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Thursday, December 1, 2011

Are You a Criminal or a Victim?

There’s a bit of a thief in all of us. Human beings are capable of attempting whatever deed any other human being has attempted, and can conceive of unspeakable actions without ever carrying a single one of them out.

Right now, the vast majority of people in the United States are engaged, to one degree or another, in a criminal enterprise. During Prohibition the vast majority of citizens were involved in a criminal enterprise as well. From homicidal gang lord to neighborhood bartender, when booze was illegal all those in the liquor business were involved in the same criminal enterprise. What mattered was what degree of culpability was involved. A bellboy who dropped a bottle off at your hotel room was not as culpable as an investment banker financing boatloads of booze coming across the border.

Profiting by withholding medical care from human beings in need is a criminal act. Denial of basic human rights for profit has a long and despicable history in the United States. Denial for profit of one human right, liberty, was known as slavery. Denial of medical care for profit is known as America’s current health insurance system.

Who are the victims and who are the criminals?

When a citizen takes twenty percent of their monthly disposable income and signs it over to a for-profit insurance company in order to protect their physical, mental, and fiscal well being; is that person a criminal or a victim?

When a citizen receives one hundred percent of their monthly income by investing in a company which earns a majority of its profits by withholding medical assistance to those unable to meet their price; is that person a criminal or a victim?

These are two minor examples of participants in the same criminal enterprise. Both engage in monetary transactions with organizations involved in the withholding of medical care. But one of them is a victim in that a virtual gun is being held to their head. Your money or your health, mind, and/or property. In the current situation, not buying into the criminal healthcare network puts individual citizens in great jeopardy of not receiving adequate medical attention and treatment when necessary and of losing all of one’s property if not sufficiently covered.

An individual forced to pay into a criminal enterprise is a victim.

There are also those citizens who are the equivalent of slave traders. These people are involved with the for-profit healthcare system for the purpose of extracting wealth from the withholding from their fellow citizens of a basic human right. Within the USA these people act as simple extortionists whose motto might as well be, “Your money or your health.”

An individual who intentionally inflicts harm on a fellow citizen, and who profits financially by doing so, is a criminal.

Most American citizens fall somewhere between these two extremes within the criminal enterprise which is healthcare in the United States. A part-time medical secretary at a community hospital is certainly less culpable than an investor in a medical office which specializes in Medicare fraud. But just by dealing with the present system, we all have blood on our hands to a greater or lesser degree.

And this is what the real criminals want you to feel. They want you to think that if you’re in for a penny you’re in for a pound. That we are all criminals like them.

Rubbish.

If all you do is try and survive and you feel the necessity of purchasing a policy from a for-profit medical insurance company, you aren’t a criminal, you are a victim of the criminal enterprise.

If all you do is invest your money in companies who profit from withholding medical treatment from those in need, you aren’t a victim, you are a criminal and a willing participant in a criminal enterprise.

There is a continuum here which stretches from victim to criminal predator.

Most are victims.

Many are criminals.