The corporations left out of your discussion are the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. In collaboration with lobbyists, they have designed, maintained, and enabled this murderous for-profit health care system by playing keepaway ball with universal healthcare from American citizens.
This 💯. They’ve failed us long enough. Time to vote the vast majority of them out and replace them with people who still remember what it’s like not to enjoy the health care bestowed upon members of Congress.
To add to the conversation about companies that kill for the sake of profit, it would be remiss if we didn’t mention groups like Big Tobacco and now Big Oil. But I’d add argue companies like Big Meat and Dairy, and even Big Tech overlook the fact that their products kill for the sake of profit. It may not be human lives directly, but they have no problem polluting the environment, exploiting workers, and in the case of Big Ag, killing tens of billions of sentient beings needlessly.
There are almost too many examples but one last one worth highlighting - DuPont, the creators of Teflon, who are responsible for creating products with forever chemicals that have no entered the blood of 99% of all beings on this Earth, knew the possible harms of their product for decades, and overlooked it because their products brought them fabulous profits. The movie Dark Waters, starring Mark Ruffalo, does a phenomenal job covering this harrowing saga, based on a long form piece by the NYT.
The system - used as a term here that describes the current models of health and education and government - is the system built for wealth accumulation to increase power capacity and greed - its that simple. And that system isnt failing - it is doing exactly what is was designed to do. And we - those who are the used to maintain this system are absolutely replacable - hence the tireless endless hamster wheel that we feed into day after day - that upholds that system. Our health and wellbeing.. our own capacity to build wealth is of no consequence to that system. We are literally the most recyclable component of it - we burn out - we die - theres someone to replace us.. and on it goes. This system is simply now being seen for what it has always done - that is fail those it is meant to serve. We have been fooled by manufactured consent into believing all that wed o is for our own benefit - yet this could never be further from the truth. Helping to keep us from the people and places we truly belong - aka nature -and each other - is designed fit for purpose in order to maintain the belief that we infact can only rely on the system for our best way forward in life. All of this has knowingly KNOWINGLY led us into our own early demise - be it from illness or dis-ease -stress - mental health.. the list is endless. One of the greatest causes of this - was the separation of what was once the traditions of learning science spirituality (or religion) and the fields of astrology and cosmology and history all as one knowing. Now separated science has simply no moral grounds - no foundations for it to truly be of benefit towards Life on Earth - it runs its own course. All this to say - after years in the industry of health and wellness and watching the destruction taking place - I am overwhelmed with joy at how much we are now willing to call this out. The time for change has long passed we need to get serious about making it happen. Thanks for your writing and willingness to agent these topics
Thank you so much for this- we need to keep pushing how distorted it all is and has been.
If corporations are people, wouldn’t that make it even more important for a corporation/CEO with deaths on their hands to be properly charged for murder? Citizens United declared corporations to be people. These powerful and wealthy people/corps/hybrid entities are treated more humanely than most of the actual humans are, in America.
Everyone else on the planet understands that a nation has to take care of its own. The wealth of a nation should support the wellbeing of its people. Every day its people know that they deserve their health- their ongoing existence- as a right.
Here, it’s reversed. Here, the massive wealth of our nation is withheld from the majority of its people to enable the suffering and death of 68,000 of us every year- so that the rich can extract and accumulate more wealth from its own people. From us. Every day we all see that wealth and the pursuit of wealth means more than people in America. It certainly gives you a separate set of rights, including purposefully causing the deaths of masses of Americans.
America is a country founded amid wealth that was dependent on cruelty, slavery. The forces that seek to subjugate others and value profit over all have always been here. Their power waxes and wanes, cycling through time, fighting for a chance to have its own way. These forces have most recently been doing whatever it takes for a chance not just to control everything, but also to declare the inhumane cruelty in the rotten heart of unregulated capitalism to be the true law of the land. To them, ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ applies *only* to them.
This comment is somewhat incidental, but I trust it is useful in pursuit of better understandings and better approaches to ending the 'violence' of the current view of property, corporate undertakings, and so on... presented in this commentary.
