On the Wings of a Dove

Now that we're allready doomed, the Bushies are rolling out their response plan for a flu pandemic. Not surprisingly, this entails billions of tax dollars for multinational corporations, and martial law. Isn't that these peoples answer for everything? Remember the anthrax scare a few years ago? Back then, public health officials pointed out that this countrys health care delivery system is in a shambles. I recall that I once found it odd to come across people stalled in the lobby of a medical building because they couldn't remember the name of their doctor. Ten years and five insurance plans later, I no longer find that remarkable. Meanwhile, MegaMedBizz plays monopoly with the hospital systems, building them up in the good markets, and shutting them down where the big money ain't. "The market" is not going to provide quality healthcare to the bottom half of the demographic, even though we pay more for healthcare than people in any other developed country. Short sighted: Doesn't anybody remember The Masque of the Red Death?
We ought to demand that congress passes a riot act for the prescription drug and health insurance industries. If vaccines have to be a loss leader for them, so be it! And twenty percent off the top for profit and overhead is not acceptable when half of the population is left to fend for themselves.
Furthermore, we must require our congress to crawl out of the pockets of agribusiness and the food processing industry. Food so cheap we can fill dumpsters with it is no bargain if it is a pipeline for deadly virus bred in the factory farms. The last meaningful food safety legislation in this country was passed in the Teddy Roosevelt administration. This ain't no fad diet book, it's a matter of national security.