Money Over People

Banks have identified medical credit cards as a lucrative opportunity to profit off of the worsening crisis of patients who are unable to afford their medical care.

Southwest Airlines made a risky gamble that mass layoffs and spending billions of dollars on handouts to investors rather than fixing infrastructure would pay off with record profits. The airline lost that bet badly.

In recent years, hospitals of every stripe have opened obstetrics emergency departments, or OBEDs, which means healthy patients get bills for emergency care they didn’t know they got.

As Southwest Pilot Larry Lonero writes, "...two decades of neglect takes several years to overcome. And, unfortunately to our horror, our house of cards came tumbling down this week as a routine winter storm broke our 1990’s operating system."

As Americans are overwhelmed with medical bills, patient financing is now a multibillion-dollar business—with profit margins topping 29 percent in the patient financing industry.

Attacking inflation by hiking interest rates is not addressing the real situation and cause. We should be hiking tax rates on corporations engaged in price gouging and profiteering.

The U.S. currently pays around $30 per dose for Pfizer's shot, which is estimated to cost $1.18 per dose to make. Yet the company plans to pump the price to $110–$130 per dose.

The United States sits in a wealth class all its own, boasting 39.2 percent of the world’s millionaires. China sits second, at 9.9 percent, with Japan third at 5.4 percent.

Many hospitals have grown wealthy, spending lavishly on advertising, team sponsorships, and even spas, while patients are squeezed by skyrocketing medical prices and rising deductibles.

It is time to rein in the big corporations that are getting away with pushing up prices to fatten their profit margins while families are quite literally paying the price of their profiteering.

Happy tax times — for the rich — don’t come carved in stone. Tax laws can and do change. Public anger can increase the tax-auditing pressure on grand private fortunes.

Wealthier neighborhoods in St. Louis have armed themselves with private police, giving them a level of service poor areas can’t afford and fueling racial and economic disparities.

One Chick-fil-A franchise in North Carolina tried paying drive-through workers in chicken sandwiches. It didn't go over well.

For-profit private equity groups buying up rural hospitals has resulted in horror stories of poor patient care, drug shortages and shut downs.