At her substack, Simple Politics, today Ms Wehle published a commentary on civil service, "Legal truths around Trump’s “Schedule F”. This is a very important offering by Ms Wehle, and once you've read it you may also see how it pertains here.
[The Civil Service Reform Act: Due Process and Misconduct-Related ...
The Civil Service Reform Act: Due Process and Misconduct-Related Adverse Actions Congressional Research Service R44803 · VERSION 3 · UPDATED 2 within different federal courts regarding the rights of federal employees.10 Against this backdrop, the CSRA created "a comprehensive system for ... ]
As I noted in comment, "As we begin reading the report, we find in the Summary, "The CSRA created a comprehensive system for reviewing actions taken by most federal agencies against their employees, and the act provides a variety of legal protections and remedies for federal employees. It also funnels review of agency decisions to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), subject to review by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Federal Circuit).
In addition to these statutory protections, the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment requires the federal government to observe certain procedures when depriving individuals of life, liberty, or property. The CSRA’s requirement that covered employees may not be removed from federal service, except for cause or unacceptable performance, creates a constitutional property interest in continued employment. The government cannot deprive covered employees of this property interest without adhering to due process requirements. ...".
Both the review venues and the creation of a constitutional property interest are valuable tools and politically hot ones at that. We just need a few live actions to begin to work with, and perhaps there are potential former civil service employees among us who could come forward so that these concepts and venues could be begun to be used and better understood now."
and
"it also seems worth it to ask if the public cannot look at the procedures and the public interest involved in an honest and fact-based effort to recover the purpose of civil service, which is honest service that is also competent to fulfill tasks associated with good, rule of law, democratic constitutional governance? Right? ...
We can, as the 'we' in we the people ask that these questions be asked and be the central questions that guide entrance and continuance in public service. We must be very candid about what public interest or interests are present and of what importance the pursuit of such interest is or interests are. This is an effective and perhaps the strongest legal 'hook' we have to pursue 'competent and honest' civil service."
So often, we citizens can flatly state what we perceive to be common interest and shared necessary outcomes when we are proceeding to critique public policy or legislation or when we are doing either writing of legislation/legislative proposal or doing a judicial challenge to some perceived illegal or unjust action. There really must be a public interest involved in any governmental action; we are the 'we' in we the people, and it is our interest that we have government at all.
This is the legacy of slavery. Slaves were brutalized and worked to death in order for the owners to accumulate profits. Employers of free labor behaved similarly, because that was obviously how profits were maximized. It took a bloody War of Rebellion for the US government to move in a progressive direction (Reconstruction, veterans benefits), and the former slave owners successfully fought back (assassinating Lincoln, ending Reconstruction, Jim Crow, segregation).
Slavery is treating people like commodities. For profit corporations are all guilty of this practice. And they keep coming up with new ways to commodify people, like surveillance capitalism.
I didn't know there was such thing as a 'corporate death penalty' until like a year ago. I'm 37 years old! I consider myself pretty well-read, media literate, and knowledgeable of history. I have an undergraduate degree that included a large history component, and I had just never heard of it! One set of parents, who are lawyers, even had a joke magnet that read, "I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one." I thought half of the joke was that it wasn't possible, not just that it wouldn't happen. So, when I found out that there was real, historic precedent for such an idea? My goodness! I remember Enron, and finished undergraduate right as the Global Financial Crisis was kicking off, and that doesn't even begin to cover the ones that are actively murderous. I have never once heard a politician actually threaten any of these harmful mega corps with anything that would even seriously hurt their pocket books.
Absolutely correct. Corporations knowingly take actions that cause death in a premeditated fashion. As I recall, there's a legal term for that when individuals do it...
How right for that question to be asked. Corporations in the US have driven wars, and implemented policies that kill people, or allow them to die with great suffering.
We were told we were fighting communism in Vietnam. Remember the domino theory? NOPE!
It was Goodyear who wanted the US military to protect their rubber trees, as well as other US companies.
Do we really need to be told why the US supports or participates in wars across the globe? It is obviously due to the interests of US corporations such as EXXON, Mobile, Chevron, et al., NOT protecting people from communism.
