Single-payer is the only solution, imho, but what will it take? A few more murders? I live in Mexico where my health care is managed by me, not some nameless invisible youngster sitting in a sea of cubicles. I text the doctor for an appointment, go see him or her, pay 800 pesos or roughly $40, and pay for the recommended treatment and drugs. No stranger intrudes into my getting the medical care I need. I'm in charge of every decision related to my health.
I commented on one of Zeynep Tufekci's articles on the assassination of Brian Thompson that the New York Times could become relevant to a major issue in America by creating a website that told the story of Americans impoverished by our Healthcare system.
I sincerely doubt that the NYTimes would ever do such a thing. As a periodical it is co-opted by Wall Street and the corrupt status quo that exists in Washington. It's story line is intended to maintain things the way they are. Such a site would only fuel the fires of discontent and undermine further the interests of a corrupt status quo. Nevertheless, it would be a very good thing. Imagine a site with 1000s of such stories.
The best I can do, is call my two Republican Senators to ask about their position on Healthcare. The staff are instructed to respond that the positions are on the Senator's website. The "solutions" on said sites always involve the usual nostrums about "choice" and personalization of coverage. I point to the poor youngster on the other end of the phone, the fatuous nature of such platitudes.
The US needs MEDICARE FOR ALL. It must get rid of the unproductive labor (Adam Smith categorization) that infests our healthcare system. Said labor's sole purpose is to find ways to skim wealth from the consumer. Much of healthcare is administered and directed by finance and lawyers and as our civilization since people began to record history has reported, those professions, in collaboration, are the root of all evil.
Such a site would be a great project for a startup journalism enterprise. Let's hope it gets taken up, even if just as a Substack. One can also vote out your Republican elected officials and talk to your friends/family/neighbors - why should we feel sorry for anyone suffering from medical debt or unable to receive treatment that is feasible but unaffordable if people continue to worship billionaires, fall for stupid race/culture wars, and vote against their own interests? This learned helplessness needs to stop. And if that means vigilantes get away with assassinations while for-profit health insurance gets away with "letting people die" (aka murders of neglect), then so be it. B/c people are so unwilling to embrace actual solutions - if not a single-payer system, then at the very least, pass legislation that would put a cap on the profits health insurance companies can make. Americans need to learn how to read a business balance sheet. With every absurd executive pay increase and profit margin report, these people are CONFESSING what they are not funding. Every single time you or a loved one gets denied for life saving treatment, think about who you voted for in government who is not doing their job in raising these concerns. And think about yourselves - why are you stressing about "having Thanksgiving conversations" when shit like this goes on? The confluence of unfortunate events was bound to happen. It's like Healthcare's George Floyd moment. There are reasons these things happen. And people are not helpless in the face of these events. It's just that they are more easily distracted by race/culture signaling than by understanding basic accounting. That's unfortunate but one could also say it's Darwinian.
The seemingly targeted assassination of a healthcare executive—and widespread popular celebration of the crime—reveal the tragedy of our political moment.
In a sane world, a major political party would be running on a platform to address the social crisis that appears to now be compelling political violence. The corporate capitalists who limit the imagination of the Democratic Party, however, have blocked even a transparent public debate about a right to healthcare from happening.
The result should alarm—yet not surprise—anyone, for its implications are chilling. I plan to write more about this in the coming days, but would offer this post as a reflection on how Democrats squandered this moment, arguably forcing more extreme action on Americans who have found our electoral system not only unresponsive, but also corrupt and thoroughly broken. https://open.substack.com/pub/shahidbuttar/p/7-ways-democrats-made-donald-trump?r=97w99&utm_medium=ios
At the end of the day, the figures with blood on their hands include not only the entire healthcare industry, but also the ranks of politicians across each of the corporate political parties whose unwillingness to embrace human rights has led our country into a ditch.
I think this is almost old news, Shahid. Most mildly sane people came to the same conclusion that the Democrats could have easily won if they had simply vowed to attend to domestic issues rather than spending everyone's money to bomb people. In fact, we begged them to do that,but the Dems could not have cared less about their constituency. We're just seeing how that is being played out now
Do you believe that Trump and his cabinet will create a better health care system with RFK jr at the helm? Should we believe that RFK really cares and that he will actually influence Trump to the extent that Americans will have access to better health and health care? This entails more than our health care system which is broken on a deep level. Let’s start first with what we eat and how this is robbing us of our health in a mighty way.
