Politics, Voter Suppression, and Modern Killing Fields

This article is about the many forms of VOTER SUPPRESSION, starting with the most cruel and disgusting. I cover this topic because to fix U.S. healthcare, we must fix our politics, and I begin with this widely shared Facebook post by Dr. Wallach, who calls out unscrupulous doctors. I then follow with my own perspective of public policy as a cause of that, along with a list of other forms of voter suppression.

THE KILLING FIELDS…. Dr. Joel Wallach

“The United States had lost 56,000 military personnel in Vietnam over a ten-year period, for an average of 5,600 per year. Millions of people poured out into the streets to protest these lost lives. We had political anarchy for the last three years of the Vietnam war because of these deaths. And because of these deaths, God forgive us, we shot and killed American students at Kent State in Ohio, who were just exercising their First Amendment rights to free assembly and free speech. YET NO GROUP WAS OUT MARCHING IN THE STREETS WITH PLACARDS PROTESTING THE KILLINGS BY THE MEDICAL PROFESSION [OR POLITICIANS].

In July, 1994, another Ralph Nader survey pointed out that 70 percent of doctors who treat Medicare patients flunked the exam on how to treat seniors safely and effectively. What would happen to American Airlines if 70 percent of their pilots flunked the exam on how to fly. What would happen to American Airlines if they killed 150,000 to 300,000 passengers per year? Everyone [even Congress] would ‘go Greyhound!’

Medical doctors reacted violently to the Ralph Nader statistics that I routinely quoted in my “Dead Doctors Don’t Lie” tape. They wrote articles in their own defense and went on talk radio to try to reduce the amount of damage to their image as all-knowing saviors of the American public.

Doctors [finally] admitted killing 80,000 Americans each year, but it was too late. The genie was out of the bottle and the spin-doctors couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty, M.D. back together again!”