Then we all know family or friends who have died, suffered or lost everything they had to support profits of health insurance companies after being denied coverage. Wrong as Mancione was to kill that executive, United Health Care has allowed thousands to die, just to make sure they maxified their profits. Shouldn’t that executive, and others like him, be put on trial for murder?
Then we have property insurers who pull out of markets where catastrophic events have occurred due to climate change (carriers are routinely ending issuing policies in hurricane-prone coastal areas such as Florida and Texas, and wildfire stricken areas in California). At least then it is agreed by all that states provide that coverage. I find it ironic that in many of those states there are views considering that as communism, but concede that is necessary in order to provide protection of property. Those same mentalities do not feel the same about governments protecting people’s health!
We as citizens can see how certain private pursuits and interests do have a status that must conform to the common public interest, which is the basis shared by all in forming society and for forming democratic rule of law governance. As you specifically note in the example of private insurance being withdrawn and, subsequently, the state taking action to provide public insurance as a social good, we have public interest at the very heart and reasoned core of our democratic vision and constitution. Public health, public safety, ... all examples that must be given superior interest value when compared to private use of what is, legally, considered private property.
Far from being a communist or socialist view, the superior value or values attached to public interests form the reasoned and inclusive civil society core of common legal protections and common legal responsibilities of our American constitutional society. These represent not ideological but very practical relationship forms that provide equal opportunity and protection within the system of norms and laws and that maintain a common status of legitimacy to participating in constitution of law and lawful guidance and application.
This hit me hard this morning. I haven't heard from a dear friend since the fall of 2020, when she relapsed into her opioid addiction. I have many friends who are living in poverty because of outrageous healthcare expenses. As a family caregiver, I know countless caregivers who have been forced to sell everything to pay for basic medical services for their loved ones - while still paying for health insurance. Yes, corporate cartel greed and crime is crushing us.
I'm so sorry for your friend, Kay. It truly is enraging that all of this is manufactured for "shareholder value." It's enraging that our politicians continue to let these corporations get away with these atrocities. smh horrific.
When Luigi Mangioni killed the CEO he actually slayed one of the individuals responsible for deaths of many. It had a face, and he targeted it. This innocent CEO was about the bottom line. I feel zero remorse for this CEO’S execution. Think of all of the people he he sentenced to death without a thought for corporate bottom line. He was just doing his job. Our culture worships wealth, and all of the things you can have. Empty promises for an empty life. It’s not sustainable.
Actually I do feel a sense of remorse for that man, but mostly for the legacy he is leaving, and due to this is where he, and others like him, have brought us all.
It is always noted in the media that he had a wife and children. But he had the income to pay out of pocket for any costs of health care for that family, AT THE EXPENSE OF ALL OF US WHO DON’T HAVE THAT PRIVILEGE! Sorry for all-caps but I am angry!
A question would be: what does a roadmap to universal health care, a "Medicare for all." look like? And the follow-up question would be, does the existing Medicare programme provide the appropriate model for a universal health programme? (To the latter my answer is no: leaving an individual with responsibility for 20 percent of a $150K medical bill still spells disaster for far too many.)
The focus on health insurance, its costs and the way companies proscribe care and treatment, is obvious and vital, but it is only one part of a much larger problem where medical (including pharmaceutical) costs are concerned. For example, I have yet to read a commentary in an American medium that speaks about the exclusivity and costs of medical education in the United States, or the culture that some medical schools cultivate that reinforces over-medication and insufficient direct personal care.
I worked at a major US medical school that accepted a small and privileged group of ca. 150 medical students annually. The first week of attendance provided orientation, including a fair of medical service providers and drug companies that dispensed luxurious gifts, such as branded leather portfolios and expensive branded pens. The medical campus included laboratories named for the company that had donated to support its services, and a major building was named for the pharmaceutical companies that sponsored its construction.
While many medical students benefit from some form of financial aid, the costs of medical education in the US makes becoming a doctor in itself an act of privilege. Average non-resident costs at a private medical school in 2023 were USD 66,176, exclusive of other academic and living expenses. Doctors may graduate with significant debt, interning in hospital where they serve double shifts, and ultimately practicing with another insurance burden--malpractice insurance.
