An editorial in an American newspaper, Investor’s Business Daily, stated that the renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, who is almost entirely paralyzed by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, “wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K.” Dr. Hawking, who is British, dismissed the assertion as absurd, and the newspaper has run a correction. “I wouldn’t be here today if it were not for the N.H.S.,” Mr. Hawking said.

Although the mentioned editorial is an amusing display of Americo-centrism, it's also another example of how private vs. national healthcare debates often miss the point completely. Rather than focusing on the inevitable horror stories about both systems, let's consider the broader social and economic consequences of a public vs. private healthcare system.

First, let's give ourselves some perspective by considering a few relevant facts:

• Most European and North American countries have a private healthcare sector in addition to their national service. Without government regulation, competition between medical professionals tends to increase the size of the private sector – although many doctors will accept both privately and publicly funded patients. Persons who are denied a desired treatment will often (a) turn to the private sector or (b) go to another country where they will receive public treatment.
• Private American hospitals do not deny emergency services to patients without insurance. Although in serious cases the uninsured patient may be dragged irretrievably into debt, hospitals often take a loss for the cost of treatment when the patient fails to pay. Public hospitals do exist in the U.S. but are notorious for providing an inferior quality of care.
• The standard of living for the homeless in European and North American countries doesn't even come close to the level of poverty experienced in many third-world countries. In other words: the existing healthcare systems in America and Europe, flawed as they may be, are top-of-the-line.

So what is wrong with healthcare as it is?

Critics of nationalized healthcare services are quick to point out that they are, like many government programs, costly, provide poorer care, and get easily dragged into a financial whirlpool of bureaucracy. Glenn Woiceshyn makes a great analogy which explains why this may be the case:

There is nothing unique about health care when it comes to egalitarianism. Certainly, food is needed more than is health care. Imagine if the government were to declare food free and agree to pay the bill. Initially, this might seem like a great idea, but costs would soon rise, along with demand. Eventually the government would claim that it had no choice but to enslave the food providers. In the long run the food supply would decline, and quality would deteriorate.

In other words, whenever the government provides a fully public service, you get the "Free stuff!" syndrome, which causes people to take advantage of services they would not ordinarily use if they had to pay for them. But medical costs are, of course, not actually free. You pay in taxes, and you pay in waiting times and limited service. Arguably, some of the challenges faced national health services are due to the parallel presence of a private sector: More people turn to their national health service for more common but less-profitable treatments and medications, yet turn to the private sector for more lucrative high-tech treatments.

Our criticisms of the private healthcare industry, on the other hand, are the consequences of consumerism and "politicorporate" culture. This blogger has really hit the nail on the head:

The current, private healthcare system, in my opinion, is not working. The reasons are simple, business men at insurance and pharmaceutical companies call all the shots and supercede both you and your doctor. Due to relaxed regulations now, insurance companies can choose not to pay for procedures and treatments recommended and performed by your doctor after the fact so you're left holding the bill. And because it is privatized, it is all run like a business where repeat business and addictive treatments are not only tolerated, but encouraged.

There's definitely growing pill-popping culture in America: If you're sad, there's a pill. If you're too fat, there's a pill. If you eat a poor diet, there's a whole rack of pills at the supermarket. If you watch American TV, every commercial break is packed with "Ask your doctor about..." followed up with a list of side-effects rattled off like an auctioneer. Doctors get flooded with patients wasting their time for prescriptions to cure "erectile dysfunction" and "restless leg syndrome". Making everyone reliant on their services is the fantasy of corporate healthcare providers – so like any good (dis)honest business, they sell you needs rather than solutions to real problems.

We can't expect the government to be our only safety-net; but just the same, the last thing we want is a whole population of pill-popping hypochondriacs. So what type of healthcare scheme can solve these problems? Ideally, we can dream about a non-corporate private health care system, in which the poor can rely on their communities for support rather than the government, and everyone receives the high quality of care that private competition provides. But given the socio-economic climate we have to work with, we need to work on correcting the problems with the systems we have.

It would be overly presumptuous to try and propose a fix-all here, but we have a pretty good idea what the first step ought to be for the public and private sectors alike: Take control away from the corporations and bureaucrats and put it back into the hands of doctors and nurses. They care about our health, not our provider, and certainly aren't going to work overtime just to write Viagra prescriptions. It won't solve all our problems, but it would be a move towards a healthier lifestyle all-around.

- Corrupt Staff

Milan, Italy - Thanks to the revolutionary research of Dr. P. Sandrini, a professor of computer science and genetics in Milan, our dreams of a fully-automated lifestyle may come true sooner than we think. Using new advances in organic circuitry, Sandrini was able to insert a microchip into the brain of a young guinea pig, which successfully took over many of its motor and behavioural functions.

Still more impressive, the guinea pig can be "remote controlled" via an antenna extending from its ear. Experiments are due to begin with brain-dead or severely impaired human subjects in 2012. At a press conference earlier this week, Sandrini was quoted saying, "Computer scientists gave up the idea of 'good old fashioned AI' years ago, but organic-electronic hybrids are something that simply never occurred to us 25 years ago. Now, the "home robot" – or "manbot", if you prefer – may be a reality as early as 2024."

Needless to say, the potential for this technology is astounding. Imagine a "manbot" to go to work for you, do the grocery shopping, clean the house, and even give you a foot-massage? Undoubtedly, early interest (and funding) will be for military applications, but economist Martin Sales foresees a socio-economic revolution. "This could be the dawn of a capitalist utopia – wage-free labour, which will leave consumers free to do what they do best – consume," he says. But don't expect too much too quickly – the first commercial models are expected to set you back at least $2.5 million.

