Let's imagine for a moment that a cure for cancer was discovered. It wasn't just a cure for certain types of cancers but a cure for all types of cancers. And it didn't require radiation, chemotherapy, or surgery (burn, poison and cut). All you would have to do is take a pill, and immediately all tumors and symptoms would end. Just like that.

The only problem is that this particular pill contains an ingredient that is very rare, so rare in fact that each pill would cost one million dollars to produce. And since the pill would make all other cancer drugs and treatments obsolete, the ensuing economic depression in the medical and pharmaceutical fields would have to be compensated for. Therefore, the market value for the pill would be about five million dollars.

Okay, so about 1500 people a day die from cancer in the United States. Worldwide that increases significantly. Then if you add to that all the people who have not yet died but have the disease, we are talking about maybe 2% of the population.

That would be about six million people just here in the United States. So six million people times five million dollars a pill would end up being as nice tidy sum: $30 trillion dollars, just for the U.S. alone. And just for the pockets of the pharma company that bought out the small research and development firm that actually developed the pill!

At 5 mil a pill, health care Insurance companies couldn't run fast enough away from all policies involved with a cancer patient. Law or no law, they would weasel out. And the cancer victim? Well, who has 5 mil lying around?

Imagine the horror of knowing that your disease, or your child's disease, was curable immediately if only you had the money. Wouldn't you rob a bank or something? Wouldn't the cancer pill supply require an army to protect it, and armed vehicles to deliver it to hospitals which now would resemble armed fortresses?

Perhaps the government would want to step in to nationalize the pills; make the pills available to every U.S. citizen that needed them. But that would require a law to be passed - fat chance if the current big business, big pharma influences persist. That would be socialism - reducing the power of the wealthy. And that's un-American.

Logically, many more benefit from cancer than those who suffer from it. This is how bottom liners think - business people, drug manufacturers, doctors, medical supply companies, and the list goes on. This is a clue to how the sense of goodness in our society has become warped, where one person's pain is seen as another's pleasure. This is the sign that a society is weakening.

So the scenario will play out that the rich would be cured and the poor would die - a top-heavy scenario that is actually happening as we speak, in slow motion, with the rising costs of all health care.

Therefore, the five million dollar pill is not so far fetched as it seems, because even a mere $1,000/mo. health care policy is becoming out of reach for common folk.

And it is happening little by little, drip by drip, and with each drip the poor and middle class lose another drop of their health security, as they are put out to pasture to fend for themselves. While those in power turn their backs just as they have turned their backs on the homeless decades ago. No one seems to care, at least not the ones in power who want to retain the disparity of wealth, that is growing daily.

And slowly the contentment of life drips out of the common folk, as their lives begin the fall into hopelessness. Can it be long before all health care will be like the five million dollar pill? Who can afford it? Perhaps only the wealthy.

Methinks that Rep. James Henry Hammond's 1836 speech illustrating perfectly the hatred and bigotry of the confederacy could easily be restated again today, with the word "Poor" replacing the gist of his speech regarding the "Negroes" of the day:

"Are we prepared to see them "Negroes" (the Poor) mingling in our Legislatures? Is any portion of this country prepared to see them enter these halls and take their seats by our sides, in perfect equality with the white (Rich and privileged) representatives of an Anglo Saxon race ... to see them placed at the heads of your Departments; . . . and wield the destinies of this great Republic? From such a picture I turn with irrepressible disgust."

Author's Bio: 

E. Raymond Rock (anagarika addie) is a meditation teacher at:

http://www.dhammarocksprings.org/ and author of “A Year to Enlightenment:

http://www.amazon.com/Year-Enlightenment-Steps-Enriching-Living/dp/15641...

His 30 years of meditation experience has taken him across four continents including two stopovers in Thailand where he practiced in the remote northeast forests as an ordained Theravada Buddhist monk.

He lived at Wat Pah Nanachat under Ajahn Chah, at Wat Pah Baan Taad under Ajahn Maha Boowa, and at Wat Pah Daan Wi Weg under Ajahn Tui. He had been a postulant at Shasta Abbey, a Zen Buddhist monastery in northern California under Roshi Kennett; and a Theravada Buddhist anagarika at both Amaravati Monastery in the UK and Bodhinyanarama Monastery in New Zealand, both under Ajahn Sumedho. The author has meditated with the Korean Master Sueng Sahn Sunim; with Bhante Gunaratana at the Bhavana Society in West Virginia; and with the Tibetan Master Trungpa Rinpoche in Boulder, Colorado. He has also practiced at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, and the Zen Center in San Francisco.