The list goes on, and the common element is the financial bottom line. It is the pervasiveness of the capitalistic ethos of greed and profit-making that comprises the "system," not the fragmented and dysfunctional care-delivery services landscape. That is why a "Medicare for all" insurance programme is insufficient. Any roadmap toward a better, more humane healthcare framework needs to address the entire landscape that contributes to the current situation--from the training of medical personnel to care delivery, management of drug costs, and equitable assurance that medical costs never lead to death and bankruptcy.
Can you conceive of such a roadmap? Or is the culture of greed so overwhelming that it is only something one can talk about?
The roadmap is actually simpler than most realize. Look, we already have 151 million Americans on Medicaid, Medicare, or Tricare. That's more people on a government administered healthcare system than any other European nation that has guaranteed healthcare. We already have the infrastructure. This is a matter of expanding that infrastructure to ensure we accommodate all people in this country, and that is done by using the savings to transition private insurance workers, giving severance to those who cannot or do not want to shift over, and investing in four year free public college to retrain those who want a new career. The path is there, we need the political willpower to make it happen.
I appreciate your optimism. It’s been 15 years since leaving the US due to the way healthcare is managed in the US and the trajectory has been to move ever more in the direction of privatisation and profiteering. That’s a lot of inertia. That’s a deeply capitalistic culture that will likely be ever more heartless in the next four years. It’s not the procedural and technical sources of healthcare administration that pose the biggest challenge. It’s the culture that fosters what now exists. The roadmap has to account for how the culture, so deeply embedded financially, can be shifted.
I don’t expect to live to see the change that’s needed, but I’m glad for people like you willing to fight for it.
The corporations left out of your discussion are the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. In collaboration with lobbyists, they have designed, maintained, and enabled this murderous for-profit health care system by playing keepaway ball with universal healthcare from American citizens.
This 💯. They’ve failed us long enough. Time to vote the vast majority of them out and replace them with people who still remember what it’s like not to enjoy the health care bestowed upon members of Congress.
Hey Qasim, did you see McKenzie Keeling's arrest?
Thank you Qasim for explaining in-depth and sharing!!
To add to the conversation about companies that kill for the sake of profit, it would be remiss if we didn’t mention groups like Big Tobacco and now Big Oil. But I’d add argue companies like Big Meat and Dairy, and even Big Tech overlook the fact that their products kill for the sake of profit. It may not be human lives directly, but they have no problem polluting the environment, exploiting workers, and in the case of Big Ag, killing tens of billions of sentient beings needlessly.
There are almost too many examples but one last one worth highlighting - DuPont, the creators of Teflon, who are responsible for creating products with forever chemicals that have no entered the blood of 99% of all beings on this Earth, knew the possible harms of their product for decades, and overlooked it because their products brought them fabulous profits. The movie Dark Waters, starring Mark Ruffalo, does a phenomenal job covering this harrowing saga, based on a long form piece by the NYT.
Excellent column, as always Qasim
The system - used as a term here that describes the current models of health and education and government - is the system built for wealth accumulation to increase power capacity and greed - its that simple. And that system isnt failing - it is doing exactly what is was designed to do. And we - those who are the used to maintain this system are absolutely replacable - hence the tireless endless hamster wheel that we feed into day after day - that upholds that system. Our health and wellbeing.. our own capacity to build wealth is of no consequence to that system. We are literally the most recyclable component of it - we burn out - we die - theres someone to replace us.. and on it goes. This system is simply now being seen for what it has always done - that is fail those it is meant to serve. We have been fooled by manufactured consent into believing all that wed o is for our own benefit - yet this could never be further from the truth. Helping to keep us from the people and places we truly belong - aka nature -and each other - is designed fit for purpose in order to maintain the belief that we infact can only rely on the system for our best way forward in life. All of this has knowingly KNOWINGLY led us into our own early demise - be it from illness or dis-ease -stress - mental health.. the list is endless. One of the greatest causes of this - was the separation of what was once the traditions of learning science spirituality (or religion) and the fields of astrology and cosmology and history all as one knowing. Now separated science has simply no moral grounds - no foundations for it to truly be of benefit towards Life on Earth - it runs its own course. All this to say - after years in the industry of health and wellness and watching the destruction taking place - I am overwhelmed with joy at how much we are now willing to call this out. The time for change has long passed we need to get serious about making it happen. Thanks for your writing and willingness to agent these topics
💯
Thank you so much for this- we need to keep pushing how distorted it all is and has been.
