Profit Over People

How America Turned Healthcare Into a Money-Making Hellscape

Okay, pull up a chair and pour yourself something — tea, wine, moon water, eggnog with rum… whatever — because we are about to take a drunken stumble through the absolute clown show that is American healthcare history.

And trust me:
you will want a drink for this.

Because the ACA subsidies are ending soon, and naturally, everyone’s premiums are about to skyrocket like a Roman candle at a Walmart parking-lot Fourth of July party.

But before we get into that, we need to understand how in the ever-loving hell we ended up with a healthcare system that cares more about profits than people.

So let’s take a Drunk History approach to understanding how we got here.

Spoiler:
It’s because the whole thing was straight-up a good idea corrupted by capitalism.
There is no grand design here. Just vibes. Mostly bad ones.

Back When Care Was… Actually Care?

Once upon a time — in the early 1900s — healthcare in America was simple. Doctors made house calls. Hospitals were run by communities and churches. Nobody was out here collecting $37,000 for a broken ankle.

Then hospitals got fancy, which meant expensive, and someone said,
“Hey, what if we all just chip in a little money to cover hospital stays?”

Boom.
Blue Cross was born.
Then Blue Shield.
Both nonprofits.
Zero corporate greed.
They were literally just trying to help people.

It was wholesome.
It was lovely.
It was the last time American healthcare made any actual sense.

The World War II ‘Oopsie-Daisy’ That Changed Everything

Picture this: It’s WWII. The government freezes wages so companies can’t poach workers.

Employers, being crafty little raccoons, say:
“Okay, we can’t give you more money… but what if we give you… healthcare?”

Workers: “Hell yeah!”
Government: “Sure, that counts as tax-free.”
Capitalism: “Lemme scooch in right here…”

What was supposed to be a temporary workaround became the backbone of American healthcare.

It was NOT intentional.
It was not strategic.
It was not wise.

It was basically the policy equivalent of duct taping your bumper back on and saying,
“There. Fixed forever.”

Enter Private Insurance, Stage Left, Looking for Profit

Private insurers looked at employer-based healthcare and said,
“Oh… there’s MONEY in this.”

And suddenly they were:

• accepting only healthy people

• rejecting anyone with so much as a seasonal allergy

• charging women more (because… reasons?)

• avoiding the elderly like it was a middle-school slow dance

Meanwhile, nonprofit Blues were like,
“We are literally trying to help everyone — why are you like this??”

But capitalism doesn’t care.
Capitalism wants cash.

Spoiler: The Blues eventually gave up and turned into for-profit corporations too, because competing against sharks as a goldfish is kind of rough.

Enter NIXON. (Yes. Him.)

Imagine I’m refilling your drink here, because…
This is where everything truly goes off the rails.

It’s 1973. Nixon signs the HMO Act.

Why?
Because he was told HMOs make more money by giving less care.

And Nixon — on tape, mind you — basically said,
“Less care = more money? Great. Love that for us.”

Darlin’, that was the moment American healthcare got hurled off a cliff.

HMOs exploded.
Insurance companies grew fangs.
Everything became about profit margins, not people.

We’ve been living in that nightmare ever since.

(Side note while I top off my drink: Fucking Nixon. I swear 75% of the mess we’re still slogging through today leads right back to that man.)

The Inequality Wasn’t a Bug.
It Was the Blueprint

If you’re designing healthcare for profit, you can’t treat everyone the same.
You literally can’t. The math won’t let you.

So America built a tiered system:

• Great care for wealthy people

• Okay-ish care for people with good jobs

• Barely-any care for poor people

• And “good luck, sweetheart” for the uninsured

We are the wealthiest nation in the world.
We are also the only developed nation without universal healthcare.
Because everyone else prioritized people.

And we prioritized profits.

Even the math is drunk at this point.

The ACA Was a Band-Aid… Now Someone’s Ripping It Off

The Affordable Care Act wasn’t perfect, but it finally gave millions of people access to:

• preventive care

• reasonable premiums

• no-denial policies

• health insurance that wasn’t tied to a job

And for the first time in their lives, people could see a doctor without being financially traumatized.

But subsidies are ending.
And when subsidies end, this whole duct-taped jalopy starts rattling apart again.

Premiums will skyrocket.
Families will panic.
Insurance companies will profit.
The cycle continues.

Because the problem with the ACA was never the ACA —
the problem was the broken, profit-first system underneath it.

A Future That Doesn’t Treat People Like Revenue Streams

If patriarchal capitalism created this mess, the answer is the opposite:

Care.
Community.
Compassion.
Actual human wellbeing.

A matriarchal approach to healthcare wouldn’t ask if someone deserves care.
It wouldn’t tie insurance to employment.
It wouldn’t allow corporations to decide who lives or dies based on profit margins.

It would simply say:
“You are human. You deserve care. Period.”

Wild concept, I know.

If a society cannot take care of its people without bankrupting them,
it’s not a society.
It’s a business model.

And maybe — just maybe — it’s time we rise up and build something better.