(“Bodies for Sale” by Nikkolas Smith. Original work produced for “SOME PEOPLE".” All rights reserved.” Visit and follow Nikkolas here.)
“The Trump administration on Thursday announced that 10,000 employees of the Health and Human Services Department would be dismissed, as part of a major reorganization designed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The layoffs are a drastic reduction in personnel for the health department, which now employs about 80,000 people.”
— New York Times, March 27, 2025
As if the United States approach to, and model of, could get any worse...No aspect of this non-plan (*read via link above) includes abolishing the Commercial Health Insurance Industry’s Denial of Care Harm-for-Profit business model. It is a model that grifts from premium-paying Americans; methodically denies healthcare to premium-paying Americans and taxpayers; and it is a model that forces Americans, by law, to sign on to "plans" that commit our fellow citizens to Denial of Care, no choice of practitioner, and endless barriers to access.
The very drafters of this non-plan will generate personal wealth from it. The Public Trust, Public Health and Public Safety are of no concern.
No other industry operates in the way in which the Commercial Health Insurance, Corporate Hospital chain and PhRMA industries are permitted to do. American bodies, health outcomes, livelihoods and futures are traded like widgets on Wall Street.
Further, Commercial Health Insurance and Corporate Healthcare operate like investment banking firms and Private Equity groups. They are not "healthcare" corporations, but rather businesses that prioritize ROI for shareholders and senior management while affording the bare minimum for care to a select few in the risk pool. Rather than widen the risk pool (Econ 101), they intentionally restrict it.
Chance, circumstance and luck impact every life, every family, every business. Health is not predictable. Illness, injury, disability and death impact every body, and everybody. The sooner Americans and ethical medical professionals grasp that Healthcare Policy and Economic Policy are one in the same, the sooner the citizens of the country will unite to enact Health Law that leverages rather than distresses citizens in the context of health and Public Health.
This administration is in the process of privatizing what little is left of the United States Public Health apparatus. What we are witnessing is the largest heist (theft) of Public Health taxpayer monies into private sector coffers, and the theft is taking place in broad daylight. The dismantling is being trumpeted from the Oval, shouted from golf carts and celebrated during ketamine-laced cabinet meetings.
Although the plan to gut and dismantle Public Health and Safety by this regime was published, predicted, and expected, in no other area of American society will the damage impose more harm or more death.
Since 1987, the dawn of the insidious Managed Care model, uniformed Americans and medical professionals have willingly accepted Denial of Care Harm-for-Profit as the model, despite the current model being a violation of both human rights and consumer rights. Throughout the last four decades, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has never protected American citizens from the methodical Denial of Care business model, the delays or the death. The agency became bloated and perpetuated the K Street merry-go-round at once prioritizing personal wealth and personal gain rather than Patient Safety, Quality of Care, Best Practice and Healthcare for All. The current regime, however, will make the last 40 years of preventable harm and death look like child's play.
So, because so few ethical medical professionals and engaged citizens have risen up and pushed back on the Harm-for-Profit ideology and corporate practices of Shock Doctrine Disaster Capitalism, here we are.
As Emergency Medicine docs triage children with measles whose livers have been harmed by too much long-term use of cod liver oil; as nurses at the VA try to find alternative care for their at-risk patients with PTSD; as women nationwide are denied Sexual and Reproductive medical care while bleeding out; and Americans delay and forego medical care entirely because the cost is so irrationally expensive, citizens continue to die from deliberately untreated illness, injury and disability.
Ethical physicians and healthcare adjacent professionals across the United States are now trying to hold steady in the midst of the intentionally-orchestrated mayhem. First, do no harm, they repeat in their hearts and minds…over and over and over. Do the best that you can. Do the best that you can. Do the best that you can.
Meanwhile, the Harm-for-Profit “killers”—as private equity groups call themselves— are laughing over their lobster bisque at Mar-a-Lago. “Haste, speed and greed at any and all cost!” they toast amidst euphoric delirium and thunderous blood diamond-encrusted standing ovations.
Single Payer Universal Healthcare would be a smart economic, moral, ethical, cultural or social solution. But, we, the canaries, are now dead. The Harm-for-Profit ideology and the purveyors of Bodies for Sale have triumphed.
They've won.