There are fundamental and powerful reasons to have specific human needs met, paid for, and managed by a democratic government. Healthcare, judicial, police, carceral, basic subsistence and housing, and education. These are all basic to sustaining a civilized and sustainable society. As well as encouraging the maintenance of a viable social contract between society and every single individual. A societal system that exploits for profit the misery and misfortune of others will inevitably generally increase the level of misery and dysfunction in the society at large. In this dynamic the profit motivation produces an overall negative outcome. Enough negative outcomes will engender an appropriate lack of trust in society as a whole. It’s not a pretty picture.
The United States has had more than 50 years to research affordable health care for all its citizens. It could have looked at Sweden, at Norway, at Denmark, at Switzerland, etc., to see how those countries dealt with health. Even Canada has a far better system of looking after its citizen’s health. But instead, the US squanders its massive taxes on its military, pretending to think that it needs to look after the democratization of the whole world, when it itself is described as a democracy in progress, listed in number 26 amongst the democracies of the world. The first dozen democracies offer their residents, even those who have not yet obtained their citizenship, far superior health care than would ever be possible here in the States under our present leadership. It really is a crying shame.
Oh, no, it's worse than that. When we occupied Japan, after WWII, we installed national health care for them. It's not like we didn't know what was best. But even then, the U.S. was governing itself on behalf of the corporatists.
A crying shame yes........but a complete triumph for Mammon worshipping capitalism none the less. And in Amerika......Money is God, and his servants are filthy rich and often run for office.
The bullet in the back of one CEO might suggest times are a changin....but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Canadians who have single payer should start defending it...vigorously. It will be too late when the neocons have gutted it, and we're on private plans like our poor friends to the south. It's time more of us used our imagination to figure out what might prompt someone to shoot another human being in the back.
As a metaphor, it could stand in nicely for what private for profit ensurers do to some people who've paid into their rip off systems for years. A friend's daughter in the states recently had surgery......all paid for....but she and her husband shell out 1700 a month for the insurance, so over the long haul, I suspect they actually paid for the surgery themselves.
Other's are not so lucky, and when their health fails, the company 'stabs them in the back'...and they're o their own.
How should Canadians defend their health care system? In Britain, the government has undercut and underfunded the NHS for decades so that the ONLY SOLUTION now is to privatize it. Because private corporations run things so much better! What do you think people can do about this?
It might be too little too late......but we might consider voting for the political party that gave us our single payer system in the first place. Voting for PP is a sure way to shoot yourself, and your children, in the foot.
Another mind change we could try is to stop saying 'socialism' is the problem and consider than neoliberal privatization may be the evil in the room. We've bowed before the false god of Mammon for over 40 years now. How many of us are better off???
I got an honours BA from full professers for the princely sum of 358.00 bucks tuition a year...at the university of Saskatchewan, under the CCF. How much does a single course, often taught on line by bad teachers, cost our kids now???
But ahhh...WE CAN'T HAVE SOCIALISM....that would anger the rich. There's lots we can do.........if good health is important to us. But admittedly, we have left it rather late.
Thankyou so much Chris Hedges and Eunice Wong for elucidating the deeper issue of why Brian Thompson was murdered. Thompson I suspect, unwittingly became part of the corrupt machine, the corporate America that cares not for the people but their profit margins. They live in Ivory Towers or as in a Gene Roddenberry Star-trek episode, those who live in the mines to support those (elite) in the cloud city. How did we get here one might ask? Well, perhaps it is no different from those in politics or leadership or “Clergy” positions where power corrupts the mind. There are studies that can now show us on a brain scan that the same areas light up re: “power” as do addiction to opioids/cocaine and other synthetic drugs such as meth. Brian was an unfortunate victim of public anger bubbling below the surface. Chris, you outlined this in many of your podcasts how the Dems have failed the people in the last four years (and then some) as have Republicans. Is this a harbinger of what is to come in our democracy (if you can call it that)? If so, we are in deeper trouble than I suspected. The 1% are uber endowed with the wealth off the proliterate. We now enter a new phase of politics and life in America, but not just the USA, also globally. I am a US citizen living in the EU. I have a different seat and persepctive of what is happening. Most Americans (sadly) are uninformed as to the crisis at hand.
My brother-in-law has said on more than one occasion, "The U.S. is the only country that profits off of sick people." Killing the CEO of a large healrh insurance company is NOT the answer or the solution. Yet this hideous act has brought forth naked before the world the travesty and tragedy created and caused by health insurance giants. It is long past the time to rein in those insurance companies. How likely that is? Zero likely.
