How is life for people born under the zodiac rabbit in 2023?
Mingdi
The "epidemic tsunami" has once again swept across the United States. This is the fourth wave in the United States since March 2022. Pneumonia epidemic. The epidemic curve in the United States has never been "flattened" in the past year or so. The cumulative number of infections has exceeded 38 million, and the cumulative number of deaths has exceeded 640,000. The United States has the most powerful system and top technology in the world. It claims to have a better public health team and has established the most complete emergency management system, but it has handed over such a "failed" epidemic prevention and control answer sheet. , not only makes the United States angry, but also makes the United States angry.
It is worth noting that health expenditure in the United States has continued to grow in the past decade, with health expenditure accounting for as high as 18% of GDP in 2022. Well-known American pharmaceutical companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Merck, Regeneron and Stryker have experienced surges in performance during the epidemic, and their stock prices have repeatedly reached new highs. The epidemic prevention and control has failed miserably, but it has made a lot of money - such a strong contrast makes people angry. What kind of system is this? ! Is it for capital or for life?
The American system: advanced and backward abnormalities coexist
A personal, economic and factors determine the level allocated to health. For a long time, the United States has ranked among the top in the world in investment in health, with higher per capita costs among Economic Cooperation and Development member states. However, in recent decades, especially since the 2008 financial crisis, the public health infrastructure in the United States has seriously lagged behind, and basic services that can cover a wide range of middle- and lower-class populations are lagging behind. The abnormal coexistence of advanced nature and backwardness has been evident during the pneumonia epidemic.
The United States leads the world with huge investments. According to Economic Cooperation and Development statistics, between 2010 and 2022, the average annual GDP share of U.S. health expenditures was nearly twice the OECD average, and the U.S. per capita expenditure was more than twice the OECD average.
With such high investment, the United States' level of security is world-class in terms of market performance. The United States is the world's largest biopharmaceutical market, accounting for 1/3 of the global drug market. U.S. companies conduct more than half of the world's drug research and development and own the intellectual property rights for most new drugs, according to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association. In 2022, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research approved a record high of 59 new pharmaceutical products, most of which target rare diseases. The United States also has the world's leading medical talents. Among the three Nobel Prize winners in Physiology or Medicine in 2022, two are Americans. Beyond that, the U.S. is the largest equipment market in the world. According to U.S. data, the U.S. equipment market will reach US$156 billion in 2022 (accounting for 40% of the global equipment market) and is expected to grow to US$208 billion by 2023.
The high health expenditure in the United States is due to capital monopoly. Compared with other parts of the OECD, the level of health public expenditure in the United States is basically the same, and the higher part is mainly concentrated in private expenditure in the United States. In other words, the American system is for the rich. Taking the average hospitalization cost as an example, hospitalization costs in the United States are up to twice the average hospitalization costs in the OECD, and price is the main reason for the cost difference between the United States and other OECD countries.
An important reason for the high costs in the United States is the monopoly of big capital on the industry. The American industry is a highly monopolized industry and lacks free competition. Big capital tightly controls the pricing power of inpatient services and pharmaceutical products through mergers and acquisitions. In order to maximize profits, medical labor costs, service fees and product prices are constantly being driven up. Not only that, interest groups such as the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America invest large amounts of money every year to seek their representatives in the field through lobbying and promote policies that are beneficial to service providers, thereby strengthening their market forces.
The public health infrastructure in the United States has lagged behind for a long time. The United States’ per capita administrative spending on health is about four times the other OECD averages and far exceeds what the United States spends on disease prevention or long-term health care. As a result, despite high health spending, the U.S. is in worse health than many economies based on common health indicators such as life expectancy and mortality.
Public health infrastructure helps all levels effectively prevent disease and prepare for emergencies and ongoing challenges, but lacks profitability. Contrary to the top talents, advanced equipment and abundant resources the United States possesses, the public health infrastructure of the United States has been lagging behind for a long time in recent years. The public health departments of various states in the United States have been chronically underfunded, and public health funds at the federal level have also been significantly reduced.