If corporations are people, wouldn’t that make it even more important for a corporation/CEO with deaths on their hands to be properly charged for murder? Citizens United declared corporations to be people. These powerful and wealthy people/corps/hybrid entities are treated more humanely than most of the actual humans are, in America.
Everyone else on the planet understands that a nation has to take care of its own. The wealth of a nation should support the wellbeing of its people. Every day its people know that they deserve their health- their ongoing existence- as a right.
Here, it’s reversed. Here, the massive wealth of our nation is withheld from the majority of its people to enable the suffering and death of 68,000 of us every year- so that the rich can extract and accumulate more wealth from its own people. From us. Every day we all see that wealth and the pursuit of wealth means more than people in America. It certainly gives you a separate set of rights, including purposefully causing the deaths of masses of Americans.
America is a country founded amid wealth that was dependent on cruelty, slavery. The forces that seek to subjugate others and value profit over all have always been here. Their power waxes and wanes, cycling through time, fighting for a chance to have its own way. These forces have most recently been doing whatever it takes for a chance not just to control everything, but also to declare the inhumane cruelty in the rotten heart of unregulated capitalism to be the true law of the land. To them, ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ applies *only* to them.
Qasim, please keepspeaking out, you are a bright light in an ever darkening land.
Thank you I will ❤️✊🏽
Thank you, Qasim, for this.
This comment is somewhat incidental, but I trust it is useful in pursuit of better understandings and better approaches to ending the 'violence' of the current view of property, corporate undertakings, and so on... presented in this commentary.
At her substack, Simple Politics, today Ms Wehle published a commentary on civil service, "Legal truths around Trump’s “Schedule F”. This is a very important offering by Ms Wehle, and once you've read it you may also see how it pertains here.
I would offer the following helpful info: https://crsreports.congress.gov › product › pdf › R › R44803 › 3
[The Civil Service Reform Act: Due Process and Misconduct-Related ...
The Civil Service Reform Act: Due Process and Misconduct-Related Adverse Actions Congressional Research Service R44803 · VERSION 3 · UPDATED 2 within different federal courts regarding the rights of federal employees.10 Against this backdrop, the CSRA created "a comprehensive system for ... ]
As I noted in comment, "As we begin reading the report, we find in the Summary, "The CSRA created a comprehensive system for reviewing actions taken by most federal agencies against their employees, and the act provides a variety of legal protections and remedies for federal employees. It also funnels review of agency decisions to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), subject to review by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Federal Circuit).
In addition to these statutory protections, the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment requires the federal government to observe certain procedures when depriving individuals of life, liberty, or property. The CSRA’s requirement that covered employees may not be removed from federal service, except for cause or unacceptable performance, creates a constitutional property interest in continued employment. The government cannot deprive covered employees of this property interest without adhering to due process requirements. ...".
Both the review venues and the creation of a constitutional property interest are valuable tools and politically hot ones at that. We just need a few live actions to begin to work with, and perhaps there are potential former civil service employees among us who could come forward so that these concepts and venues could be begun to be used and better understood now."
and
"it also seems worth it to ask if the public cannot look at the procedures and the public interest involved in an honest and fact-based effort to recover the purpose of civil service, which is honest service that is also competent to fulfill tasks associated with good, rule of law, democratic constitutional governance? Right? ...
We can, as the 'we' in we the people ask that these questions be asked and be the central questions that guide entrance and continuance in public service. We must be very candid about what public interest or interests are present and of what importance the pursuit of such interest is or interests are. This is an effective and perhaps the strongest legal 'hook' we have to pursue 'competent and honest' civil service."