Insurance is intended to protect yourself (and family) from economic hardship. Our health care insurance system often fails to prevent this from happening, even when we play by the rules. Citizens, by law, are required to pay for and carry, a health insurance plan or suffer a tax penalty. My question is "should it literally be considered a form of insurance. If not, then what is it?
I remember when Obamacare came in, and my insurance premium went from $250/mo to $500/mo, and I could no longer afford it. And then, when tax time came, the government fined me $625 for not being able to afford health care. Oh how I love Obamacare!/s
Yet that was the best your rich man republic could do for it's citizens. Beats me why so many Americans are so darn arrogant about their democracy.......and so passive every time American money funds aerial terrorism of other people's countries.
It particularly bugs me, because my Canadian government follows your lead when it comes to foreign policy, but gets beat up because we don't spend enough on the death machines!!!
In short, you don't have single payer health care because you have planet dominating military machines just about everywhere.
Nancy Pelosi made a promise to these scum med insurance lobbyists that she'd make sure no one would pass a Medicare or Medicaid for-all bill. She is the devil.
Lovely sentiment: As a genocide rages in Gaza.....kept running by American armaments. As an outsider, I'm surprised more citizens haven't taken careful aim at some of the obscenely rich milking the people but willing to pay for endless war.....while climate catastrophe stalks us all.
The corporate media is dedicated to keeping a lid on an increasingly angry population. Trump will act as a temporary relief valve. But, before the end of his presidency, it will become obvious that he has failed. He and the oligarchs that own him are incapable of governing much less solving the huge issues our country is faced with. The problem for the super-wealthy is that the only actual, real, solutions are Progressive. It’s like asking them to commit suicide. Which would be nice but unlikely. In 1933 FDR became president and recognized this similar dynamic and applied progressive solutions to save the country. The capitalists almost overthrew him. Our situation is similar but far more dire. We must be prepared to pull the rug out from under the oligarchs. Or die trying.
We've been watching the massacre of men women children and babies for over a year. What little empathy humanity had has become insensitive to to all civilities. This will not end well.
The "killer" was captured and will probably get a lengthy prison sentence. The real killer/s go free and with complete immunity to get rich while the money's there for the taking from all of us.
Single-payer is the only solution, imho, but what will it take? A few more murders? I live in Mexico where my health care is managed by me, not some nameless invisible youngster sitting in a sea of cubicles. I text the doctor for an appointment, go see him or her, pay 800 pesos or roughly $40, and pay for the recommended treatment and drugs. No stranger intrudes into my getting the medical care I need. I'm in charge of every decision related to my health.
I commented on one of Zeynep Tufekci's articles on the assassination of Brian Thompson that the New York Times could become relevant to a major issue in America by creating a website that told the story of Americans impoverished by our Healthcare system.
I sincerely doubt that the NYTimes would ever do such a thing. As a periodical it is co-opted by Wall Street and the corrupt status quo that exists in Washington. It's story line is intended to maintain things the way they are. Such a site would only fuel the fires of discontent and undermine further the interests of a corrupt status quo. Nevertheless, it would be a very good thing. Imagine a site with 1000s of such stories.
The best I can do, is call my two Republican Senators to ask about their position on Healthcare. The staff are instructed to respond that the positions are on the Senator's website. The "solutions" on said sites always involve the usual nostrums about "choice" and personalization of coverage. I point to the poor youngster on the other end of the phone, the fatuous nature of such platitudes.
The US needs MEDICARE FOR ALL. It must get rid of the unproductive labor (Adam Smith categorization) that infests our healthcare system. Said labor's sole purpose is to find ways to skim wealth from the consumer. Much of healthcare is administered and directed by finance and lawyers and as our civilization since people began to record history has reported, those professions, in collaboration, are the root of all evil.
Such a site would be a great project for a startup journalism enterprise. Let's hope it gets taken up, even if just as a Substack. One can also vote out your Republican elected officials and talk to your friends/family/neighbors - why should we feel sorry for anyone suffering from medical debt or unable to receive treatment that is feasible but unaffordable if people continue to worship billionaires, fall for stupid race/culture wars, and vote against their own interests? This learned helplessness needs to stop. And if that means vigilantes get away with assassinations while for-profit health insurance gets away with "letting people die" (aka murders of neglect), then so be it. B/c people are so unwilling to embrace actual solutions - if not a single-payer system, then at the very least, pass legislation that would put a cap on the profits health insurance companies can make. Americans need to learn how to read a business balance sheet. With every absurd executive pay increase and profit margin report, these people are CONFESSING what they are not funding. Every single time you or a loved one gets denied for life saving treatment, think about who you voted for in government who is not doing their job in raising these concerns. And think about yourselves - why are you stressing about "having Thanksgiving conversations" when shit like this goes on? The confluence of unfortunate events was bound to happen. It's like Healthcare's George Floyd moment. There are reasons these things happen. And people are not helpless in the face of these events. It's just that they are more easily distracted by race/culture signaling than by understanding basic accounting. That's unfortunate but one could also say it's Darwinian.
