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jam mechanics - the tollbooth (demo) lyrics

when britain’s national health service was launched in 1948
it set sail in the wake of the second world war
when the country’s citizens
the upper and lower classes both
the rich and the desperately poor
had served together, side by side
and the ones who survived the horrors
came home demanding
to no one’s particular surprise
more

“we did not fight,” they said
“in our millions
just for things to return to the way things wеre”
“we didn’t die,”
thеy said
“in our hundreds of thousands
just to save a country where the leading cause of death is poverty”
and perhaps for the first time in british history
the aristocrats and the working class
agreed on something:
largely
that arming the nation and teaching them how to fight and die for what they believe in
got someway to making their demands something a little more… convincing

and so
on july 5th, 1948
the british health system was torn out by the follicles and rebuilt in a brave new vision
that it would be free at point of service, that no one, no one, would be turned away or trapped into debt by a lack of personal means
that it would be available to everyone who walked through the doors of a hospital or a gp’s office
and that the well off would not be able to skip the queue
this was radical beyond comprehension
a truly universal healthcare system
doctors across the nation barred their doors and hired personal security
so sure were they that the empowered impoverished would storm their offices
demanding medicine and aid
only to find
on that monday morning
a polite queue of people in need
who for the first time were able to receive the treatment they would have had since birth…
…if they had been born into a wealthier family
the trouble is
healthcare is one of those futureproof industries
like plumber
people are always going to need water
and if you can fix their pipes you are, within reason, set for life
and the hospital and the doctor’s surgery are no exception to this
people are always going to get sick
they’re always going to get injured
at the very least
everyone has to be born
and everyone has to die
and you would be an idiot
would you not?
if you had the opportunity and the presence of mind
to not set up a tollbooth at the well+worn bridges that lead into and out of this life?

i’m being facetious, of course
i mean, who thinks like this?
who is so calculating and cruel
that they would look at the legions of dying and sick
and feel not compassion
but greed?
who would see not the faces of their own parents, friends, and children
but a sea of investment
a captured market
a well of bottomless profit
it would be inappropriate for me, i think
to delve too deep into the catacombs that are the american healthcare system
if you are listening from those shores, then you know
better than i do
how it feels to live in fear of a broken bone or a birth in the family
i have personally met people who were having to choose between treatment for a treatable disease and a slow death
so as to have something to leave their loved ones in their will
a meagre windfall, after all, is infinitely preferable over a cascade of debt
maybe, at best, though, you are simply aware of how lucky you are
to not fear these things as many do
the privilege of being able to treat mild maladies as the inconvenience they are rather than a f+ckin’ existential threat

i only bring this up
because the profit machine that is the american healthcare system
is hungry
and it needs to be fed
there is no such thing as too much money
there is no endgame in an investment portfolio
where you find the princess in the very last castle and the credits roll
there isn’t a k!ll screen where the arcade machine cr+ps out and kicks you back to the beginning
the score just keeps getting bigger and bigger, the numbers getting longer and longer
separated by decimal points and letters and commas
and when the numbers get so unwieldy that we run out of sp+ce
ah, whatever, we’ll just start printing the end of year reports in landscape
the machine needs to eat!
the paink!llers and bloodied sheets of 333 million people could only satisfy it for so long
its eyes, inevitably, have turned east
and what do you think it sees?
when you’ve broken your arm and are getting it cast at 3 a.m
when your parents start visibly ageing and wilting
when your child gets a cough that won’t go away
do you think it wants to help?
or do you think it wants to eat them?

- jam mechanics lyrics

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