I just got home a few minutes ago, cops everywhere, the coroner's van parked in the street

[Overseas]

120. Free health care or Medicare for All would have helped a lot. It takes the edge off.

I remember how deeply soothing it was to know that if I ever got ill, I could get healthcare at a nominal cost, even as a resident alien. Medical and dental. The care wasn't fancy but it was efficient and effective. I remember that secure feeling versus the nervousness I felt, looking for free clinics, after I'd returned to the US and was working full time without insurance benefits.

The many other industrialized countries that have universal health care systems provided them because they knew that their countries' job markets would be rapidly evolving and might leave people without a basic human right like health care if they made that job-dependent.

They knew their people understood public health to be a part of national security.

They knew government provision of nonprofit medical care would take a large burden off of their businesses and make their products more competitive on a global market.

Our legislators try not to acknowledge that we the people would be glad to pay taxes to support free health care for all instead of spending ten times as much on the military as many other countries combined. They know we would be content spending five times as much as our competitors on the military in order to provide Medicare for All.

But somehow, our legislators were convinced that retaining the enormous private profits of our medical system was more important than their constituents' long term quality of life, or even their survival.