The seemingly targeted assassination of a healthcare executive—and widespread popular celebration of the crime—reveal the tragedy of our political moment.
In a sane world, a major political party would be running on a platform to address the social crisis that appears to now be compelling political violence. The corporate capitalists who limit the imagination of the Democratic Party, however, have blocked even a transparent public debate about a right to healthcare from happening.
The result should alarm—yet not surprise—anyone, for its implications are chilling. I plan to write more about this in the coming days, but would offer this post as a reflection on how Democrats squandered this moment, arguably forcing more extreme action on Americans who have found our electoral system not only unresponsive, but also corrupt and thoroughly broken. https://open.substack.com/pub/shahidbuttar/p/7-ways-democrats-made-donald-trump?r=97w99&utm_medium=ios
At the end of the day, the figures with blood on their hands include not only the entire healthcare industry, but also the ranks of politicians across each of the corporate political parties whose unwillingness to embrace human rights has led our country into a ditch.
I think this is almost old news, Shahid. Most mildly sane people came to the same conclusion that the Democrats could have easily won if they had simply vowed to attend to domestic issues rather than spending everyone's money to bomb people. In fact, we begged them to do that,but the Dems could not have cared less about their constituency. We're just seeing how that is being played out now
Do you believe that Trump and his cabinet will create a better health care system with RFK jr at the helm? Should we believe that RFK really cares and that he will actually influence Trump to the extent that Americans will have access to better health and health care? This entails more than our health care system which is broken on a deep level. Let’s start first with what we eat and how this is robbing us of our health in a mighty way.
And don't forget, the voters who voted for those politicians.
You are a great writer - so write more!
There are fundamental and powerful reasons to have specific human needs met, paid for, and managed by a democratic government. Healthcare, judicial, police, carceral, basic subsistence and housing, and education. These are all basic to sustaining a civilized and sustainable society. As well as encouraging the maintenance of a viable social contract between society and every single individual. A societal system that exploits for profit the misery and misfortune of others will inevitably generally increase the level of misery and dysfunction in the society at large. In this dynamic the profit motivation produces an overall negative outcome. Enough negative outcomes will engender an appropriate lack of trust in society as a whole. It’s not a pretty picture.
The United States has had more than 50 years to research affordable health care for all its citizens. It could have looked at Sweden, at Norway, at Denmark, at Switzerland, etc., to see how those countries dealt with health. Even Canada has a far better system of looking after its citizen’s health. But instead, the US squanders its massive taxes on its military, pretending to think that it needs to look after the democratization of the whole world, when it itself is described as a democracy in progress, listed in number 26 amongst the democracies of the world. The first dozen democracies offer their residents, even those who have not yet obtained their citizenship, far superior health care than would ever be possible here in the States under our present leadership. It really is a crying shame.
Oh, no, it's worse than that. When we occupied Japan, after WWII, we installed national health care for them. It's not like we didn't know what was best. But even then, the U.S. was governing itself on behalf of the corporatists.
A crying shame yes........but a complete triumph for Mammon worshipping capitalism none the less. And in Amerika......Money is God, and his servants are filthy rich and often run for office.
The bullet in the back of one CEO might suggest times are a changin....but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Canadians who have single payer should start defending it...vigorously. It will be too late when the neocons have gutted it, and we're on private plans like our poor friends to the south. It's time more of us used our imagination to figure out what might prompt someone to shoot another human being in the back.
As a metaphor, it could stand in nicely for what private for profit ensurers do to some people who've paid into their rip off systems for years. A friend's daughter in the states recently had surgery......all paid for....but she and her husband shell out 1700 a month for the insurance, so over the long haul, I suspect they actually paid for the surgery themselves.
Other's are not so lucky, and when their health fails, the company 'stabs them in the back'...and they're o their own.
How should Canadians defend their health care system? In Britain, the government has undercut and underfunded the NHS for decades so that the ONLY SOLUTION now is to privatize it. Because private corporations run things so much better! What do you think people can do about this?
It might be too little too late......but we might consider voting for the political party that gave us our single payer system in the first place. Voting for PP is a sure way to shoot yourself, and your children, in the foot.
