Privatized medicine should be an oxymoron
Because the physician who promises to do no harm
Operates in a system that demands business profits
Delivering mistreatment to even those who can afford to pay.
When the doctors do what makes the most money for them
When the hospitals are managed to maximize return on
investment
When the pharmaceuticals market their pills ad nauseum
Woe unto the person who suffers illness, injury or pain.
Sooner or later each of us needing health care must decide
In a kind of pick your poison choice what to do
Whether to take your chances with conventional medicine
Or trust in the regimen of alternative practitioners.
I think everyone has heard or lived a medical horror story
Someone who suffered unnecessarily under a doctor’s hands
Someone who would have been better off untouched
Especially when there’s no known effective treatment.
Your only hope if your condition has no conventional cure
Would be someone who says an alternate remedy exists
But because that provider exists in the capitalist system
Credulous belief in the possibility is all that you have.
My friend finds himself on the horns of this dilemma
Knowing conventional medicine offers nothing long term
Loathing the terrible side effects that impair any quality
of life
Preferring to keep the faith with alternative narratives.
Not being in his predicament I remain skeptical
Having no confidence in untested or unverified methods
But my position and his position are so far removed we don’t
talk
Avoiding conversation about the progression of his illness.
The distortion of science under capitalism impacts medicine
In ways that reach deep into our interpersonal relationships
Doing harm between us even as it does harm to us
When what we need is double blind experimental truth.
There is a science to testing what works and what doesn’t
Which is what matters most to socialized medicine
The obvious cure that is so desperately needed
Sadly too late for so many afflicted today.