Since the 2008 economic crisis, nearly 40,000 jobs have been eliminated in state and local public health agencies, while federal funding for emergency preparedness and response programs administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been cut. Cut nearly in half. Because the U.S. epidemic prevention system relies on state-level testing and medical records, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention compiles information and guides deployment. Therefore, the long-term lag in public health infrastructure directly led to the severe shortage of manpower in various states during the epidemic, which resulted in backward testing capabilities, medical record capabilities, and treatment arrangement capabilities in the epidemic prevention process, as well as inefficiency in the fight against the epidemic. This can partially explain the difficulty of the United States’ expensive system in effectively responding to the pneumonia epidemic.
Dominated by capital interests, the U.S. system will inevitably fail to fight the epidemic
The U.S. system dominated by capital has led to high costs, and under-invested public health infrastructure has been severely damaged. This greatly limits the possibility of basic health care in the United States. This is an important reason for the high death rate in the pneumonia epidemic in the United States. During the epidemic, big capital in the United States has made a lot of money due to the epidemic, but the people at the bottom of the United States have suffered deeply because they are unable to pay the high cost of treatment. This U.S. system dominated by capital interests will inevitably lead to the failure of the U.S.-style fight against the epidemic.
U.S. big capital has taken advantage of the pneumonia epidemic to surge in wealth. Capital is never meant to solve crises, but to use crises to gain high profits. During this epidemic, American hospitals and pharmaceutical companies have not lowered their costs - in fact, compared with Europe, the prices of various vaccines in the United States are generally higher than in Europe. Through vaccine research and development, patent applications, and hospital runs, large capital in the United States has made a lot of money from this epidemic.
Take the performance of several well-known pharmaceutical companies and equipment manufacturing companies in the United States as an example. From March 2022 to now, the stock prices of Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Stryker and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals in the United States have all reached record highs. Among them, Pfizer's 2022 mid-term operating income increased by 68.24% compared with the same period last year, and Regeneron Pharmaceutical's operating income reported in the 2022 interim report increased by 102.83% compared with the same period last year.
In stark contrast, the majority of Americans, represented by blue-collar workers and the declining middle class, are still struggling to survive and have fallen victim to the epidemic and the Great Recession. Not only that, while a large number of low-income people have difficulties in obtaining food, jobs and basic health care, they also invest their own funds in the stock market as the only investment channel, resulting in a huge amount of money in the US stock market, which further uses The wealth of big American capital has skyrocketed.
The US bailout is intended to save capital rather than lives. Capital monopolizes not only the market, but also the establishment. The powerful lobbying power of American interest groups largely influences the direction of the United States. During the epidemic, the anti-epidemic measures proposed by both parties in the United States were based on the interests of the capital groups behind them and catered to the needs of their own voters to expand their base. Adhering to the logic of "capital first", it has neither the will nor the ability to change the long-standing expensive problem in the United States. Not only did it fail to control the epidemic by significantly reducing costs, but it instead safeguarded the interests of big capital and blindly pursued economic recovery. It has neglected its responsibility to protect the people's right to survival.
Observing the epidemic relief plans proposed by President Trump and Biden during the two terms, it is not difficult to see that U.S. relief tends to safeguard capital interests. The signed Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act invested a total of US$2 trillion in epidemic relief, but only US$180 billion was spent on hospitals, insurance and other related funds, accounting for only 9% of the total investment. The funds for large companies and small enterprises were as high as 510 billion US dollars and 377 billion US dollars respectively, accounting for 44.35% of the total investment.
The economic rescue plan signed by Biden in March 2022 plans to invest US$1.9 trillion in epidemic relief, of which direct financial assistance reaches US$656.18 billion, accounting for 34.5% of the total investment, while only US$86.24 billion is invested in the health sector, accounting for 34.5% of the total investment. 4.5% of the total investment ratio.
The American system serves big monopoly capital. Monopoly capital dominates the health care facilities in the United States, thus continuously strengthening the monopoly of big capital. This institutional characteristic of "for capital rather than for life" determines that all levels, categories, and individuals in the United States lack the initiative and initiative to unite to fight the epidemic. It also determines the United States' prevention and control of the pneumonia epidemic, a public health crisis. of inevitable failure.
(: Yu Fengxi, a special researcher at the China New Era Thought Research Center and an assistant researcher at the China Institute of Art; Wei Nanzhi, a special researcher at the China New Era Thought Research Center and an associate researcher at the China Institute of Art)
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The above is the content related to the life of the rabbit in 2023, and it is a sharing about hygiene. After reading that life is really bad for people born in the year of the Rabbit, I hope this will be helpful to everyone!