Another mind change we could try is to stop saying 'socialism' is the problem and consider than neoliberal privatization may be the evil in the room. We've bowed before the false god of Mammon for over 40 years now. How many of us are better off???
I got an honours BA from full professers for the princely sum of 358.00 bucks tuition a year...at the university of Saskatchewan, under the CCF. How much does a single course, often taught on line by bad teachers, cost our kids now???
But ahhh...WE CAN'T HAVE SOCIALISM....that would anger the rich. There's lots we can do.........if good health is important to us. But admittedly, we have left it rather late.
When you engage in a criminal business, criminal responses are to be expected.
Thankyou so much Chris Hedges and Eunice Wong for elucidating the deeper issue of why Brian Thompson was murdered. Thompson I suspect, unwittingly became part of the corrupt machine, the corporate America that cares not for the people but their profit margins. They live in Ivory Towers or as in a Gene Roddenberry Star-trek episode, those who live in the mines to support those (elite) in the cloud city. How did we get here one might ask? Well, perhaps it is no different from those in politics or leadership or “Clergy” positions where power corrupts the mind. There are studies that can now show us on a brain scan that the same areas light up re: “power” as do addiction to opioids/cocaine and other synthetic drugs such as meth. Brian was an unfortunate victim of public anger bubbling below the surface. Chris, you outlined this in many of your podcasts how the Dems have failed the people in the last four years (and then some) as have Republicans. Is this a harbinger of what is to come in our democracy (if you can call it that)? If so, we are in deeper trouble than I suspected. The 1% are uber endowed with the wealth off the proliterate. We now enter a new phase of politics and life in America, but not just the USA, also globally. I am a US citizen living in the EU. I have a different seat and persepctive of what is happening. Most Americans (sadly) are uninformed as to the crisis at hand.
My brother-in-law has said on more than one occasion, "The U.S. is the only country that profits off of sick people." Killing the CEO of a large healrh insurance company is NOT the answer or the solution. Yet this hideous act has brought forth naked before the world the travesty and tragedy created and caused by health insurance giants. It is long past the time to rein in those insurance companies. How likely that is? Zero likely.
Insurance is intended to protect yourself (and family) from economic hardship. Our health care insurance system often fails to prevent this from happening, even when we play by the rules. Citizens, by law, are required to pay for and carry, a health insurance plan or suffer a tax penalty. My question is "should it literally be considered a form of insurance. If not, then what is it?
I remember when Obamacare came in, and my insurance premium went from $250/mo to $500/mo, and I could no longer afford it. And then, when tax time came, the government fined me $625 for not being able to afford health care. Oh how I love Obamacare!/s
Yet that was the best your rich man republic could do for it's citizens. Beats me why so many Americans are so darn arrogant about their democracy.......and so passive every time American money funds aerial terrorism of other people's countries.
It particularly bugs me, because my Canadian government follows your lead when it comes to foreign policy, but gets beat up because we don't spend enough on the death machines!!!
In short, you don't have single payer health care because you have planet dominating military machines just about everywhere.
Nancy Pelosi made a promise to these scum med insurance lobbyists that she'd make sure no one would pass a Medicare or Medicaid for-all bill. She is the devil.
Profit means gold coins not people.
Nothing absolves the shooter? How about the Biblical ethos: an eye for an eye?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ John F. Kennedy
Lovely sentiment: As a genocide rages in Gaza.....kept running by American armaments. As an outsider, I'm surprised more citizens haven't taken careful aim at some of the obscenely rich milking the people but willing to pay for endless war.....while climate catastrophe stalks us all.
The corporate media is dedicated to keeping a lid on an increasingly angry population. Trump will act as a temporary relief valve. But, before the end of his presidency, it will become obvious that he has failed. He and the oligarchs that own him are incapable of governing much less solving the huge issues our country is faced with. The problem for the super-wealthy is that the only actual, real, solutions are Progressive. It’s like asking them to commit suicide. Which would be nice but unlikely. In 1933 FDR became president and recognized this similar dynamic and applied progressive solutions to save the country. The capitalists almost overthrew him. Our situation is similar but far more dire. We must be prepared to pull the rug out from under the oligarchs. Or die trying.
Progressive Canadians wish you every kind of luck.
We've been watching the massacre of men women children and babies for over a year. What little empathy humanity had has become insensitive to to all civilities. This will not end well.
Yes. "Thoughts and prayers".... 🥴
Thanks. It's just sad.
The "killer" was captured and will probably get a lengthy prison sentence. The real killer/s go free and with complete immunity to get rich while the money's there for the taking from all of us.