His plan was in no way designed for «universal coverage»; that promise was just a lie.

In the OECD’s «Health at a Glance 2015» (which is their latest version of that, and covers actually 44 nations), the United States scores at or near the bottom for almost all indicators of healthcare-quality, including: Life expectancy, Access to care, Quality of care, Doctors per capita, and Hospital beds per capita. We are by far the highest on Pharmaceutical expenditure per capita. Oddly, three nations, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary, are exceptionally high in both their heart-disease death-rates and their cancer death-rates; plus their life-expectancies are even lower than America’s, and their most carefully medically calculated measured «Quality of care» rankings are also generally as bad as the United States. However, in the latest calculated year, which is shown there, which was 2013, «Health expenditure per capita» (p. 165) was U.S. $8,713; Czech Republic $2,040, Slovak Republic $2,010; and Hungary $1,719.

So, America’s was over four times as high as the healthcare costs of other countries in its class — i.e. in the overall worst class. Generally the top-performing nations were: Japan, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Italy, and Switzerland. Switzerland was the second-highest in cost-of-care, $6,325, right below the U.S. Norway was third-costliest, $5,862. Sweden fifth-costliest, $4,904. Japan 14th-costliest, $3,713. Finland 17th-costliest, $3,442. Italy twentieth-costliest, $3,077. The average OECD cost for all the 44 nations was $3,453. Whether Obamacare would change any of those U.S. rankings is too early to tell. However, the U.S. is such an extreme «outlier» so that our healthcare system would need to be replaced root-and-branch in order to be competitive with any other nation’s in terms of delivering value-for-the-money, instead of rip-off (which is its existing outlier status — unparalleled by any other country’s, for delivering lousy value).

It is so bottom-of-the-barrel, that it is below the barrel. This is by far the world’s most-free-market healthcare system, but our government spends more per-capita on it than do other nations’ governments that pay almost all of their citizens’ healthcare costs. In fact, as shown in the chart «9.3. Health expenditure as a share of GDP, 2013 (or nearest year)» on page 167 of that OECD report, the U.S. is the only country where the private sector pays more of the nation’s healthcare costs than does the public sector, the government. No other nation comes anywhere close to that degree of non-governmental providing of the healthcare function. Every other nation has socialized the healthcare-function to a vastly higher extent than the U.S. has. That’s how corrupt America is: history, the data, are still ignored here, even when every other nation accepts those realities and has long-since implemented them in national policies.

Lots of other countries are more corrupt in the pettier forms of corruption such as bribery, but perhaps few match America’s higher-level, and far more complex, systemic corruption.

After Obamacare’s having been in effect now for two years, there is no indication whatsoever that it has at all improved the competitive standing of the U.S. in healthcare, but some evidence exists that the U.S. has experienced the exact contrary: the highest percentage increase in that cost of healthcare of any country, soaring from $8,713 per-capita in 2013 (pre-Obamacare), up 9.3% to $9,523 Obamacare in 2014, the latest-reported year. Furthermore, the U.S. is below average in the quality of its healthcare as compared with other industrialized nations. If Obama has had any significant impact upon healthcare in America, that impact has been bad, not good. In fact even just on health-insurance premiums, the story is not good, as Brian Blase summed up on 28 July 2016, headlining «Overwhelming Evidence That Obamacare Caused Premiums To Increase Substantially».

Obama’s other intended historical legacy (though one that he always kept secret from the American people) was to overthrow the leaders of nations that are friendly toward (or especially that are supportive of) Russia (such as Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine, and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya), and ultimately to replace Russia’s President Vladimir Putin himself, and so to force Russia (the world’s largest and most resource-rich nation) to become another member-nation in the American empire. However, that historical legacy, too, is now almost inevitably going to be failed, unless either President Obama or else his immediate successor (he’s hoping it will be Hillary Clinton), will launch World War III in order outright to conquer Russia; and this war-launch appears to be unlikely, because the United States has not yet (if it ever will) achieve «Nuclear Primacy» over Russia — the ability to destroy Russia in a blitz nuclear attack that simultaneously eliminates Russia’s retaliatory ability. 

As President Obama had told graduating cadets at West Point on 28 May 2014:

«The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come. But the world is changing with accelerating speed. This presents opportunity, but also new dangers. We know all too well, after 9/11, just how technology and globalization has put power once reserved for states in the hands of individuals, raising the capacity of terrorists to do harm. Russia’s aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China’s economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us, and governments seek a greater say in global forums».

In other words: only the U.S. is indispensable; Russia, like any other nation, is not, he is telling America’s future military leaders. Obama sees international relations as being fundamentally an economic competition that’s backed up by the nation’s military, and he instructs his military to treat it that way, and to view every nation other than their own as being «dispensable».

Obama’s proposed three mega-international-‘trade’ deals — TTIP with Europe, TPP with Asia, and TISA regarding financial services — were likewise proposed by him in order to isolate Russia (and also but secondarily to isolate China, and thirdly India and Brazil), by leaving them in the position of facing higher tariffs from the current industrialized nations than the industrialized nations charge each other. Furthermore, Obama’s ‘trade’ deals entail a significant transfer of national sovereignty to international corporations, control over whether there will be any increased regulation to protect the environment, or workers, or consumers, would subject the nation that’s imposing the increase, to pay to the stockholders in international corporations, enormous fines, for violation of those stockholders’ ‘right to profit’, which, in Obama’s view (and in the view of the other heads-of-state in the American empire) supersedes the rights of any mere voter, or taxpayer. So: the U.S. empire is based upon an ideology — the transcendent rights (their ‘rights’ to profit from their gambles) that the stockholders who control international corporations have — and not merely upon the brute force of the military.

However, the prospects now for the passage-into-law of even just a single one of Obama’s proposed three mega-treaties, are little-to-none, because politicians in the participating countries have been getting cold feet about their prior public support for what they all euphemistically call ‘free trade’. Even if Obama wins the current Presidential election and Hillary Clinton becomes his immediate successor, he probably still won’t win even a single one of the three treaties.

That leaves, as his only remaining possible historical legacy, WW III, which is not something that he ever even announced publicly as his goal, and which even he would probably consider to be ‘premature’ because «Nuclear Primacy» hasn’t yet been achieved (if it ever will be).