Legal Disclaimer: This is a satirical commentary in the style of George Carlin. If you’re a senator with a pulse and a health plan we pay for, relax — this isn’t about you personally. It’s about the swamp that keeps your co-pay at zero while everyone else’s life turns into a billing statement. If you feel attacked, that’s your conscience trying to reboot. Try turning it off and back on again.

So here we are.

Government’s shut down again.

Not because we ran out of money — we’ve got trillions. Not because we ran out of ideas — we haven’t used one since the New Deal. No, it’s shut down because some asshole decided that helping people afford health insurance is socialism, but bailing out banks is “stabilizing the economy.”

The fight this time? Premium tax credits.

You know, the tiny sliver of sanity that keeps people who make more than poverty wages from being crushed by poverty-level medical bills. We’ve got one side screaming that it’s too expensive, and the other side quietly wondering how to keep the lights on without looking like they enjoy helping.

Let’s get something straight: we already pay for healthcare. All of it. Every pill, every scan, every $400 Band-Aid that gets stapled to your dignity in the ER. The only thing we don’t have is healthcare that actually gives a damn about people.

We spend four point eight trillion dollars a year — that’s trillion with a T — and somehow half the country still has to choose between insulin and rent. You could cover everyone, twice, for that kind of money. Instead, we run it through a funhouse mirror of insurance companies, billing codes, denials, deductibles, and prayer chains, and call it a “system.”

It’s not a system. It’s a laundering operation.

Money goes in sick, comes out clean, and somewhere in the middle a CEO buys his fifth yacht while a nurse skips lunch because she’s got seven patients and a bladder the size of a shot glass.

We’ve built the most expensive, least efficient health bureaucracy in the world, and we have the audacity to pretend it’s capitalism. No — capitalism implies competition. What we’ve got is extortion with paperwork.

And here’s the kicker: the government’s already footing half the bill. Two and a half trillion in taxes, every damn year, for Medicare, Medicaid, VA care, ACA subsidies — the whole alphabet soup. We are already paying for a single-payer system. We just let fifty states, six hundred lobbyists, and a hedge fund middleman run off with the change.

So instead of fighting over who gets the crumbs, how about we stop baking pies in private equity ovens and serve the damn meal properly?

Here’s how it works — simple, clean, fair.

Employers kick in about seven percent of payroll. No cap. None of this “oh, I make a million a year but I’ve hit the limit” bullshit. You make more, you pay more. 

Households chip in a small progressive surtax, starting at nothing for the people who actually need help and scaling up for the folks whose biggest medical decision is whether to Botox before or after brunch.

States keep paying what they already do, the feds cover the rest, and we stop burning cash on paperwork.

No premiums. No deductibles. No surprise bills that arrive three months after your appendix exploded.

Hospitals? Paid.

Doctors? Paid.

Nurses, EMTs, the people who keep you alive at three in the morning? Paid.

Even the drug companies still get rich, just not “build-an-island-in-the-Pacific” rich.

The only ones who take a hit are the insurance companies.

You know, those warm, compassionate souls at Anthem who denied your ER claim for a broken arm because it wasn’t pre-authorized. Yeah, you were supposed to call corporate before you fell. Next time, try scheduling your accident during business hours.

But don’t worry, Anthem will be fine. They’ll rebrand as “health consultants” and charge us to explain why we still can’t see a doctor. Parasites always find a new host.

Meanwhile, the rest of us — the people who actually live in this body of a country — get a healthcare system that works. We spend less than we do now, nobody goes bankrupt, and your nurse can finally afford a day off that doesn’t involve COVID or a second job.

That’s not socialism. That’s sanity.

You want fiscal responsibility? Stop setting four point eight trillion dollars on fire just to stay sick. You want freedom? Try not worrying that a car accident means losing your house. You want patriotism? How about a country that doesn’t treat health like a subscription service.

We can afford universal healthcare. What we can’t afford — what we’ve never been able to afford — is the greed that keeps it broken.