Sunday June 7, Detroit, Michigan

The city of Detroit has launched a new campaign against racism, the “Detroit Brotherhood of Humanity” - but with a twist. Brotherhood of Humanity spokesperson James “Muddy” Wyatt agreed to answer a few questions for Corrupt:

C: First of all, what is the DBoH and what do you campaign for?
W: It’s a new campaign to reduce racism and, most importantly, segregation and race-related crime. It’s part of nation-wide initiative, but you might say we’ve given it our own “twist”. This isn’t just another “awareness” campaign. What we’re doing is trying to eradicate racism from the English language, at the same time increasing awareness and pride in people’s heritage.

C: So how do you plan to “eradicate racism from the English language”? Isn’t that a bit ambitious?
W: Racial slurs are really just an expression of our desire for unity. If you use these words enough, they lose their power. We want to transform insults into positive forms of self-expression. So our first step is to allow these words back into broadcasts and publications of the mass media. This is completely the opposite of censorship – we’re encouraging people to express themselves, as naturally and colorfully as possible. It is ambitious, but it’s far from Science Fiction.

C: What inspired this campaign?
W: It was the people who inspired it, really. We noticed how words like ‘slut’, ‘nigger’ and ‘faggot’ have gone from being rude insults to terms of endearment or pride. There’s virtually a whole merchandise industry based on it. We’re hoping to start a similar transformation for other race-related insults - “Defusing the N-Bomb,” as our slogan goes.

C: So if this were a campaign against drugs, you’d be speaking for legalisation and telling everyone to “Give coke a try”?
W: [Laughs] Well drug-houses are like Starbucks in the city, as it is. But I don’t think the analogy works. Taking too much of a drug – any drug – is very bad. But overusing a word like ‘nigger’ is actually very good, as we have already seen. But generally speaking, yes, we’re actually trying to increase the frequency of racial slurs in the media. We fully expect it to be shocking and offensive at first. The important thing is that it really works.

C: What are you doing to spread the message?
W: I’m glad you asked – this is the fun part! Again, we’ve taken our inspiration from the people. Basically, we’re trying to influence existing industries and media. For example, we’ve contacted several companies that produce novelty items (T-shirts, bumper stickers, and key-chains) with statements like “God Loves Fags” and convinced them to add a few new ones to their product lines. Our proposals include “Chicano,” “Paki,” “Jap,” “Redskin” and “WASP” as well as some subtler, more humorous ones like “The Turkinator” and “GERMan”. And yes, people actually buy this stuff. But what’s most surprising is that people tend to select the products that are the most personally insulting.

We’re also working to get our message into comedy clubs and popular music by promoting acts that have the right idea, like the “New Spics on the Block”. My personal favorite is the rock band “The Towel Heads” - their new album “Chinkie Revolution” (a parody of the title of the new Guns n’ Roses album “Chinese Democracy”) includes titles such as “Foreign Call Center” and “Sweat-shop Blues”. This is the sort of thing that really raises awareness of modern issues that people are normally afraid to talk about.

We also had a dozen or so billboards up for a couple of weeks, but we had to remove most of them because they were causing nearby traffic accidents.

C: What’s the greatest challenge you’ve faced so far?
W: Coming up with convincing insults for white people. The fact is, hatred for whites is a deep unspoken near-religious sentiment which is rarely expressed in words. There are a lot of lifestyle-specific insults, like ‘yuppie’ but not very many that refer to white people in general. The most common insult used against whites is to call them “racists” so we’ve done our best to exploit this. But we’ve also had to come up with some new ones, like ‘pastry’ and ‘kraut’.

C: What happens when the novelty wears off?
W: Then our work is done! If this really works as well as we expect, then we’ll work towards making it a national initiative.

C: Has anyone else given this a try?
We have got a small DBoH advertisement campaign to encourage other cities to give it a try, but we’ve had no serious takers, yet. We expect more interest once the DBoH has been around long enough to see some positive, long-term results. One of our flyers, which states “The streets have become pakified” (a play on the words ‘pacified’ and ‘paki’) actually resulted in riots and death-threats in London, so we have pulled the European ad campaign altogether. I guess the conditions have to be right.

President Obama is now on tour selling worldwide nuclear disarmament - but who’s buying it? Nobody wants to be the first to disarm – the U.S. least of all. So how’s it supposed to work? We all “let go of the rope” at once? That kind of teamwork might happen in boy scouts, but in foreign politics??

We're realizing that the days of conventional warfare are numbered: The power to destroy the world several times over simply isn’t much good when you share the same planet with your enemies. We can't un-invent the bomb, and we’re not really on the way to ending all wars (Sorry, Obama). We can only make open war unthinkably risky. The beauty of a cold war is that you can enjoy all the suspense and compelling drama of real combat without spilling a drop of beer.

There’s one thing that might solve the arms deadlock: Ultimate surveillance. If everyone knew what new weapons of mass destruction everyone else was building, we could all disarm with a firm handshake and a fake grin slapped all over our faces, knowing that we've got a sophisticated network of surveillance satellites to keep an eye on naughty presidents. Not to mention a secret stash of “just in case” treats, like my mother used to keep in case of unexpected house guests.

Rather than a balance of power based on rockets, we could have a balance of power based on knowledge and trust. In fact, we can probably just about genetically engineer pigs with wings. Let us not forget the power of optimism and the importance of the freedom of choice. What do you prefer? People listening in to your phone calls and taking satellite pictures of your house, or an arsenal of nuclear missiles silently contemplating their final destinations? Heck, why settle for one when you can have both? The future looks bright – all we need to do is increase high street spending!