So often, we citizens can flatly state what we perceive to be common interest and shared necessary outcomes when we are proceeding to critique public policy or legislation or when we are doing either writing of legislation/legislative proposal or doing a judicial challenge to some perceived illegal or unjust action. There really must be a public interest involved in any governmental action; we are the 'we' in we the people, and it is our interest that we have government at all.
This is the legacy of slavery. Slaves were brutalized and worked to death in order for the owners to accumulate profits. Employers of free labor behaved similarly, because that was obviously how profits were maximized. It took a bloody War of Rebellion for the US government to move in a progressive direction (Reconstruction, veterans benefits), and the former slave owners successfully fought back (assassinating Lincoln, ending Reconstruction, Jim Crow, segregation).
Slavery is treating people like commodities. For profit corporations are all guilty of this practice. And they keep coming up with new ways to commodify people, like surveillance capitalism.
It's the Southern Strategy, which derives from Jim Crow, which derives from slavery. So yes the chain is absolutely the same.
I didn't know there was such thing as a 'corporate death penalty' until like a year ago. I'm 37 years old! I consider myself pretty well-read, media literate, and knowledgeable of history. I have an undergraduate degree that included a large history component, and I had just never heard of it! One set of parents, who are lawyers, even had a joke magnet that read, "I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one." I thought half of the joke was that it wasn't possible, not just that it wouldn't happen. So, when I found out that there was real, historic precedent for such an idea? My goodness! I remember Enron, and finished undergraduate right as the Global Financial Crisis was kicking off, and that doesn't even begin to cover the ones that are actively murderous. I have never once heard a politician actually threaten any of these harmful mega corps with anything that would even seriously hurt their pocket books.
Yep, to me ultimately the blame falls on the politicians for capitulating to these corrupt corporations rather than holding them accountable.
Absolutely correct. Corporations knowingly take actions that cause death in a premeditated fashion. As I recall, there's a legal term for that when individuals do it...
It rhymes with Birder...
How right for that question to be asked. Corporations in the US have driven wars, and implemented policies that kill people, or allow them to die with great suffering.
We were told we were fighting communism in Vietnam. Remember the domino theory? NOPE!
It was Goodyear who wanted the US military to protect their rubber trees, as well as other US companies.
Do we really need to be told why the US supports or participates in wars across the globe? It is obviously due to the interests of US corporations such as EXXON, Mobile, Chevron, et al., NOT protecting people from communism.
Then we all know family or friends who have died, suffered or lost everything they had to support profits of health insurance companies after being denied coverage. Wrong as Mancione was to kill that executive, United Health Care has allowed thousands to die, just to make sure they maxified their profits. Shouldn’t that executive, and others like him, be put on trial for murder?
Then we have property insurers who pull out of markets where catastrophic events have occurred due to climate change (carriers are routinely ending issuing policies in hurricane-prone coastal areas such as Florida and Texas, and wildfire stricken areas in California). At least then it is agreed by all that states provide that coverage. I find it ironic that in many of those states there are views considering that as communism, but concede that is necessary in order to provide protection of property. Those same mentalities do not feel the same about governments protecting people’s health!
Thank you for this.
We as citizens can see how certain private pursuits and interests do have a status that must conform to the common public interest, which is the basis shared by all in forming society and for forming democratic rule of law governance. As you specifically note in the example of private insurance being withdrawn and, subsequently, the state taking action to provide public insurance as a social good, we have public interest at the very heart and reasoned core of our democratic vision and constitution. Public health, public safety, ... all examples that must be given superior interest value when compared to private use of what is, legally, considered private property.
Far from being a communist or socialist view, the superior value or values attached to public interests form the reasoned and inclusive civil society core of common legal protections and common legal responsibilities of our American constitutional society. These represent not ideological but very practical relationship forms that provide equal opportunity and protection within the system of norms and laws and that maintain a common status of legitimacy to participating in constitution of law and lawful guidance and application.
You are welcome. Thanks, back, for your well written response.
This hit me hard this morning. I haven't heard from a dear friend since the fall of 2020, when she relapsed into her opioid addiction. I have many friends who are living in poverty because of outrageous healthcare expenses. As a family caregiver, I know countless caregivers who have been forced to sell everything to pay for basic medical services for their loved ones - while still paying for health insurance. Yes, corporate cartel greed and crime is crushing us.
