Tech Billionaires and the Healthcare Mirage

While tech billionaires have promised to disrupt healthcare the same way they revolutionized online shopping and communication, their actual results have been underwhelming—and in many cases, outright failures.

Take Haven, the much-hyped joint venture between Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, and Berkshire Hathaway. It was supposed to slash healthcare costs for their employees and develop scalable solutions for the country. But after three years of vague announcements and no major results, it quietly shut down in 2021. The reason? U.S. healthcare isn’t broken because of a lack of innovation—it’s broken because of entrenched corporate profit models, legislative capture, and insurance/pharma monopolies. No app or AI tool can overcome that.

Even Google and Apple have tried to wedge into healthcare—through health tracking, data analytics, and cloud services—but none have solved the real issue: affordability. These efforts often result in more consumer data being commodified and monetized, not better care or lower costs.

The lesson? If tech titans with trillions in combined market cap can’t fix healthcare while still trying to profit from it, maybe it’s time to stop pretending the private sector can save us—and start building a public system that actually puts people before profits.

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🩺 What If We Treated Medicine Like We Treat Public Schools?

 

Imagine walking into a pharmacy, picking up life-saving medication, and paying nothing at the counter.

No $1,000 insulin.

No $500 inhalers.

Just like your kids can go to school without a tuition bill (unless you count the PTA’s annual guilt trip), you could get the meds your life depends on — because your life is valuable, not just your wallet.

Sound radical?

Let’s ask the real question:
Why is access to health only guaranteed if you can afford it?

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💊 The Big Idea: Nationalize Big Pharma

 

Let’s stop sugarcoating it.

It’s time to nationalize Big Pharma.

Just like we have a Department of Education to manage public schools, we need a Department of Medical Access & Innovation to oversee pharmaceutical development, manufacturing, and distribution.

We already trust government operations to do the hard stuff:

• NASA explores space

• The CDC tracks diseases

• The DOE handles nuclear bombs (!)

But somehow, we’re told government can’t handle Tylenol?

C’mon.

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🧩 Why Nationalization?

 

1️⃣ Because Health is a Human Right

If you’re bleeding out, should someone ask for your credit score before applying the tourniquet?

If your kid has leukemia, should your GoFundMe be the thing keeping them alive?

No. Full stop.

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2️⃣ Because We Already Pay for the R&D

Here’s the kicker: most medical breakthroughs?

Already funded by your tax dollars through NIH grants, academic research, and military research programs.

But once a drug is viable, private companies swoop in, patent it, and crank the prices through the roof.

That’s like you paying someone to build your house, and they charge you rent to live in it.

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3️⃣ Because the Free Market Is Failing

Capitalism crushes it in some sectors — iPhones, pizza delivery, socks with Nicolas Cage’s face.

But it faceplants in healthcare, where the profit model relies on:

• Price gouging

• Withholding cures

• Lobbying against generics

• Evergreening patents with meaningless tweaks

It’s not a market — it’s a hostage situation.

Remember when a group of our beloved billionaires got together and announced they were going to fix the US health system? Ever wonder what happened to that? They quit. Our vaunted business geniuses couldn’t fix it.

And the reason was simple. You can’t make a health system work on a for-profit basis. Just about every other industrialized country has figured that out. Now it’s our turn to Put People First!!!

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🏛️ How It Could Work

 

We create a Public Pharma Agency (PPA), modeled like the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which does an amazing job of spearheading research and overseeing projects, while simultaneously leveraging private companies to do what they do best.

The PPA could utilize the same model with the following mission:

• Research what the public needs

• Continue cutting-edge R&D through existing NIH grants, academic research, and military research programs

• Produce life-saving meds at scale

• Distribute them cheaply — or freely

• And, most importantly, find cures!

Private companies can still make supplements, designer hormone cocktails, whatever. And no more public advertising! I haven’t met anyone who isn’t sick of that constant barrage (pun intended).

But insulin? Antibiotics? Cancer meds?

Public domain. Public good. Public ownership.

This isn’t about stifling innovation — it’s about saving lives.

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🧱 OMG, What About…?

 

“This is socialism!”

No, it’s civilization.
We already fund public schools, roads, cops, fire stations, and libraries. Are those socialism? If so, then congrats on being a card-carrying socialist every time you call the fire dept or drive down a highway. (Although, there was one Red State that experimented with the fire department not putting out your fire if you didn’t pay your subscription fee. In advance.)

“It’ll kill innovation!”

You mean the innovation that already depends on NIH grants and university research?
When profit isn’t the priority, maybe we finally get cures, not just treatments that keep patients sick but always paying. Survival on the subscription plan.

“It’ll be bloated and inefficient!”

The current system is bloated on purpose.
A single ER visit can cost more than a used Honda. You know what’s inefficient? Thousands of private insurance companies, each with their own paperwork circus.

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🌎 The Bigger Picture

 

If the U.S. leads by nationalizing Big Pharma, it could trigger a global shift toward health equity.

We could build a world where:

• No one dies from lack of insulin

• Your grandparents don’t have to decide between prescriptions or food

• Medicine heals people — not billionaire bank accounts

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🎯 Final Word: We Built Public Libraries. We Can Build Public Pharmacies.

 

This isn’t utopia. It’s a moral choice.

When we say “health is a human right,” let’s act like it.
Nationalizing Big Pharma isn’t radical — it’s rational. It’s about people over patents. Life over profit. Equity over monopoly.

This post is going to be a real “pain in the ass” for Democrats. What are their billionaire and corporate donors going to tell them to say about this idea?

The only thing stopping us is cowardice — and we don’t do cowardice around here.

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🗣️ CALL TO ACTION:

 

What do you think, Wolverines?

Should Big Pharma become Public Pharma?

Could this idea save lives — maybe even yours? Or your moms? Or your kids?

👉 Drop a comment.
👉 Share this post.
👉 Demand better.

Because No Place for Political Wimps means we don’t flinch when it’s time to fight for people’s lives.