And this is true in essential services, like medical care, as well as trivial pursuits, like soft drinks. Alas, for a growing number of Americans, that is no longer true. We've unleashed the marketplace on the medical sector. Today medicine is a commodity and a profit-center. Doctors are bought and sold by remote investors.
Giant corporations make long distance life and death decisions about patients.
And for more and more people, doctor choice is fast-disappearing. Opponents of national health insurance insisted that if we adopted such a concept we would no longer be able to choose our own doctors. And in Canada, national health insurance allows all patients that right. But in the United States, capitalist medicine just doesn't seem able to provide that kind of service. Once upon a time, not that long ago, you could choose your operating system and you could choose your other software.