Get angry and stay angry!
I'm so sorry for your friend, Kay. It truly is enraging that all of this is manufactured for "shareholder value." It's enraging that our politicians continue to let these corporations get away with these atrocities. smh horrific.
When Luigi Mangioni killed the CEO he actually slayed one of the individuals responsible for deaths of many. It had a face, and he targeted it. This innocent CEO was about the bottom line. I feel zero remorse for this CEO’S execution. Think of all of the people he he sentenced to death without a thought for corporate bottom line. He was just doing his job. Our culture worships wealth, and all of the things you can have. Empty promises for an empty life. It’s not sustainable.
Actually I do feel a sense of remorse for that man, but mostly for the legacy he is leaving, and due to this is where he, and others like him, have brought us all.
It is always noted in the media that he had a wife and children. But he had the income to pay out of pocket for any costs of health care for that family, AT THE EXPENSE OF ALL OF US WHO DON’T HAVE THAT PRIVILEGE! Sorry for all-caps but I am angry!
A question would be: what does a roadmap to universal health care, a "Medicare for all." look like? And the follow-up question would be, does the existing Medicare programme provide the appropriate model for a universal health programme? (To the latter my answer is no: leaving an individual with responsibility for 20 percent of a $150K medical bill still spells disaster for far too many.)
The focus on health insurance, its costs and the way companies proscribe care and treatment, is obvious and vital, but it is only one part of a much larger problem where medical (including pharmaceutical) costs are concerned. For example, I have yet to read a commentary in an American medium that speaks about the exclusivity and costs of medical education in the United States, or the culture that some medical schools cultivate that reinforces over-medication and insufficient direct personal care.
I worked at a major US medical school that accepted a small and privileged group of ca. 150 medical students annually. The first week of attendance provided orientation, including a fair of medical service providers and drug companies that dispensed luxurious gifts, such as branded leather portfolios and expensive branded pens. The medical campus included laboratories named for the company that had donated to support its services, and a major building was named for the pharmaceutical companies that sponsored its construction.
While many medical students benefit from some form of financial aid, the costs of medical education in the US makes becoming a doctor in itself an act of privilege. Average non-resident costs at a private medical school in 2023 were USD 66,176, exclusive of other academic and living expenses. Doctors may graduate with significant debt, interning in hospital where they serve double shifts, and ultimately practicing with another insurance burden--malpractice insurance.
The list goes on, and the common element is the financial bottom line. It is the pervasiveness of the capitalistic ethos of greed and profit-making that comprises the "system," not the fragmented and dysfunctional care-delivery services landscape. That is why a "Medicare for all" insurance programme is insufficient. Any roadmap toward a better, more humane healthcare framework needs to address the entire landscape that contributes to the current situation--from the training of medical personnel to care delivery, management of drug costs, and equitable assurance that medical costs never lead to death and bankruptcy.
Can you conceive of such a roadmap? Or is the culture of greed so overwhelming that it is only something one can talk about?
The roadmap is actually simpler than most realize. Look, we already have 151 million Americans on Medicaid, Medicare, or Tricare. That's more people on a government administered healthcare system than any other European nation that has guaranteed healthcare. We already have the infrastructure. This is a matter of expanding that infrastructure to ensure we accommodate all people in this country, and that is done by using the savings to transition private insurance workers, giving severance to those who cannot or do not want to shift over, and investing in four year free public college to retrain those who want a new career. The path is there, we need the political willpower to make it happen.
I appreciate your optimism. It’s been 15 years since leaving the US due to the way healthcare is managed in the US and the trajectory has been to move ever more in the direction of privatisation and profiteering. That’s a lot of inertia. That’s a deeply capitalistic culture that will likely be ever more heartless in the next four years. It’s not the procedural and technical sources of healthcare administration that pose the biggest challenge. It’s the culture that fosters what now exists. The roadmap has to account for how the culture, so deeply embedded financially, can be shifted.
I don’t expect to live to see the change that’s needed, but I’m glad for people like you willing to fight for it.