Ensnared

When the last hesitant politician

finally trades their soul for a win

hope starves in the soup kitchen line

And for the living

the doors of the hospital

open wide

swallowing everyone ensnared

into insurmountable debt

What’s happened with health insurance and pharmaceutical industries in the US over the last few decades is an example of how greed often supersedes compassion and basic human rights. The industry standard has become profit before people. The already sky high and constantly rising cost of health insurance and health care keeps an alarming number of people from accessing the services they need.

Prescriptions, doctor visits, specialists, and basically all types of medical procedures, are unobtainable for many people. Living with a rectifiable condition, going without medicine, glasses, and hearing aids, is not uncommon. The absolute cruelty of putting people in the position of having to decide between going bankrupt for accepting medical care or going without and having to deal with permanent damage or worse is material for horror novels. But this awful situation is not fiction, it’s become the norm.

The private health insurance industry has filled countless politicians’ pockets while causing a trail of destruction and misery. How do we fix something that our greedy, lying politicians don’t want to fix? There doesn’t seem to be any simple answer, but I can only hope that decades from now, the last of the people holding healthcare just out of our reach, will be voted out of office, causing the unnecessary suffering in the system of profit over people to finally end.