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Joshua Scheer
I posted an article from Truthout about Trump and healthcare, but nowhere in the piece did it mention Obama and the failure of his administration — and the Democrats here in California under Gavin Newsom — to create a real single-payer system. Thankfully, voices like Margaret Flowers, Dr. Ana Malinow, and many others continue working to set the record straight and push for the only truly logical solution: a single-payer healthcare system, not the capitalist model that Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, Obama, and now Trumpcare have all helped preserve.
As America’s healthcare system collapses under the weight of corporate greed, millions are being priced out of basic care while insurance giants, private equity firms, and pharmaceutical monopolies rake in record profits. In this explosive episode of Clearing the FOG, Margaret Flowers speaks with pediatrician and longtime Medicare for All advocate Dr. Anna Malinou about why the crisis isn’t a failure of policy — it’s the system working exactly as designed. From crushing medical debt and collapsing rural hospitals to the rise of private equity vultures buying up healthcare infrastructure for profit, the conversation tears apart the myth that the United States has a “healthcare system” at all.
But the interview goes even further, connecting the violence of the so-called “medical-industrial complex” to the broader machinery of empire — from sanctions on Cuba to the genocide in Gaza and the war on Iran. As Washington pours trillions into militarism while gutting public health protections at home, Flowers and Malinou argue that the same ideology fueling endless war abroad is also destroying healthcare, dignity, and life expectancy inside the United States itself. Their message is blunt: healthcare will never become a human right until people confront the profit-driven system feeding on human suffering.
Margaret Flowers and Dr. Anna Malinou expose how private insurers, Wall Street investors, and militarized politics turned healthcare into a profit racket while millions are left uninsured, indebted, and dying younger.
The United States spends more on healthcare than any country on Earth — yet millions of Americans are uninsured, underinsured, drowning in medical debt, or forced to delay care because they simply cannot afford it. In this powerful episode of Clearing the FOG, host Margaret Flowers and pediatrician Dr. Anna Malinou argue that this is not a broken system in need of reform, but a profit-driven machine functioning exactly as designed: enriching corporations while human beings suffer.
One of the sharpest themes running through the conversation is the idea that the “medical-industrial complex” now operates much like the military-industrial complex — a sprawling alliance of insurance companies, pharmaceutical giants, private equity firms, hospital conglomerates, and politicians whose profits depend on keeping healthcare commodified. Malinou describes a healthcare economy where “insurance companies and middlemen” drain public money while venture capital firms increasingly buy hospitals, clinics, dialysis centers, laboratories, and even entire physician networks.
The consequences, they argue, are catastrophic. Rural hospitals are collapsing, pediatric departments are being shuttered because they are not “profitable enough,” and healthcare workers are burning out under a system dominated by corporate cost-cutting and insurance denials. Rather than allowing doctors to practice medicine based on patient need, insurers and administrators routinely override clinical judgment. Flowers points to findings showing physicians increasingly suffer from what experts now call “moral injury” — not because individual doctors are failing, but because the system forces them to participate in a healthcare structure that routinely harms patients.
The interview also demolishes the mythology surrounding the so-called “Affordable Care Act.” Both Flowers and Malinou argue that the ACA ultimately entrenched the private insurance industry even deeper into American life while delaying the fight for a universal healthcare system. Malinou warns that new Democratic proposals like “Medicare by Choice” are simply updated versions of the old public-option framework — policies she argues are designed to preserve private insurance dominance while creating the illusion of reform.
But perhaps the most explosive part of the discussion is the connection they draw between healthcare collapse at home and American militarism abroad. Malinou argues that the same political system willing to fund wars, sanctions, and occupations also accepts mass suffering domestically. She points directly to U.S. sanctions on Cuba, the genocide in Gaza, and escalating conflict with Iran as evidence that violence abroad and austerity at home are part of the same ideological structure.
At the very moment Washington is gutting Medicaid, defunding public health infrastructure, and allowing life expectancy in the United States to decline, Congress continues pouring staggering sums into war spending. The interview highlights how cuts to preventative care, weakened environmental protections, and dismantled public health systems have left Americans increasingly vulnerable not only to chronic illness, but to future pandemics and climate-driven disease outbreaks as well.
The episode ultimately centers on a growing grassroots push for a publicly financed, profit-free national healthcare system. National Single Payer’s new “Declaration of Independence from the Medical Industrial Complex” campaign calls for healthcare to be recognized as a human right, the elimination of private insurance profiteering, and the creation of a universal Medicare for All system free from corporate control. Flowers and Malinou insist that real change will not come from political branding exercises or watered-down compromises, but from building an uncompromising movement capable of confronting corporate power directly.
Their message is blunt: the crisis facing Americans is not accidental. It is the predictable outcome of a system where profit matters more than human life — and where both healthcare and war have become industries feeding off suffering itself.
