Healthcare Should Not Be a For-Profit Business, says Jesse Ventura | Big Think.

Pharma is corporate healthcare, and I don’t believe that healthcare should be a for-profit business. And unfortunately, with pharma, it totally is. Like this bozo—that pill that AIDS patients needed and this bozo raises the price from $12 a pill to what was it—$900 or something ridiculous. Well, there you’ve got an example of the private sector coming in and making everything for profit.

Always remember that there’s a difference—and this is for the people out there for these like CEOs like Trump that run. There’s a difference between government and a corporation. Corporations are for profit. That is all they’re for. Turning out profit for the shareholders. Government is to provide services, and that’s a different ballgame. Providing services to being for profit. So you cannot run them the same way.

People are saying, "Oh, run it like a private corporation." No. Private corporations are for profit, and that’s what you’re seeing in the healthcare industry today. It’s being run for profit, and I don’t think people’s health should be run for profit. Certainly, people don’t work in the industry should earn a living. No one is denying that.

But when you read about the heads of these healthcares making what—$40 million a year—stock options to where they have so much money they couldn’t spend it all. All at the sake of our health. Health should not be for profit. If you’re sick in a country like ours, it’s simple. You should have the ability to go see a doctor.

Everybody in this country deserves the same healthcare that congressmen get. How’s that? Whatever congressmen get, you and I deserve the same thing. They should be no better or no worse than us. After all, don’t they work for us? Or aren’t they supposed to? We’re the boss. They’re the employee.

All you see on daytime television—and I love it—tell your doctor about this drug. Well, let me steal from Bill Maher if I will for a moment. If you’re telling your doctor what you need, your doctor’s not a doctor, he’s a dealer. He should be telling you what you need. He’s the doctor.

So why do they do ads on TV telling you to take these drugs? And the point is yes, they do control our entire healthcare system today. The pure Libertarian is almost an anarchist. I’ve butted heads with them at times, and they believe, some of them, that there’s no role of government at all.

And I’ve kind of said come on, in a civilized society you’ve got to have some type of entity that performs fairness within society. You’d have anarchy if you don’t have, in a civil society, if you don’t have some form of control of the people. So I understand the Libertarian viewpoint enough, but I’m also a realist, you know. You’re not going to live in Utopia. That’s impossible. We’re human beings. We make mistakes. We’re not gods. We’re humans.